Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

While we may all bleat about the State Government’s decide and defend strategies the Local Government Act (an act of the State Parliament) requires us to be consulting on almost everything we do, short of going to the toilet.

So yes we have yet another consultation about to head your way, or at lest those of you who have a real interest in how you are governed. This one is what is known as the Elector Representation Review.

Every so often (8 years or thereabouts) we have to review our Ward structure, primarily to establish an equal voter distribution. Our time is here and council will tomorrow night be asked to sanction a consultation process to determine what you might think is appropriate. Many of your elected members have views but we need yours before we make our recommendations to the Minister.

Amongst the many things we have to review are:

1   the principal office of Council, whether it should be a mayor elected by you or a chairperson (who apparently can still be called Mayor) elected by the elected members;

2   the need to have area councillors in addition to ward councillors;

3   the division of the Council into wards, or alternatively the abolition of wards;

4   the number of elected members required to provide fair and adequate representation to the community;

5   the level of ward representation (ie single and/or multi councillor wards or combination thereof); and

6   the name of the Council area and/or any proposed wards.

Have fun with this one. If you have thoughts let us know.

I have thoughts on each but you are the one being represented so …………. over to you!