Going to election is a very humbling and human experience. It is the performance review of the Council, the Mayor and Councillors. Councils are the closest level of government to the people and we can provide advice to the State and Federal Governments knowing our communities are behind us.

We work in the community centres and sports clubs on bettering the lives of our people. We are working with our businesses to grow jobs and our economies. We are in our rural fire sheds with strong support and appreciation for our volunteers and indeed on many occasions are volunteers ourselves.

A current issue of great concern is an announcement by the State Government that the NSW RFS will be changing their methodology for fund allocation this financial year, and will now be asking for an annual contribution, based on previous year's expenditure.

Our region has always been supportive of a more equitable system for funding emergency services, but the proposed system is inequitable and punishes those councils who have invested more in their fire services over the past decades by expecting them to contribute significantly more and run the risk of being penalised by subsidising less proactive zones.

The increase has been announced after councils have already prepared and adopted budgets for this financial year and no-one has anticipated the significant increases that have resulted, certainly above the CPI or the 1.8% rate pegging increase allowable.

Our member councils are very concerned about the lack of transparency and oversight in this process. Under the new arrangements the RFS is less transparent than they were in the past. The RFS is, in effect a monopoly service provider which benefits from a legislative arrangement that obligates its users to pay its fees regardless of the service that is provided.

The RFS does not appear to be constrained in the same way as other state agencies are in relation to budgeting for example there appears to be no demand for productivity efficiencies or targets for reducing costs. Without any constraints in place our members are very concerned that expenditure will continue to escalate.

The State Government has also announced they will be implementing a property based emergency services levy to be paid alongside council rates. The region’s Councils are being asked to administer this process, despite no legislation being passed on the reform, and we are unclear who will be picking up the tab and how bad debt will be managed.

It is unrealistic and unsustainable for local government to be expected to meet the ever increasing costs of emergency services, especially the RFS. While councils are expected to rein in spending and deliver balanced budgets there appears to be no real accountability or funding constraints placed on the RFS. There is no ceiling on their budgets and they are not required to justify their ever increasing expenditure. This is particularly galling when councils are being challenged on their “fitness for the future.”

State and local governments should equally share the burden of meeting the RFS costs, it is inequitable that local government should be paying 4.4% more for RFS services, particularly when we have virtually no influence on their operations.

Once again local government has not been meaningfully consulted and the new system has no appreciation for how Local Government works. We wonder why the rush and confusion and ask, can’t we take the time to get this right?

I have been trying to engage the State regarding this issue since I became the Chair of Centroc and for years as Mayor of Cowra. At our recent Centroc Board meeting there was unanimous resolve for the region to keep shouting out loud about this issue. 

Centroc represents Central NSW Councils, Forbes is a member council.