The St George Leader did not touch upon what I think is the main aspect of the presently adopted name for Georges Rover Council, or change of it, in respect of the merged Kogarah and Hurstville councils (“New name for Georges River Council”, Leader, June 22).
It is the overdue omission of the ridiculous word ’City’.
When Hurstville quit being a municipality in favour of the silly notion of it being a city, it was an exercise of pure ego — goodness knows at what cost to the ratepayers - and they even succeeded in getting the railways to rename Hurstville station as ’Hurstville City’.
Thankfully, someone there with common sense, saw the absurdity of it and before long the name reverted, without the fanfare of its introduction, to just plain ’Hurstville’.
The city has long been identified with the CBD and its immediate surrounds.
Just because an outdated regulation said that once an area of population reached a certain number, the local council could ditch the word ’municipality’ and re-badge itself, provided a crummy excuse for the small-minded aldermen of the time, to take advantage of it.
Mercifully, the shire did not get enticed into this status-seeking.
It was a mark of Ms Connolly’s (or someone’s) sanity that the word ’city’ was quietly abandoned, and to avoid conspicuousness of the changed name, so was the appropriate word ’municipality’.
Howsoever the word ‘George’ is played around with in the final council name wash-up is, in my opinion, a non-event.
So long as the joke of pretending this suburban area is a city, is not revived.
Tony Martin, Mortdale
