The Sunbury Out of Hume Panel has recommended removing Sunbury from the City of Hume to create a new municipality from July next year.
The Panel has recommended the new municipality be centred on the Sunbury area.
The report has already been accepted by Minister for Local Government Tim Bull, who said the Government was committed to implementing the majority of the panel’s recommendations including the new boundary, timeline and method proposed for establishing the municipality next year.
Mr Bull said administrators and an interim chief executive officer would be appointed and in place by July 1, 2015 to establish and run the new council until the election of councillors at the 2016 general council elections.
“The boundary of Hume City Council will be revised accordingly, however all existing Hume councillors will remain in place until the 2016 elections,” Mr Bull said.
“Melbourne Airport will remain within the Hume City Council with annual payments representing a share of airport ‘rates in lieu’ transferring from Hume to the new Sunbury council over the first 10 years.”
Hume mayor Casey Nunn told Star Weekly it would be “over my dead body” to accept a situation where the people of Hume would have to subsidise Sunbury for 10 years.
Mr Bull said the Government has also accepted the panel recommendations regarding the method to be used for the division of assets, which means full proceeds from the development at Racecourse Road in Sunbury will be available to the new council.
He said only three recommendations were not supported by Government. These relate to a suggested cap on rates for the new municipality, the name of the new Council (the panel wanted City of Calder) and the amount and timing of revenue from the Melbourne Airport to be transferred from Hume City
Another contentious issue was the inclusion of the emerging suburb of Diggers Rest, half of which is in the City of Melton. The panel recommends that it be earmarked to be part of the municipality but only after local consultation.
More to come.
