There is no doubt that the boundary change would benefit the profile of the city of Hull and in turn probably the East Riding too, along with making it comparable to the boundaries used by most other cities, but it does cause issues for those directly affected and that doesn't make them all nimbys and I doubt bin collection were all that high up their list of concerns.
There are 152 education authorities, the East Riding schools are currently ranked 71st, Hull school are ranked 145th and that's despite their numbers being bumped by places like Hymers who have a 99-100% pass rate. If you take South Hunsley, which is the biggest school in Hull and the East Riding, and add it to Hull then obviously Hull's figures jump, as the school has an 80% pass rate(the average in Hull is 50%), so Hull jumps up the league table to maybe 120th. For those affected though, their school just dropped off the list of schools ranked 71st and onto the one ranked 120th, you can see why they'd vote against it.
The same applies to the house price index, where again Hull is at the bottom of the all the league tables. Average house prices in Anlaby and Cottingham etc are 50% higher than the house prices in Hull, so if you put them together, then Hull moves off the bottom on the league table, but residents of the areas affected move from being in an are with £150k average house prices, to an area with £120k average house prices. Obviously the house prices don't actually drop, but you can see why residents of those areas areas would rather be associated with the more affluent areas, rather than having a perceived drop down the league tables for them.
Then there's the issue of the councils themselves, HCC have a terrible reputation and ERYCC have a good one, the difference probably isn't as big as is perceived, but there's certainly areas where one does much better than the other. I know some have stood up for HCC on here, but the reality is that this board is full of threads on how useless HCC are, yet I'm not sure we've ever had an ERYCC one? Even on basic things like protecting buildings(one of my particular bugbears) and the general upkeep of facilities, town centres etc, the ERYCC is way out in front.
The issue is convincing people that the area as a whole will benefit from the boundary changes and simply calling people nimby's isn't going to help, they have genuine concerns that need to be addressed and they haven't been. ERYCC have run a campaign to get people to vote against this change, has HCC run any campaign to show the benefits of it? If they have, I've missed it.
The most ridiculous thing posted on this thread so far, is the suggestion that East Yorkshire residents should be changed to use facilities in Hull, when obviously the opposite is true. Hull needs as many visitors as it can get, be them from East Yorkshire or anywhere else, rather than doing things that put people off coming to Hull, they need to be doing everything possible to attract more of them. Hull already suffers from very poor shopping facilities, Leeds and York offer far better and it's in the best interest of everyone in Hull and the East Riding that the facilities are improved and as many people as possible are attracted there.
I can see almost no attempt by anyone to positively spin this and explain the benefits to anyone, while that remains the case I expect another 'Hands off Haltemprice' type campaign to run and the whole thing to be deeply resented.