Cowra Council has put its hand up to be included in CENTROC's adoption of a pilot program tagged by one Cowra councillor as a precursor to amalgamation.
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The State Government has offered a $300,000 incentive to councils participating in the pilot Joint Organisation of Councils (JOC) project.
While willing to put their hand up to participate in the CENTROC partnerships, one individual Cowra councillor was blistering in their attack on the State Government and its Fit for the Future paper which introduced joint organisations.
"The inference has been there has been no collaboration and that we have not cooperated across common boundaries, which I find offensive," Cr Bruce Miller said during discussion at last week's Cowra council meeting.
"There's been a whole lot of things we have cooperated on, such as water.
"They claim there will be a saving in red tape and there is a little bit of a carrot if we want to get involved in a joint organisation of councils."
He went on to label the funding offer and announcement a "great con", saying some Councils were teetering on the edge of insolvency not because of a lack of cooperation, but because of cost shifting by other levels of government and rate pegging for the last 35 years.
He also made it clear his opinion the "carrot" will change to stronger talk soon.
"The current policy of government is no forced amalgamations, frankly, the no forced part will be dropped off before the election next year," Cr Miller said.
"The future after March next year, I think you will find will be very different."
His comments came as Cowra Council voted to support its inclusion in the pilot Central West JOC.
A report presented at the Council meeting outlined the proposal.
The proposed Central West JOC fits broadly into the existing CENTROC (Central NSW Councils) footprint, of which Cowra Council has been a long-standing member.
The State has also offered other resources to assist with pilot JOCs.
CENTROC Chairman, Ken Keith, said CENTROC has been functioning well in its current structure, but a JOC would be different.
"So at the moment all councils in the CENTROC group have the autonomous right to opt in and opt out of any particular program that CENTROC does," Cr Keith said.
"So it's not compulsory to be in anything but I think under the new scheme they are looking to make some things more mandatory and others optional."
Cr Keith said the JOC could involve joint staffing across councils. There's a possibility the JOCs might cover some services for those rural council models to save them having to employ direct staff and have those economies of scale of a bigger organisation," he said.
"The details of that won't be out before Christmas for this new rural council model."
The government is expected to announced the successful pilot regions late this year.
