Peninsula denied its own councillors

The Peninsula will not get the opportunity to elect its own councillors after Gosford Council decided not to consider adopting the ward system.

Gosford Council has resolved not to hold a referendum with the council elections in September which would give ratepayers the opportunity to vote for electing councillors to represent their own area.

A number of advantages and disadvantages of the ward system were listed in a staff report to Council's meeting of Tuesday, April 10.

According to the report, a ward system would offer equal and local representation, would provide a greater opportunity for the representative to become more specialised in his or her knowledge of the area and would allow ratepayers to have greater communication with their local councillor.

Among the disadvantages outlined in Council's report were that that ward boundaries needed to be reviewed each term, the system offered the opportunity of claims of gerrymander, could potentially cause parochialism in the allocation of funds by Council and councillors may not positively approach decisions that affected land or localities remote from their ward.

Throughout their discussion councillors mentioned the actions of a previous councillor, assumed to be Lynne Bockholt, who was an active and vocal advocate for the Peninsula.

Prior to the 1977 council elections, the Gosford Local Government area was divided into three wards containing three councillors in each ward.

Wards were abolished for the 1977 election and the number of councillors increased from nine to 10.

At the June 1994 by-election, a referendum asked: "Do you approve of the Gosford City Council area being divided into four wards?

The results were 32,129 yes and 35,865 no.

In 1995, Council held a referendum seeking approval to divide the area into electoral wards.

The results were 33,229 yes and 43,258 no.

Gosford Council Agenda SF.6, 10 Apr 2012