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Town of East Fremantle to cease financial contributions to City of Fremantle for library services

Leah RobertsFremantle Gazette

TOWN of East Fremantle will no longer contribute $200,000 to City of Fremantle for its library services.

The arrangement was agreed upon as the Town has no public library and the payment was made to assist the City with the operational costs of providing a library.

The Fremantle Library currently stores and provides access to the Town’s local history, resources and council minutes dating to 1903.

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To the end of the 2016-17 financial year, 724 residents from East Fremantle were members of the library, but to April 1 to June 30 2017, 1125 were members of City of Melville’s libraries.

Deputy Mayor Michael McPhail said it was always unpleasant to give another organisation less money.

“This arrangement is one of those quirks of history, born from a time when East Fremantle and Fremantle were much more joined at the hip in providing key services like electricity, lighting and trams,” he said.

“A single allocation is not equitable or reflective of what our residents actually value.

“We don’t provide an allocation to the City of Melville or Western Suburbs Library; instead we’d be better off discussing with Fremantle services that our residents increasingly want to use.”

An amendment was put forward by councillor Tony Watkins to change the wording to “reconsider further payments” but it was lost.

Currently East Fremantle does not give any other local government a financial contribution to their libraries.

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