Survey

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

People within the Shire of Kent will receive a survey this week asking them to indicate a preferred option should the Shire be forced to amalgamate.

This has come about from information that came out of Local Government Week. Cr's Skipsey, Grant-Williams and I attended this year. Both the Minister for Local Government and the Premier indicated that VROC's were not acceptable as a structural reform option. Much discussion was had with some of our neighbouring shires. The general feeling was that some form of amalgamation was inevitable. Therefore it was in our own interest to indicate where our preferences for amalgamation lay.
This was further galvanised when the Shire of Katanning released their draft submission which looked at including the town of Nyabing in its 75km radius sweep.

The Shire of Kent is still committed to upholding it's constituent's wishes that we do not amalgamate. What we are requesting from the survey is, that if we are forced to amalgamate, which current Shire/s would you prefer to join?

I'm still totally against amalgamation for our Shire. I can't see the benefits at all. We are in a healthy financial position and since we are a farming community, our rate base is stable. Our communities are full of strong, forward thinking people. I believe we are perfectly capable of taking our community into the future without the need to join another shire or group of shires.

To me, amalgamation means huge expense with little result. The main beneficiary seems to be the major town in the group. Amalgamation won't mean we'll have more people living in our towns, it won't create employment in our towns (in fact, jobs will be lost!), there won't be more services in our towns, so what's the point?

For the 'Other' option, in our shire survey, I'm putting "No other option - no amalgamation".
I urge you to do the same.