Albany councillors facing the chop under proposed WA local government reforms

Four City of Albany council seats could be abolished under the WA Government’s biggest local government reforms in 25-years. Under the sweeping reforms released for public consultation last Wednesday new rules would see councils with between 5000-75,000 residents represented by 5-9 councillors — including a mayor or president — in a bid to reduce costs. With a population of more than 38,000 Albany’s council of 13 members would be reduced to nine. Preferential voting would replace the current “first-past-the-post” system in line with State and Federal elections, and mayors and presidents would be elected directly by constituents. Albany would continue to have councillors elected to its six wards, but smaller councils such as the Shire of Denmark would have their wards dissolved. Albany Mayor Dennis Wellington said he was not opposed to a proposed reduction of councillor numbers as the change would be implemented gradually. “I personally think 13 is a bit too high,” he said. “Nine is what they are suggesting, which is probably the optimum number, which is probably what you have in terms of a board of directors for a major company. “I think probably we should be better off with smaller, concise councils and work with that.” Dysfunctional councils will be targeted by a local government inspector which would handle complaints about elected members and chief executives, and have powers of a standing inquiry to manage investigations. Mr Wellington said overall he believed the proposed reforms were a positive step and formalised changes many local governments had already implemented. He said the proposed reforms should represent a commitment to ongoing change to ensure local governments adapted with the times. “I think with a lot of them we saw them coming. The Minister did make a statement that he thought good councils wouldn’t have too many concerns about them and as such we don’t really have too many concerns,” he said. “Some of them still need a bit of fleshing out and there is a period of negotiation which is open until early February, I don’t think they will have a huge impact either.” The proposed reforms also aim to introduce amendments to “encourage and enable” councils, especially in smaller regional local governments, to share resources including chief executives and senior employees. He said more needed to be done to encourage this sort of collaboration. “I don’t think it goes far enough. I think pilot schemes should be put in place for local authorities to go into shared facilities, shared schemes and shared staff,” he said.