THREE Northern councils will fend off the prospect of amalgamation by formalising a resource sharing agreement, despite approaches for merger discussions with the Launceston City Council.
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West Tamar, Meander Valley and Northern Midlands mayors and general managers last week resolved to benchmark tri-partisan service sharing.
Each council will this month vote whether to formally progress the matter.
Recent resource sharing discussions stem from individual meetings between the councils and Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein in February.
The process, if approved, would be the first step in delivering a combined approach to governance for the municipalities.
Launceston City Council sent out an invitation to discuss amalgamations to each council last month.
The councils are yet to respond to the invitation, and said in a joint media release that their municipalities were unlikely to accept any voluntary mergers.
Meander Valley mayor Craig Perkins said the joint resource sharing exercise could lower the impact of impending funding cuts from the federal government.
‘‘The point is that it’s a good time for us to review and look at how we do business and the cost of business and running councils,’’ Cr Perkins said.
‘‘We’ll look at the benchmarking process and then make that publicly available, so people understand what we’re doing, and open that to the community for scrutiny.’’
Northern Midlands mayor David Downie said the three councils were similar in structure and held a combined population of 54,000 people and income of $56 million.
‘‘We’re very keen to talk to Meander and West Tamar,’’ Cr Downie said.
At this stage, the council has not shown interest in talking to Launceston.’’
West Tamar mayor Christina Holmdahl said, if approved, the councils would begin to identify strategic service sharing opportunities.
Launceston mayor Albert van Zetten said it was an interesting move by those councils, given that there had been discussions through Northern Tasmania Development about resource sharing in the past, but nothing had come of it.
He said he would have thought that it would be better to work together for the ratepayers and the region as a whole.
Alderman van Zetten said he retained the view that amalgamations should be led by the state government, however they would work with the process before them.
Votes on a formal approach will be held by Northern Midlands on April 20, and Meander Valley and West Tamar on April 21.
