Real work of council languishes in the doldrums

In June 2017, we were promised that the Woy Woy Town Centre Master Plan would be finished by June 2020.

At the time, I wrote that this was an absurdly long time-frame for such a simple project ('Leisurely does it' is council watchword, Peninsula News 24 Jul 2017), but here we are, three years later, and the Woy Woy Plan still appears to be as distant as a mirage.

Heaven help us, if the Council ever had to tackle a complicated planning problem.

Councillors seem to have no problem in deciding immediately on the maximum permissible recompense for themselves or on maximum permissible increases in rates (and let us remember that these increased rates are levied on recently increased land values, making them a double impost), but the real work of the Council languishes in the doldrums.

The crowning insult is that we now have to put up with this situation for an extra year, on the pathetic justification that we are incapable of organizing an election at the same time as we cope with a virus.

I say that councillors should have to demonstrate their competence, before they are allowed to award themselves payments.

Email, 22 Jul 2020

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy