Mayor's Column - Leaders in the Leader 14-8-2020
The Mayor, Cr Tony Rayner
Another busy couple of weeks in our region have passed since I was last with you. I’d firstly like to thank everyone who engaged with us earlier this month when we presented the latest on the Thomson River Masterplan.
We had lots of people view our street gallery outside Ringrose Button and give their feedback by placing stickers against the ideas they liked most. We also benefitted from good attendance at the information session with the planners from Urbis later that day. Everyone was very positive and it’s great to see people getting excited about the potential of our river.
Most of the feedback we’ve received has been positive, and the main concerns people seem to have are around flooding, which the planners are very aware of. For those of you not there, the planners explained some of the new materials and design methodologies that can be implemented. The other concern people have is against overdevelopment, which is also understandable – people want to preserve the nature of the river. That’s actually one of the main reasons we are developing the plan, to guide improvements at the river in a responsible way.
A final draft of the plan is due back to Council later this year, and there’ll be a comment period during which you can give further feedback on the document prior to its adoption. From there it will be up to Council to take the finished document and go knocking on doors to try and secure the necessary funding to implement the plan.
I was in Barcaldine last week for some important meetings in my capacity as the chair of RAPAD. We had meetings of our road and water groups, and we also received briefings on progress at the former Longreach Pastoral College. Some of that information is commercial-in-confidence, but what I can say is that there are some reasons to be optimistic about the future of the college in our community.
Our engagement with RAPAD is important and the opportunity to be a partner in the organisation is a valuable one. Some extremely significant regional coordination takes place around the RAPAD board table.
It was a pleasure to host the Governor of Queensland in Longreach this week. His Excellency visited Longreach State School, where he was a student in the 1950s, before meeting with Councillors for a briefing on regional matters. His Excellency met with a number of our former Mayors, who I have appointed ambassadors for Council. The ambassadors have a voluntary role to use their knowledge and experience as former Mayors to help explain the role of local government.
Before departing, the Governor hosted a reception at the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame for community members involved in drought response and the tourism industry.
We’re still waiting for a response from the Minister for Industrial Relations on our application to declare 16 November, the 100th birthday of Qantas, a special holiday for this year. However, we’ve had a great response from the community to our survey asking people to nominate their preferred date for the 2021 Special Holiday.
That survey must close at 5pm this Sunday the 16th of August. Once we have all the results, a recommendation will come to the August Council meeting next week. We’re collecting responses based on locality – Ilfracombe, Isisford/Yaraka, or Longreach.
We’ve had over 280 responses so far, a big improvement on the 20 or so we received last year! It just goes to show that the more that people engage with us, the better the outcomes are that we can achieve.
Our Council meeting next week will take place in Yaraka on Thursday 20th of August. As you may know, we rotate where our meetings are held among each of the communities in our region. Every second meeting is held outside Longreach in either Ilfracombe or Isisford, and once a year we meet in Yaraka. As always, our Council meetings are open to the public and we encourage people to come along and see how they’re conducted.
Until next time, please don’t hesitate to contact Council directly on (07) 4658 4111 (24hrs), or email assist@longreach.qld.gov.au. You can find also find email and phone numbers for me and all of my fellow Councillors on our website at longreach.qld.gov.au/elected-members.