Members of the public packed the gallery at the extraordinary meeting to witness councillors vote five to three to demolish the site.

The agenda item concluded with local historian Joe Kinsela expressing his outrage, labelling the councillors “disgraceful”.

He accused them of not representing the interests of the townspeople as deputy mayor Ben Cooper yelled back “we are elected to make the decisions”.

The brouhaha continued as Mr Kinsela continued to express his displeasure and, as general manager Peter Vlatko rose from his seat, he yelled, “I don’t care, you can evict me”.

After almost two months since the development application was advertised, a council meeting and a rescission motion, eight councillors gathered a second time – Cr John Walker being absent – to decide what was to happen to the Mercy Care hospital site.

Cr Brian Ingram was the first to push for council to take on board the four recommendations in favour of the demolition prior to discussion.

His request was supported by Cr Ben Cooper, Cr Stuart Freudenstein, Cr Brian Mullany and Cr Allan Miller.

Cr Sandy Freudenstein, Cr John McGregor and Cr Tony Wallace were against the demolition.

Local woman Judith Pugh and the site’s owner Angelo Doukas addressed the meeting during the open forum.

Ms Pugh said, in her second speech in three weeks to council, that council “shouldn’t rely on the heritage statement” because it didn’t contain the “full facts”.

The heritage statement was the reason why council voted at their last monthly meeting to postpone the DA for two months, because they weren’t given the whole 65-page report.

But this decision was rescinded last week because the majority of the councillors believed they did not need two months to view the report.

However councillors still hadn’t seen the report prior to Wednesday’s meeting.

 “Tourism is economy … and heritage drives tourism,” Ms Pugh said.

She said council had the ability to make an Interim Heritage (or Conservation) Order, which lasted for six months to determine the significance.

“[The owner told us] he was in no hurry … you have the capacity to give us six months to find a use for it,” she said.

In his address, Mr Doukas said he’d had no offer to date and had “looked at all options”.

“I’m not a bully,” the software developer said, “I didn’t ask for a report that asked for demolition.”

Cr Ingram said the building had no heritage value “except an emotional one”.

“As a councillor we’re expected to make educated and fact related decisions, not emotional ones,” he said. “There is no real or factual reason we should oppose the DA”.

Cr Cooper and Cr Mullany agreed, saying the building had been sitting there empty for nine years.

“If someone had the money to fix it up, it would have happened in that nine year period,” Cr Cooper said.

Cr Miller said the value of the building was lost some 30-40 years ago when they allowed the extensions.

However, Cr Wallace claimed the heritage report submitted to council was “flawed” and contained no detail about the structures of the building.

He also questioned how they could save the building in part and demolish others.

McGregor said he had received “a lot of phone calls” from people in the community about the matter prior to talking about several historic buildings in town.

“You can’t tell me Mercy Care isn’t more important than these,” he said.

Following the debate and public heckling, council’s planning, environment and strategic services director Craig Filmer read out a statement submitted by the NSW Government Office of Environment and Heritage.

The statement read “as the Mercy Hospital complex does not appear to demonstrate potential state heritage significance, the Heritage Division will not be making a recommendation to the minister for an Interim Heritage Order. Based on our review of the existing documentation, we consider the site to be one of potential local heritage significance and the matter is therefore one for council to determine”.