Graham Brown OAM of GPB Partners chooses his words carefully as he gives voice to the sentiment of a growing number people in the Taree business community. 

"Business people in town and clients of GPB Partners believe it would be a very good thing for Taree," Mr Brown said.

Tomorrow at a meeting of MidCoast Council in Forster, Mr Brown will express support for the proposed single site option for MidCoast Council administrative staff and says, he speaks for many.

The proposal is on the agenda after independent economic consultant, The Balmoral Group recommended a single site following the completion of a new cost benefit analysis. The company said the option provided more value for money over a 20 year period than a multi-site model. It would see administrative staff from offices in Forster and Taree move to the Biripi Way location, with a customer service point earmarked for Forster. Staff in offices in Gloucester, Stroud and Tea Gardens would not be impacted. 

The recommendation is for councillors to allow the project to proceed to a design and construction phase.

Mr Brown says business men and women "now think they need to be heard" as they have not been able to attend previous meetings of council.

"It is not indicative of a lack of support, it's because of the meeting time. Council meetings are at 2pm and a small business person can rarely walk out of their business to go to a council meeting for three or four hours. However, now they think they need to be heard."

Opposition to MidCoast Council's plan to centralise offices formed a significant part of the Country Labor campaign in the March 23 election for the seat of Myall Lakes. Candidate Dr David Keegan and Shadow Minister for Local Government Peter Primrose pledged funding to create a mechanism to demerge MidCoast Council if community support was demonstrated in a referendum, and promised to refer the Masters centralisation plan for investigation to the Office of Local Government.

"There's a school of thought that says, 'if that was an item for this election and it didn't result in votes then the greater population isn't concerned about a move to Masters ... it quite obviously didn't win votes."

Counting is finalised for the seat of Myall Lakes, and reveals Country Labor decreased its percentage of total formal votes with re-elected member, Stephen Bromhead increasing the Nationals total formal votes to 48.43 per cent, up from 46.87 per cent in 2015.

Mr Brown acknowledges there is community opposition and says, "It's certainly noisy but there is no evidence that there are thousands of people, and they haven't demonstrated that level of support when they have gone to council meetings to protest."

Mr Brown contends the location of a centralised MidCoast Council office in Taree would create jobs, boost existing businesses in Taree, increase parking availability in the central business district, increase MidCoast Council staff efficiency and importantly, boost the local economy. And as an accountant, Mr Brown says he's done the math on proposal and says, "the finance appears to me to stack up." 

"Business is tough locally and we are starting to see vacant premises on the rise again. Taree's economy has changed and we have moved from a manufacturing to a building economy, that is to say, building homes, because there is no real commercial building happening anywhere in the Manning Valley - if that starts to slow down then the economy is going to be very, very bad.

Last week, Mr Brown revealed the tough economic reality facing small businesses in the Manning Valley, and in commenting on the 2019 Federal Budget, he said that if he had the opportunity to sit down with federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg to discuss the Budget he would say, "stop fiddling with the tax system and concentrate on regional jobs."

"The Masters move would be a very quick answer to help Taree to boost its employment numbers on the basis of the number of people coming into town to buy their lunch and do their bits and pieces - it will bolster the general business community.

"Taree needs more jobs. Between 2008 and 2013, the Manning Valley lost 953 jobs to redundancies and flow business closures. You can't access these figures publicly anywhere, because I started writing it down back in those days, and my list isn't exhaustive.

"That constitutes pure redundancies when places like UGL and Schefenacker closed down, as well as other businesses that then dropped in the community as a result of the fact that there was a massive downturn in the economy. Place like Darrell Lea, Pizza Hut, Taree Music Centre, Taree Community College, Angus and Robertson, there is 40 or so businesses on my list.

"At that time, if you put that across our employment base, it was about 15 per cent of the workforce and truly from then until now we haven't had any government assistance in trying to replace those jobs. They are starting to now, it's probably fair to say, and maybe that's a positive thing that has come out of the amalgamation, we are now actually big enough to get noticed."

Mr Brown describes parking availability in Taree as "atrocious" and says "everybody is complaining about it."

Taree Business Chamber launched a public survey on March 16 to try to gather information about community use of car parks in the central business district, perception of parking availability and expectations. It is driving the campaign for information and access to the survey through its Facebook page.

"There just aren't enough car parks. Part of that could be alleviated with between 100 and 200 council staff parking at Taree South," Mr Brown said.

The business community is being told that development applications are now taking longer to process, according to Mr Brown.

"It's not the sort of business that runs on a quick email going backwards and forwards, it has to run on discussions and having remote employees reduces the amount of intellectual capital shared amongst employees at informal meetings or over a coffee in the corridor."

Mr Brown said centralisation now "just makes sense" and "is a chance to put Taree back as a regional centre for services to the Mid Coast region."

"We could score a government trifecta in the one year given that the State member (Stephen Bromhead) has promised $16 million to start the Northern Gateway development, and the Federal member (David Gillespie) has promised $8.5 million to build the infrastructure for the Fig Trees residential development on the river in Chatham, and then local councillors voted to boost the economy of Taree while waiting for these other two projects to get off the ground.

"My greatest fear, and this is very personal, is that if it is not done now council will say in 10 years time - it's just not working, let's go and find a greenfields site and build a taj mahal - then we will find out just how much it will really cost our community to build a building to house 500 people."

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