Coffs Harbour City Council has voted to keep pushing to form a new Joint Organisation with Clarence Valley and Nambucca shire councils rather than combining with Bellingen, Kempsey and Port Macquarie in the Mid North Coast JO that was created last month.
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This ran counter to the advice of their general manager Steve McGrath, who said that “given the state government’s stated position, my advice to you will be to pursue the recommendation that’s in the report.”
That recommendation was “to approve the inclusion of the Council’s area in the area of the Mid North Coast Joint Organisation”.
Over 90 per cent of regional councils have been organised into the 11 JOs that were created on May 15, and the government has advised that it will not proclaim any new JOs in regional NSW, except for the Far West region.
The sticking point for Nambucca and Coffs has been the inclusion of Port Macquarie in the Mid North Coast JO, so as things stand, Bellingen finds itself stranded in an alliance that lacks the neighbours with whom it shares strategic interests.
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Another option listed for the Coffs councillors was to “Reject the recommendation and continue to pursue Council’s current resolved position on the membership of a JO, comprising Clarence Valley Council, Coffs Harbour City Council, Bellingen Shire Council and Nambucca Shire Council, through making of representations to the Deputy Premier, the Minister for Local Government and local State Members.”
The GM advised that if councillors wished to pursue that option, they should leave Bellingen out of the equation initially.
“You’ve got to tread carefully with how you approach it to get the outcome,” he said.
Mr McGrath suggested a three-step process that would involve making representations about a new JO in conjunction with Nambucca and Clarence, forming the JO comprising three councils if it was accepted by the state government, then finally inviting Bellingen to join “as a full member if they get approval to withdraw from the Mid North Coast JO, or to join as an associate member if that’s not the case”.
Councillor Keith Rhoades then put forward an amended motion along those lines, arguing that the four councils shared a community of interest and noting that Clarence and Nambucca had passed similar motions in the past week.
“We’ve got no common interest with Port Macquarie,” he said. “None whatsoever. And I really feel that if we don’t win this battle, the losers will be not us, it’ll be the Bellingens and the Nambuccas.”
“We can’t include Bellingen because they are a member of one, but we do cover that by the last part of this amendment, ” he said. “There have been public statements made by the mayor of Bellingen that in a roundabout way they think they’re in the wrong place at the present moment.”
The motion was passed unanimously.
