This year we have the council election in September.
In conjunction with this, we also have the local referendum about reducing the number of councillors from 15 to nine and reducing the number of wards from five to three.
We, as Central Coast residents, cannot allow this to pass.
If this succeeds, it will drastically increase the ratio of the population to councillors by an extra 15,400 people per councillor.
The flow-on from this will be the risk of diminishing the vital connection between the local government and the community it serves.
We have already been experiencing this since the administrator took over in October 2020.
It is no surprise the Central Coast Council is the most complained about council in NSW.
The Central Coast LGA is the third largest in the state, with a population of about 346,000.
To put that in perspective, the population of Iceland is 375,000, the Northern Territory is 251,000.
We need to ensure our extremely large population is equally taken care of.
Changing the number of councillors will bring the Central Coast out of alignment with the current ratios of the other top 10 largest LGAs in NSW.
We will be the outlier by a significant margin and will suffer for it.
Email, Mar 5
Evan Schrei, Niagara Park
please find in the link a infographic highlighting how out of alignment we will be with the top 10 largest LGAs