The evening session of the Kogarah/Hurstville amalgamation inquiry was much better attended than the afternoon session.
At least 70 people were present and 14 spoke.
The president of the City of Hurstville Residents Association, Brian Shaw, who attended both sessions, said none of the speakers were in favour of amalgamation.
‘‘All in all the ratepayers of Hurstville and Kogarah made a good showing of themselves,’’ Mr Shaw said.
Mr Shaw spoke on behalf of the City of Hurstville Residents Association.
‘‘Our organisation has represented the ratepayers of Hurstville for 35 years and I have been president for 26 years,’’ he said.
‘‘I have attended Hurstville council meetings for over 27 years.’’
He said the association had spent more than 30 hours discussing the merger proposal and found no support for mergers within Hurstville or any other local area council.
But they believed that there should be some adjustment to boundaries for Hurstville to unite a number of suburbs such as Riverwood, Narwee, Beverly Hills, Kingsgrove, as well as Carlton and Kogarah which were now divided by unnatural boundaries and led to ‘‘lazy governance by councils’’.
This would increase the population of Hurstville by about 25,000.
‘‘We believe the council area should be divided into wards,’’ Mr Shaw said.
‘‘We support the council electing the mayor annually as it allows for a bad choice to be changed before too much damage is done.
‘‘We believe there should be no political parties in Local Government. We also believe there should be a mechanism which can remove councillors who behave badly which is not politically motivated.’’
What would you like to see happen?
