Council’s ‘fitness’ not in doubt

Cr John Davis has welcomed the decision by the Premier to release the report for public discussion and its assessment of Orange City Council’s finances.

“It’s good news that IPART has found Orange City Council is in good financial shape,” Cr John Davis said.

“When IPART looked closely at questions of financial sustainability, our infrastructure, our services management and efficiency, they found Orange City Council measured up to all of the NSW Government’s fitness benchmarks.”

“Despite ticking every financial sustainability, infrastructure, services management and efficiency box, when IPART looked at scale and capacity, a view open to very significant interpretation, IPART felt that Orange was unfit because it hadn’t demonstrated where a merged council could make savings up to the required benchmark level.”

“As we’ve looked at some cases in the report, it’s become clear that what was meant by ‘fitness’ was ‘volunteering to merge’. If a council or its neighbours had not proposed a merger and they hadn’t demonstrated that the option of standing alone would be good as or better, then they’ve been labelled ‘unfit’.”

“It’s disappointing, when IPART found Orange City Council was in good financial shape. It doesn’t inspire confidence when local residents are coming to the Civic Centre front counter worried, after hearing media reports that the council isn’t ‘fit’.”

Orange Civic Centre“Realistically, if you look at a map of NSW, at 280 square kilometres, Orange is an unusually small regional council, compared to Bathurst and Dubbo which were both judged to be ‘fit’ for the future.”

“It’s pretty obvious that attempts are being made to fit Orange City Council into a regional footprint.”

“We already do a lot of work for our residents and I think the NSW Government believes that could happen over a bigger geographic area. As a result, we’ve been placed in the category of councils which the NSW government may want to merge.”

“I’m looking forward to sitting down with our neighbours and talking through the options.”

“We’ve now been given until 18 November to respond before the government announces its final decision. The Local Government minister has said councils across the state will learn about their future before the end of the year.”