Message from the Mayor: 30 August 2024
Published on 30 August 2024
Good morning, everybody. I'm here on behalf of Mayor Connors again.
In the lead up to the election, we'll be delivering our messages out to the community through our weekly video update on behalf of the Mayor.
This week, we've got plenty of news to get through again, starting with the UCI World Pump track Championships Australian Qualifiers which was held up at the Dungog Common last weekend. It went really well, and the Mayor was there to present a couple of the awards to some of the winners. There's lots of photos circulating around and it looked like an action-packed day, it was fantastic.
There was well over 400 spectators that turned up to the fantastic event and a lot of people from out of town, which was great to see. Good for the economy and good for tourism. And a very special thanks to Ride Dungog for all their hard work organising the event up there at Dungog Common. Council was very proud to be a major sponsor of the event. We had our little stand up there, and lots of people came to visit and talk to our Visitor Information Centre staff about tourism opportunities and all sorts of stuff, and we were giving out packs to people for the local area from a tourism perspective. So it was quite a successful day for Council as well. So well done to the staff in economic development and the Visitor Information Centre as well. We had a couple of councillors come as well including Councillor Rayward and Councillor Bale. Many thanks to them for showing up.
The Australia Day Nominations are now open. We put these out and encourage people to nominate. It's really important to make sure that we're recognising people who do good in our community and who achieve things. This is such a great program that Council runs, and we do these nominations and then provide awards, along with citizenship as well, on Australia Day. It’s a very important day for us all, and we gets lots of people attend. We usually get a couple of hundred people come into the James Theatre on Australia Day. It’s great to see! There are kids that get up who are nominated, there are community volunteers. There are all these people who do a great deal of work in our local community and they're not paid for it. They do it because they love it, or because they're good at it, and then to reward them is a great thing that we can do. So please get out there and nominate. We do have our nomination forms available. The awards that we've got for Australia Day 2025 include
* Citizen of the Year (that's for anyone 25 years over)
* Young Citizen of the Year (anyone 25 and under)
* Environmental Citizen of the Year
* Senior Sports Award (over 18 years of age)
* Junior Sports Award (under 18)
* Volunteer Service to the Community Award.
We've got so many volunteers and we're really looking forward to seeing lots of nominations this year. The nomination forms can be found on our website, and they can be also found here at Council at the council's customer service area. Head to our Facebook page or our website to find out all the details. Nominations close on the 18th of October.
So we've got time, but don't leave it to the last minute. Get them in as soon as you can and be prepared.
The Local Government Elections are coming up on 14th of September. The pre poll does opens on the 7th of September, and that's at the Doug Walters Pavilion this time. So that's a different venue. It's open from 8am to 6pm.
The locations across the Shire for voting on the 14th September include Dungog Primary School, Clarence Town Primary School, Paterson Primary School, Vacy School of Arts, and the East Gresford School of Arts. Have a look on the Electoral Commission website if you're interested in looking at where those pre poll details are, and also polling day venues, just so that you're well prepared and you know what you're doing so you can get in and make your vote count once again. Dates are the 14th of September for the actual election, but pre poll starts on the 7th of September at Doug Walters.
To our Financial Assistance Grants, we were very pleased to receive our notification of the annual Financial Assistance Grants this week. I know Mayor Connors and Council have a very strong position in relation to the Financial Assistance Grants that the amount that the federal government allocates out through to all councils across all states in Australia, and our position here at Council is that those grants should be returned to 1% of Commonwealth taxation revenue. They’re currently about half a percent, so they're not keeping touch or pace with the required works that the federal government expects you to do with them, and they haven't been able to help Council’s really get on top of a lot of the assets that these grants help fund. So, roads in particular, and other services that we provide across the community, really depend on these allocations. The Mayor has been very active, raising it when we were in Canberra last year, the year before, and this year, with all the Ministers that were there including Minister King, return these grants to a reasonable level to help us deliver the services we need to. Pleasingly, this year we did get an increase. So Dungog's amount is up over $5 million and it is really pleasing to see that, so well done. And hopefully we can get that into our budget and get some works happening for next financial year as well.
Now to our capital work sites, road and bridge construction works. The Allyn River Road up at Eccleston, we're doing stage two works up there, from Halton to Gringhi Bridge. There's further shoulder and drainage work scheduled, so watch out for those and please follow all the speed signage and drive safely around workers and also work sites. Those speed zones are legally enforceable, and they're there for a reason: to protect our workers. So, thank you for doing that in advance. I've seen some photo updates this morning, and I was very pleased to see some of the sealing works going on there. So, I'd like to thank the crews for their work up there as well.
Lord Street Dungog, we're looking at some initial site works scheduled next week commencing at the Hooke Street end. At Clements Rd at Gresford, from Gresford Rd to Clements Bridge, the council crews are doing pavement works and material drainage works. There's going to be some extended traffic delays there so while we apologise for that, it's unavoidable. We'd always much rather have people inconvenienced by doing roadworks than not doing roadworks. So, keep that in mind, and thank you once again for following those traffic safety directions and speed limits during roadworks to keep yourself and our workers safe.
Stroud Hill Road, section three has commenced. That section includes the Fosterton Road intersection. There’s going to be traffic lights in place to manage that particular intersection. So keep an eye out for those, and again, please obey the traffic signals. There will be some delays for vehicles in that area. We're doing some shoulder widening works and earthworks there. So just keep an eye out for that as well.
Great to see Durham Road, Gresford pretty well completed. We've had the sealing and line marking works now completed. I drove that way into work this morning and it was great to see. Just a reminder, please keep to the speed limit, it is a 50km zone. It’s been raised with council that now that the roadworks are finished, people are loving it and they're just going too fast. So we ask people to respect the speed limit there and drive safely. We've still got some tidy up works to go but it’s great to see those works completed. And I thank everyone up there for their patience.
On that note, I'll wrap up today and I wish everyone a wonderful weekend and we will see you next week.