Precinct split divides council

A kerfuffle broke out at a recent Waverley Council meeting over the decision to split the Bondi beach precinct committee into two groups.

After a tied vote, Mayor Sally Betts used her casting vote to approve a one-year trial split, raising accusations that the move was political.

Labor councillor John Wakefield claimed the mayor had hijacked the Bondi Beach resident group because of its anti-development stance.

“The Bondi Beach precinct group has been an active and vocal forum for residents to fight large scale over-development of Bondi,” Cr Wakefield said.

“The Liberal councillors have succeeded in undermining the viability of an outspoken and effective residents’ group. For all of us concerned about over-development it’s a sad day and means we will have to fight all the harder to stop the mayor and her colleagues’ continued support for large scale re-development of Bondi.”

But Waverley mayor Sally Betts said nobody had set out to cut the Bondi Beach precinct in half but that last year’s boundary redistribution had created a need to realign the precincts.

“The question was how to deal with the section coming in from Hunter ward and the North Bondi precinct having most of its residents taken away from it,” she said. “We had one tiny precinct and one large one so we amalgamated both and split them in two. I know the executives of the Bondi Beach precinct would have preferred things to stay as they were but all the precincts voted for this formula except Bondi Beach.”

The 13 precincts in Waverley meet periodically as a combined precinct group: a combined precinct review panel recommended that precincts should be within ward boundaries, with the exception of Charing Cross where it is too difficult to split the shopping village between two precincts.

“I don’t believe councillors should interfere in the precinct system. We set them up but they run themselves. I believe that as mayor I had no choice but to support the majority decision of the combined precinct convenors,” Cr Betts said.

“This issue did not come up during my mayoralty but during that of Labor councillor Ingrid Strewe. It is not a Liberal plot and this is not a political issue. Most of the precincts are anti-development.”

Mayor Betts answered the charge of being pro-development saying the only time she had used her casting vote on a large development was to defer the Swiss Grand decision.