WAKOOL Shire Mayor Neil Gorey has hit back at claims the shire should merge with neighbouring councils as part of the State Government’s Fit for the Future (FFTF) reforms.
One of the measures Wakool Shire had to consider as part of its FFTF proposal was to merge with other mid-Murray councils, Deniliquin, Conargo and Murray.
The council opted to stand alone as a Rural Council, unlike Deniliquin Council, whose mayor Lindsay Renwick told media outlets the mid-Murray councils would be financially better off in the long run as one merged council.
Cr Gorey told The Guardian he disagreed with Cr Renwick’s assessment.
“Deniliquin’s general manager and Mayor accused all the other councils of basically being unfit for the future,” Cr Gorey said.
“There were some concerns raised over our internal revenue but we’ve shown we will be compliant [with FFTF criteria] and our staff has taken a lot of work into consultancies and gotten the right information and made the required changes.”
Cr Gorey pointed out Wakool Shire had 45 public submissions on the proposal — most of them in favour of standing alone — whereas the Deniliquin community had shown little interest in its own proposal.
Deniliquin Mayor Lindsay Renwick said he didn’t intend to say the other councils were ‘unfit’ by themselves, but that they’d all be ‘fitter’ together as one.
“Deniliquin Council from day one, when we got the merger plans given to us from the taskforce, we summed it up and thought, well that’s the best way to go forward in the region,” Cr Renwick said.
“We’ve had consultants come in and do some case studies with all of us… in the long run it would be much better for our region.
For more on this story, grab a copy of Monday’s Guardian (July 6).
