Thursday, September 14, marks the day.
It will be exactly one year before Central Coast residents will vote in 15 new councillors on September 14, 2024.
And vote in a referendum as well.
The referendum will ask residents if you want 15 councillors in five wards as it has been, or if you want nine councillors in three wards.
No other council as large as the Central Coast has less than 15 councillors.
Before the merger to create one Central Coast Council:
# Gosford had 10 councillors with a resident representation ratio of 1:17,199.
# Wyong had 10 councillors with a representation ratio of 1:15,902.
Then we got:
# A merged council with 15 councillors brought this ratio to 1:22,067.
The Local Government Boundaries Commission said in April 2016 that it supported the maximum number of councillors due to the heavy workload for councillors in a merged council with a population at the time “in excess of 330,000 and growing”.
The Council was born in May 2016 with the merger of the former Wyong and Gosford councils and was under the first administrator Ian Reynolds until elections were held in September 2017.
Residents voted in four Liberals, five independents, and six Labor councillors.
Four wards, Gosford East, Gosford West, The Entrance, and Wyong, had one councillor of each colour while Budgewoi ward had two Labor and one independent.
The councillors were suspended in October 2020 when the Council announced significant cash flow issues.
That’s when interim administrator Dick Persson came on board and he brought in Rik Hart as his acting CEO.
The councillors were then sacked in March 2021 after a public inquiry found they should have had better oversight of the finances despite the inquiry finding the staff investment reports from October 2019 until the crisis were designed to obfuscate rather than elucidate.
The idea to reduce the number of councillors came from Dick Persson in one of his final decisions before he ended his role after six months.
Dick and Rik had by this time hired David Farmer as CEO.
Rik took on Dick’s role as administrator.
The Coast was supposed to vote for new councillors in 2020 but Covid pushed that back to 2021 and, by then, we were under administration and we didn’t get to vote when the rest of NSW voted.
The Central Coast has been under administration longer than it has had councillors.
So here we are, one year out from the September 2024 council elections.
It will be exactly one year before Central Coast residents will vote in 15 new councillors on September 14, 2024.
And vote in a referendum as well.
The referendum will ask residents if you want 15 councillors in five wards as it has been, or if you want nine councillors in three wards.
No other council as large as the Central Coast has less than 15 councillors.
Before the merger to create one Central Coast Council:
# Gosford had 10 councillors with a resident representation ratio of 1:17,199.
# Wyong had 10 councillors with a representation ratio of 1:15,902.
Then we got:
# A merged council with 15 councillors brought this ratio to 1:22,067.
The Local Government Boundaries Commission said in April 2016 that it supported the maximum number of councillors due to the heavy workload for councillors in a merged council with a population at the time “in excess of 330,000 and growing”.
The Council was born in May 2016 with the merger of the former Wyong and Gosford councils and was under the first administrator Ian Reynolds until elections were held in September 2017.
Residents voted in four Liberals, five independents, and six Labor councillors.
Four wards, Gosford East, Gosford West, The Entrance, and Wyong, had one councillor of each colour while Budgewoi ward had two Labor and one independent.
The councillors were suspended in October 2020 when the Council announced significant cash flow issues.
That’s when interim administrator Dick Persson came on board and he brought in Rik Hart as his acting CEO.
The councillors were then sacked in March 2021 after a public inquiry found they should have had better oversight of the finances despite the inquiry finding the staff investment reports from October 2019 until the crisis were designed to obfuscate rather than elucidate.
The idea to reduce the number of councillors came from Dick Persson in one of his final decisions before he ended his role after six months.
Dick and Rik had by this time hired David Farmer as CEO.
Rik took on Dick’s role as administrator.
The Coast was supposed to vote for new councillors in 2020 but Covid pushed that back to 2021 and, by then, we were under administration and we didn’t get to vote when the rest of NSW voted.
The Central Coast has been under administration longer than it has had councillors.
So here we are, one year out from the September 2024 council elections.
