Why don’t we have our own Peninsula Council?

Letters forum

While council plans for new waterside developments and the revitalisation of Gosford township, the millions of dollars Peninsula residents pour into the council account is doing precious little to improve the Peninsula.

Works that have been overlooked, ignored for sometimes 20 to 25 years, are still being put on a back burner: the railway underpass at Woy Woy, the Woy Woy Wharf renewal, channel dredging off Ettalong and approximately 70 roads that have no kerbing or footpaths. Patch up jobs everywhere but, as we are told, it all takes money to fix, and government only lets councils raise rates by small annual increases. This didn’t stop the former Gosford Council investing $100M in dud American real estate deals and losing almost $39M of our money back in 2009.

Now they can’t agree on what to do with the Ettalong Channel problem which is impacting negatively on the income from tourist dollars, not to mention the commuter inconvenience. It is doubtful they will ever resolve the railway underpass, and footpaths and street kerbing seems to be totally beyond their capacity. So when you analyse it in its entirety, why do we continue with Central Coast Council? Why don’t we go back to having our own Peninsula Council? Surely there are enough intelligent people on the Peninsula to form our own council and have the rates and so on that are collected used for our own benefit. The Peninsula did it that way many years ago and it couldn’t be worse than our current predicament.

Email, 28 Mar 2018 R Fountain, Booker Bay