Bendigo Council wants ward realignment

The City of Greater Bendigo council's submission to the Victorian Electoral Commision's Electoral Representation Review has acknowledged that the present nine ward boundaries should be realigned due to the numerous communities of interest allocated to the two current rural ward Councillors.Mayor Cr Rod Fyffe said the rural wards were too extensive for two councillors and the boundaries needed to be realigned to share rural areas between more councillors."Council is proposing a model which would see Greater Bendigo represented by three urban based wards and six wards that contain a mixture of both urban and rural areas," he said."The model council has proposed would align with locality boundaries – something council believes is important. The last thing we want to see is strong communities divided between wards."Council is also keen to have input into the renaming of wards."He said council is not supportive of an un-subdivided electoral structure or multi member wards as this could lead to significant communities of interest being unrepresented and could cause confusion of responsibilities and duplication of effort by councillors."Large numbers of candidates might be confusing for voters and groups could form within council in the in the case of a structure where there are no wards," he said.The VEC will release a preliminary report detailing the range of options that have been identified through the submission process on Wednesday, March 30.