Business As Usual for Residents of New Inner West Council
Residents of the new Inner West Council will continue to receive the high quality services they expect from their new local council, along with a $15 million boost to community projects and services.
The State Government has appointed an Administrator, Mr Richard Pearson, who will be responsible for Council decisions until new Councillors are elected in September 2017.
Interim General Manager Ms Vanessa Chan will oversee operations of the Council.
Mr Pearson said that there would be no changes to services or community facilities in the short term.
“Residents can be assured that rubbish collections, library hours and other key services will continue as normal,” he said.
“Applications or requests lodged with the previous councils will continue to be actioned in the new Council.
“And under the Government’s rate protection commitment, residents of new councils will pay no more for their rates than they would have under their old council for four years.”
Ms Chan said that staff members of the newly formed Council were looking forward to the opportunities presented by the merger to better serve local residents.
“This is a very unique opportunity for an organisation such as ours to build world class services from the bottom up,” she said. “We can make sure that all of our services are streamlined, integrated and offer exactly what our residents want and need.”
The State Government is also making $15 million in infrastructure funding available to the new Council. Further details of this funding and the role the community can play will be made available shortly.
Residents can still access their customer services through the existing customer service centres in Ashfield, Leichhardt and Petersham.
The Centres are open from 8:30am – 5:00pm Monday to Friday and can be contacted on: (02) 9392 5000.
The new Council Webpage should be available within the next week. Existing services will continue to be accessed through the previous existing Council pages for the time being.
The Inner West Council will now begin reviewing all of the services offered by the previous councils, and work to combine those services in the months ahead.
The new Council contains the former local government areas of Marrickville, Leichardt and Ashfield. With a population of 185,000 people it covers 36 Km².
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