Message from the Mayor: 20 September 2024

Published on 20 September 2024

Good morning everybody and welcome to this week's Mayoral message. I'm Gareth Curtis, General Manager of Dungog Shie Council bringing you this week's message on behalf of Mayor Connors.

The Local Government Elections were held last weekend. It's likely we're going to get a few new faces on the council, a bit of new blood, and we've also got some returning councillors as well, which is great. I’m looking forward to working with all of the new councillors. We won't know who they are officially until the NSW Electoral Commission makes the declaration of those polls, and that can take two to three weeks after the election. Once they're declared, as General Manager, I'll be communicating with all those successful candidates about the very first council meeting and briefings that will be arranged for October. At this stage, the first meeting will be on the third Wednesday of October, the 16th. We usually do our councillor briefings starting the week before that council meeting. As I said, I’ll communicate directly with the candidates once they've been announced and declared by the NSW Electoral Commission. It's out of Council's hands, we don't get to decide when those things happen. It's up to the commission. So bear with us.

 We've got Pedalfest happening this weekend, and we wish them all the best for their event. Council's involvement with that is as the roads authority. They've received a Roads Act approval to close certain roads, so there could be some inconvenience for people traveling through town on Saturday, 21st of September.

Those temporary road closures will be from 1pm- 6pm, from Dowling St northbound between Mackay and Brown Street. Brown Street, the full width between Dowling and Lord Street. Lord Street, southbound, between Brown and Mackay Street. Mackay Street, the full width between Lord and Dowling streets. These details are also up on our Facebook page if you need further information. It's a temporary road closure, so as soon as the event is over, those roads will be reopened for public use. We wish Pedalfest all the best with the event. It's a great event with people having a great time with their bikes around town, and it's good to see a bit of activity around. It brings a lot of people into town as well.

This week, I had the pleasure of attending the Lower Hunter Rural Fire Service Medallion presentation ceremony with Deputy Mayor Steve Lowe on behalf of Mayor Connors. There were about 100 presentations of medals to all the amazing RFS volunteers. So I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to all those people I met on Wednesday this week. I congratulate them on being a recipient of the medals and thank Deputy Mayor Steve Lowe for his kind words to all of those recipients on behalf of Mayor Connors. Keep an eye on Facebook because we're going to post some photos from the event. We had volunteers there from Vacy Rural Fire Service in Gresford, and it was great to see them get some medals. We heard that Vacy also won a competition recently, and we’ll provide more details about that as soon as we can get them.

I wish you all the best for the weekend. Good luck to Pedalfest, and I look forward to seeing you all next week.