Hawkesbury formally allies itself with Penrith, Blue Mountains councils

Council voted to sign the alliance at its June 28 meeting, and while one speaker vocally objected to the alliance at the meeting, it went through eight votes to one.

The strategic alliance was an alternative put forward to the state government’s plans to potentially amalgamate some of the councils.

Hawkesbury Council was slated for amalgamation with The Hills Shire Council, because the state government had the view it was not financially viable.

The strategic alliance would see all three councils move to eventually share services such as pay roll, while also submitting joint tenders to buy in bulk and save money.

Hawkesbury Mayor Kim Ford is highly in favour of the alliance.

“If it hadn't been for the [state government’s] merger proposal Council would have already signed this,” he said at the meeting.

In May, Cr Ford spoke to the Gazette and talked about the potential benefits of the alliance.

“We still see our future as a stand alone Council and I think we will have probably a bigger operational role,” he said.

“The strategic alliance will play a big part. We will have the resource sharing and that would return more benefits to the community than any merger would have done.

“We'll do resource sharing in terms of bulk purchasing, we'll do joint tenders, we'll do resource sharing with wages and equipment in the future as well.

“If one Council area is good at doing pay roll, why have three councils all running payrolls, just have one.”

The Councils have had an honourary agreement in place for some time, and were waiting for the winds of amalgamation to die down before formally signing the alliance.