Council Connect: 15 November 2024

Published on 15 November 2024

Hello everyone. It's Deputy Mayor Carruthers here to give you this week's Council update.

I'll jump straight into it. We've got a busy council meeting coming up next week on Wednesday. We've got over 30 reports currently on the agenda, and a few motions from our new Councillors, myself included. So that's exciting.

We will also be looking at the Dungog Shire Council Annual Report and State of the Shire reports. The Annual Report outlines our ongoing commitment to implementing the Delivery Program and Operational Plan across the shire and the improvements the Council has made in the last 12 months. It's worth mentioning here that we've had a lot of job vacancies, so it's been quite skint on the ground, and the council has achieved quite a lot in that time. Even though that's been the case, they've done a lot of work to deliver the kilometres of road upgrades and Fixing Country Bridges and improving many other community facilities. So that's a huge, tremendous effort from our council. We all know what it's like to have not as many hands moving bits and pieces as we like. So for them to make those achievements in the last 12 months, that's a big well done to them.

Looking at the State of the Shire report, that's a really important document that I really do encourage everyone to have a look at. It covers the achievements from the previous council term, and it also measures Council's achievements against the Strategic Plan, which is a 10-year plan that outlines our community's main priorities and aspirations, and that also pulls together the whole picture of how Council is performing and what's being delivered for us as the community. There are many highlights in the report as well, but the main one I feel which is going to be a great foundation for this term of Council is the value of development that has gone in with over $135 million so that's a great starting point for us, and also shows that there is potential in the Dungog shire, which we all know.

I'm really excited about working with the Mayor and fellow Councillors to continue to deliver for our shire. The Annual and State of the Shire reports will be available for you to view next week after the council meeting on the Council’s website. So I really encourage you to take a look at them. And if you've got any feedback or comments, it's really important that you come to us with those, we want your input as that's the only way we're going to succeed here.

Finally, I'd like to congratulate Council on the near completion of our EV charging stations. From early December, we will have two EV charging points. One will be at Vacy and one will be at the Visitors Information Centre in Dungog. That’s a great way to end the year. With the rapid growth of electric vehicles, these charging points will play a really important role in the visitor economy and people coming out to the Shire, and then also just the convenience for our residents that already have electric vehicles here in the shire as well. That gives them two points on either side of the mountain range.

So that's it for this week, and I'll catch up with you all soon. Thanks. Bye.