A new mayor has taken his fight straight up to the NSW Premier for more transition funds claiming a “regional and rural snub” has left newly merged councils struggling.
Brian Ingram, a Young shearing contractor, and the unanimously elected new mayor of Hilltops Council, says it was unfair rural and regional councils received just $5 million for transition costs while new city councils were given $10 million.
Mr Ingram also said the department of local government had not bothered to reply to correspondence over a seven month period sent by the council. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian met with Mr Ingram during her by-election tour to Young and has promised to take up the matters with her Local Government minister Gabrielle Upton.
Mr Ingram said he faced the unpalatable position that if more funds were not provided of having to raise rates, cut services or suspend infrastructure projects.
He said there was a large pool of funds that were not dispersed after the NSW Government backflipped on forced council mergers earlier this year, a debacle that partly precipitated the end of Mike Baird’s reign as Premier and the elevation of Ms Berejiklian.
Mr Ingram wants access to the funds to support a high IT costs after the merger of three council areas of Boorowa, Harden and Young. He said the council needed funds also to support new staff to help in the interim merger period and to synchronise water and sewerage systems. He imagined that other new merged councils in rural NSW were in the same predicament as Hilltops.
“I had a very positive meeting with the Premier. I told her that there was still a lot of work to be done with the mergers and the $5m transition amount would not cover it. For instance we need to integrate three different IT systems and that is going to be quite expensive. She said she would take the matter up with the local government minister and also Deputy Premier (John Barilaro).
“There is extra money there because of the mergers that didn’t go ahead. It’s a significant amount of money.”
Mr Ingram said he was most concerned about the lack of response from the department of local government to several letters sent to them during the administration period - none of which had been replied to. “I understand that other regional councils have also had the same thing happen to them - no reply. This situation must be rectified.”
The Land asked for a response from Minister Gabrielle Upton to Mr Ingram’s concerns, and did get a reply - but a short one that didn’t take the issues any further.
A spokesman for Mrs Upton said she was “aware that the Premier has met directly with Hilltops Council to discuss its request for additional funds towards the cost of amalgamation.” The spokesman said Hilltops received the same transition money as other rural councils.