Tuesday, May 15, 2007

local government forced amalgamations - Monto Shire Council

As small local business owners and employee of local council we empatically object to forced amalgamation of our shire.  The effects on our town will be devastating and dire. Not only this the whole legislation is undemocratic and hitlerism at its best.  The domino effect of such loss of major employer in our town will see declines in our essential services and our retail sector.  Simply by deleting the additional income that 8 councillors and perhaps 10 employees (to say the least) from our community's cash flow will have nothing but a negative effect on our economic outlook.  This is not even taking into account any further onflow of loss of cash flow will have on our town.  What will effectively happen is that once cash flow is reduced, then our local businesses will have no choice but to stock less lines and this will lead to a domino flowon effect of a decline in our trade.  People will in time have no option but to travel to larger centres to do their buying as the perception will be that the stores in town will have nothing or very little to chose from.  Also, add to this the loss of even a small percentage of essential services.  We already have problems with no private dentist and no full-time solicitor which necessitates some of the community travelling away to major centres to conduct these business transactions. We can ill-afford to lose any medical services with our ageing population as the present medical situation has already declined since we have been reducted from 2 full-time private doctors which results in a waiting list to see medical practitioners at short notice unless an emergency situation.  Already, we have an abortion of a system of the ambulance and we do not need any diminishment in our essential services which could reflect similarly to the ambulance system.
 
Kim Mundt
153 Luthje Road
MONTO  4630