Five-time IHF World Hockey Player of the Year Jamie Dwyer demonstrates skills to students at the clinic.
Camera IconFive-time IHF World Hockey Player of the Year Jamie Dwyer demonstrates skills to students at the clinic. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

City agrees to merger plan

Rachel Watts, Fremantle GazetteFremantle Gazette

Working from a series of boundary changes agreed to by a group of 20 metropolitan councils, known as the G20, councillors acknowledged the delicate political situation with their neighbours.

The proposal that will go to the Minister for Local Government will see Fremantle widen its borders to the north to include Mosman Park to Victoria Street, to the east to Stock Road and south to Phoenix Road.

Planners made the effort to avoid absorbing land occupied by any council’s administration centre and to adhere to the spirit of the G20 agreement.

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Cr Wilson said the reform agenda had been scant on the part of the State Government.

‘What the State Government is doing it’s not reform, it’s just brutal,’ he said.

‘Through the process we have, with other councils, decided to take on the reform task.

‘If we make massive changes to the G20 agreement, East Fremantle won’t like it, Melville won’t like it and the State Government will go ahead with its brutal, sticky-tape the jigsaw pieces together agenda.’

An amendment by Cr Bill Massie to extend the eastern border to North Lake Road failed, despite Cr Massie’s impassioned plea to consider the business community and high value riverside residential property the City could inherit.

East Fremantle Mayor Alan Ferris said that from a representational perspective the G20’s recommendations to merge East Fremantle and Fremantle creating a City of 36,000 would be better.

‘But there is still little evidence that the Town of East Fremantle would be better off,’ he said.

‘The Town of East Fremantle is financially sound, a fact that has been supported through various independent reports which have been completed through the reform process.

‘The financial impact of any amalgamation, this one or the Robson report, is unknown but it is likely that we will be worse off,’ he said.

The City of Fremantle also passed a recommendation that the State Government absorb any cost of reform.