Are you ready for thousands of new homes and apartments in Macarthur?

At last Tuesday’s meeting of Campbelltown Council, a clearly frustrated Cr George Greiss hit out at those opposed to having a single strategy on new homes and other infrastructure.

“Where’s the growth in Campbelltown,’’ he asked.

“It’s all happening in Camden,’’ he said in answering his own question.

And it is true that Camden’s population is growing at a very fast rate as greenfield sites from Elderslie to Oran Park are transformed into suburban hubs.

But Greiss knows that the present time is the calm before the storm in Campbelltown.

The process – from start to finished homes – is painfully slow, but the wheels are definitely in motion now that the council has agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding for a single strategy.

In the next five years there is no doubt there will be an explosion of growth in Campbelltown.

This will be in the shape of medium density – high rise apartments – along the railway corridor and at each station from Glenfield to Macarthur – as well as traditional homes with backyards in their thousands in places like Menangle and Gilead.

Wollondilly Shire will not escape and it will also have to do its bit as the State Government opens up land for housing in a bid to keep prices low as demand grows.

Camden will continue to chug along for another 10 years or more but it is in Campelltown where we will see the major changes occurring in that period.

Important election on September 10

All of which leads to this fork in the road: what sort of people do we want to elect on September 10 to make sure all of this massive growth is managed in a careful way.

In a way that does not destroy out natural resources such as our bushland areas in places like Wedderburn.

Make no mistake: development will be the major issue of the local government elections of 2016.

There will be a few others such as the massive rate rise of Campbelltown Council two years ago, but future development and growth will be the big one.

And at this early stage it’s sufficient to say that we the voters should be starting to think about the sort of questions we want to ask our candidates for council office.

There’s no time to waste if we want to get right and elect the right people on September 10.