Council Connect: 25 October 2024

Published on 25 October 2024

Hello everyone. I'm Alexandria Carruthers, recently elected Councillor to Dungog Shire Council, C-Ward. And as Mayor Rayward would have filled you all in last week's update, I was elected as Deputy Mayor at our first meeting for the term, so that's very exciting. I'll be very busy, but I'm really looking forward to the opportunity working and engaging with Council and the community to keep progress moving. We've had a lot of great things come our way in recent times, but there's a lot more opportunities to come, and I look forward to contributing to that in my capacity as Deputy Mayor.

I'll get on with this week's quick update. First cab off the rank is the Clarence Town Bridge is now out for tender. That tender is open, so we're calling for submissions to that. If you want more information about it, we'll put a link in the comments below, so all the details will be there for you. You don't need me to ramble on about all the technical details in that space, the video will end up being too long and as we can see, I'm really good at rambling.

Next cab off the rank is the roads update. As always, our roads updates and the works scheduled for the week will be on the Council's Facebook page. So, head there and all the details will be on the page. If you've got any feedback or concerns, contact Council. I strongly encourage you to get in touch with them if there is positive or negative feedback.

So next on the list is the Australia Day Award nominations. Those have been extended to the 1st November. We're really keen to get some sports people nominated. We have a lot of fantastic sports groups in Dungog, from football, bikes, soccer, netball, bull riding, tennis, you name it, we've got it! We've also, more importantly, as part of that, got a lot of dedicated volunteers running those clubs making it happen. And the Australia Day Awards are a great way to recognise the contribution that they make to our community. The process for nomination is really easy. You can do it all online. You can even do it from your phone. We'll include a link in the comments below for that too.

And then finally, for this week, on Wednesday, some of the Councillors and Mayor Rayward had the opportunity to catch up with Dungog Regional Tourism. A lot of exciting conversations were had, getting to know where things are up to and where we can help. There are a lot of ideas on the table around the areas of destination tourism, so looking at agritourism, recreational tourism, nature tourism, all the wonderful things that we have here in the Shire that we want people to come and see and experience, just as we get to experience them and see them every day. So that's really exciting and more to come in that space soon. But we've already got a great number of initiatives underway, such as the platypus project, that's sort of getting a lot of traction across the Shire, which is really exciting. More information will come on that soon too, but that was in the paper recently.

Also, our Gresford Art Gallery recently opened over in Gresford which was really exciting. I went to the opening of that. So many people attended, which was fantastic. We've got so many local artists with their artwork in the gallery now, which is just amazing, and it's a really big draw card for us. So, if you haven't been yet, you should certainly put that one on the calendar. And if you know anyone visiting, tell them to visit there as well.

I should also mention that some of those initiatives I mentioned before are thanks to the Community Builders Program that's been happening around the Shire. Some of our Councillors have actually been involved in those sessions, me included. A lot of exciting things are coming out of that space. So again, if you want more information, I'm happy to share that with you and put you in touch with the organisers of that. I'll include my contact details below as well.

That pretty well wraps everything up for this week. Thanks for listening and I'll see you around soon. Thanks. Bye.