Cumberland Council discusses decentralisation

Cumberland councillors are debating whether the council should all be under one roof in a new centre or if the money would be better spent clearing the infrastructure backlog.

Cumberland Council has offices in Merrylands and Auburn.

• Boarding house not welcome
• Pendle Hill parking crisis

Selling Auburn Council’s administrative building to the SBS, operating a new headquarters at Granville and opening satellite branches across Cumberland where the public can consult staff and councillors.

These were some of the ideas Cumberland Council entertained last week when it discussed whether it should decentralise or open a centre instead of administration staff operating between Auburn and Merrylands buildings.

Cumberland Council was formed in 2016 after Holroyd merged with parts of Auburn and Parramatta. Decentralisation was deferred before the State Election when there were concerns the council would demerge.

Cumberland Council’s Merrylands administration centre.

Councillor Ross Grove said the merged council was a success but opposed the centralisation, citing the need for funds to be spent on more pressing projects.

“We’re still a council in its infancy, we’re still absorbing new systems, new processes and sooner or later those new systems and new processes will deliver a marked improvement to frontline services,’’ he said.

“I’d like to sell the Auburn building to the SBS and have SBS come out to western Sydney where multicultural communities actually live and broadcast from somewhere in western Sydney.

Cr Ned Attie wants the council to operate from one building. Picture: Richard Dobson

Cr Lisa Lake says several service centres would be a good idea. Picture: Angelo Velardo

“If you had an arrangement like that, I’d be signing off on something like that in a heartbeat but without that urgency, I think we need to turn the focus to our frontline staff.”

Cr Lisa Lake objected to building one administrative centre, saying such a project was a “complete distraction to the capital works program”.

Money should be spent on completing projects such as Wentworthville pools, Cr Lake says.

She said the council had a backlog “as long as her arm” of projects that urgently needed to be completed including Wentworthville and Guildford pool upgrades, improvements to Auburn Botanic Gardens, restoring Civic Park Wetlands and implementing masterplans.

Auburn Botanic Gardens is earmarked for improvements. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“I think when you look at the size and shape of this LGA — we’re 72sq km, we’ve got about 240,000 people — it’s high density, it’s highly trafficked,’’ she said.

“I think what we want to do, acknowledging the size and shape of the LGA, is to provide service centres right across the LGA that we can open perhaps on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings where people can come and make appointments to sit with offices and discuss issues, file issues, pay rates …,’’ she said.

“That’s the sort of council we need — one that’s on the ground, one that believes in grassroots, one that still thinks it’s a local council.’’

But Cr Ned Attie endorsed the need for a new building so the council’s administration staff could be united and “eradicate the 15 to 35 per cent inefficiency rate” with which it was running by staff working between two buildings.

“Maybe … we can have a new chamber where we can all work in a harmonised manner and we can all be united and not divided,’’ he said.

“It’s amazing how divided we are right now.”

Councillor Joseph Rahme said Granville would be a preferred site for the new headquarters because it was in the centre of the council area.

The council will investigate the centralisation and prepare a report into the matter.