Somehow they expect a better deal under Orange City Council. I can’t see how that will be the case.

Consider the following …

There are newspaper reports on the poor state of roads in the Orange area. Leading them all of course is the Northern Distributor Road.

I am told that Orange rates are actually the second highest in the state behind Mosman.  Rural rates may be less for a year or two but what then? Our rates on an 85-acre rural block in Borenore are about 40 per cent of what we were paying for a suburban house we owned in Orange 16 years ago.

As for garbage, I don’t see Orange offering services to the proposed area which has 400 kilometres of rural roads. Pretty quickly the ratepayers of Orange will realise they were being asked to subsidise the benefits this group seeks.

This eastern Cabonne group seem to have forgotten that over the last five years public meetings about joining Orange have been held in the areas they are targeting. Apart from one person, Borenore unanimously rejected a move into Orange.

The Orange byelection of 2016 provides more recent data. One of the hot issues was council amalgamations. The people again expressed their feelings, this time through the ballot box. In seven of the eastern Cabonne village areas (Borenore, Canobolas, Cargo, Mullion Creek, Nashdale, Spring Hill and Spring Terrace) residents overwhelmingly voted against amalgamation.

The swings against the Nationals candidate were: Mullion Creek (56 per cent), Cargo (49 per cent), Spring Hill (44 per cent), Spring Terrace (42 per cent), Nashdale (37 per cent) and Borenore (30 per cent).

Hasn’t the NSW government already been shafted for ignoring the wishes of the people? Just check with the Nationals Troy Grant and Paul Toole.

And by the way, I hear that some Spring Hill residents in the Orange local government area actually want to move to Cabonne because of the way they were treated over the airport development.

Is there a hidden agenda here?

The secession group is pretty short on factual information. When the totality of their proposition is considered it cannot be supported.

In my mind nothing has changed.

The secession group does not speak on my behalf and I am certain they do not speak on Borenore’s behalf. All the evidence seems to indicate the majority of the eastern electorate do not want to leave Cabonne and join Orange.

I WAS thinking recently of the need for a council bulk waste pick up so searched the Orange council website for the necessary details.

I was shocked and dismayed to find out that a service previously free – the kerbside collection – is now charged at $209.35.

Many other councils still provide this service to ratepayers free. 

This cost on top of $600-per-quarter rates which provide little more than garbage collection and potholed roads, is shameful.

It is hardly surprising that other residents resort to roadside dumping when these costs are so prohibitive.