On the face of it this would seem like a reasonable cost to provide the much needed CCTV coverage for Sanctuary Point, East Nowra and Bomaderry.

However, either councillor Gash has not read the staff report or she is deliberately misleading the community on the costs due to ratepayers. 

The costs reported to staff are more than $120,000 a year, totalling more than $625,000 over the five-year life of the cameras. These are not my figures; I have merely added them up from the report.

Cr Gash always wants to play out the politics of division in trying to suggest I’m against CCTV. 

It is a ridiculous suggestion since I was the councillor who fought to keep the Nowra cameras on while we mounted a public campaign for CCTV rather than wasting ratepayer’s money on legal process.

Yet as important as CCTV is for community and commercial safety, our council should never be signing a blank cheque for that is what this deal amounts to. Add this cost to the $1.2m footpath at Vincentia and the interest free holiday for foreign property developers at Comberton Grange and you start to see a pattern of financial profligacy by this council. Further consider that council is in the process of giving away a potential motor racing asset that could bring in millions and that our own media ‘spin’ office is the only department to grow amongst the cutbacks.

Smart councils all over the state are delivering on these challenges without selling out their community’s interests. 

There is nothing worse than a government that cannot be trusted with the public’s money.

A. Guile,

Berry.