John Sloane from Tamworth writes about local government, in reply to Gary Somerville’s recent letter to the editor.
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IN RESPONSE to Gary Somerville’s letter on January 20.
Gary, thanks for your kind backup letter, but I think your thoughts are a little out of touch.
We still have two abattoirs that employ many hundreds of local workers.
We have a new livestock exchange centre built at a cost of about $17 million.
Services such as garbage collection are probably outsourced in every local government in NSW.
The Dungowan problem was instigated by the State Government Dams Safety Committee, so was offloaded to Tamworth Regional Council.
The problem with local government is that when services are outsourced, they still have an administration department to oversee the contractor.
This defeats the purpose of cost-cutting and ends up costing much more to run.
My main concern in living in Tamworth is the arrogant way in which this council treats the ratepayers who actually pay a large percentage of their top-heavy wages.
To tell ratepayers that they have almost no say at a council meeting is, I think, a disgrace and unconstitutional.
This council should look at a struggling small council such as Bourke, which treats its ratepayers as part of the community and not the idiots who pay their wages.
I was in Bourke recently and you can feel the proud connection between their local government and the community as they work together to make their town a proud place to live and for the great tourist income they generate from their joint efforts.
Can’t wait to leave here.