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Dr Steve Peterson is about to risk becoming quite unpopular with his fellow Orange councillors
February 2, 2023
By Peter Holmes
It’s a bold move that could ultimately see him lose his own job as an Orange City councillor, but Dr Steve Peterson wants to reopen the discussion about cutting the number of councillors.
There are currently 12 councillors, but Peterson reckons that as few as nine would suffice.
At Tuesday night’s council meeting, the first for 2023, Peterson will revive the ghost of an idea raised during the term of the preceding council by the then mayor Reg Kidd, who retired at the election.
“It’s about whether we should do a referendum at the next council election,” Peterson told The Orange News Examiner.
“It was something that was brought up during the last council and I suspect a lot of people on council would be happy if no attention was paid to it, but I think it’s a good idea and I think a lot of people in the community would have opinions on it. I’m sure there are people who would tell you it’s a very bad idea as well.”
Peterson said that Kidd’s proposal “just sat there, no one has done anything with it”. It was on the first agenda for the new council in February 2022.
“They just slid it in the 10th or 11th item .. hope no one would notice. It was the same with councillor superannuation. I thought it was the best thing to bring it to people’s attention so it doesn't just slide through.”
Asked about his ideal number of councillors, Peterson said: “I’d like to put it to the people and see what they think, but Dubbo and Bathurst have 10 and Wagga has nine. The motion was nine councillors.
“I think nine is a good number. You’d have the mayor, the deputy mayor and [seven others], and that would be an odd number.”
This would avoid potential 6-6 votes.
He believed the extra workload would be manageable.
Deputy mayor Gerald Power strongly disagreed with Peterson. He told The Orange News Examiner that the increase in workload for councillors would be “significant”.
“We’ve discussed this here before, and I know he wants to reduce ratepayer [costs], but the NSW government actually pays for our positions.
“With the growth in the city, it’s heading towards 50,000-plus, 60,000 - if you start changing that down … to have [12 now] is a good balance. We have to look to the future.”
Councillors get paid about $24,000 a year, plus superannuation if they choose to accept it.
They not only attend fortnightly council meetings but must sit on a number of council committees dealing with areas including finance, development, sport and recreation, the environment and community safety. They are expected to be on top of the hundreds of pages committee reports that are ultimately fed into the main council meetings.
On top of this they are expected to attend community and official events, and conferences, respond to calls and emails from the community and media, deliver speeches on occasion, and make site inspections if necessary for controversial development applications and other projects around the city. And risk the sometimes unhinged wrath of the public on social media.
“The amount of committees the 12 of us do now is just crazy,” Power said. “Reduce that down to nine - that is massive extra work, and you don’t get paid any extra money, it’s a flat rate. We get paid a pittance for the amount of work we do. And the mayor is already flat out.”
Asked if he had considered whether he would run at the next council election, Power said: “I’m definitely running again - I actually love it.”
In 2022, his first year as a councillor, Peterson questioned councillor costs and expenses on several occasions.
He asked in one meeting whether it was necessary to send a number of councillors away to the same conferences.
He was also one of only a handful of councillors who declined to be paid superannuation on his council remuneration.
Peterson acknowledged that a cut from 12 to nine councillors could risk diversity.
If, for example, you subtracted Peterson, deputy mayor Gerald Power and councillor Melanie McDonell from the current dozen, you would lose an advocate for Indigenous affairs, an advocate for those living with a disability, and a young female nurse.
The Orange News Examiner spoke to councillor Richard Foley from the City of Wagga Wagga. A construction worker, he is in his first term on council.
He said having only nine councillors had worked well for Wagga, as it meant less factions and more cooperation.
"We still have disagreements and some argy bargy but we move on," he said.
He said the committee workload was not unreasonable, but stressed he didn't want to advise the people of Orange how to go about their business. "It's really up to them," he said.
The first Orange City Council meeting for 2023 is on Tuesday night.
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