G’day, it’s Digby Raywood here. Again, it’s my pleasure to present this week’s Council Connect.
There’s a heap of things happening, but I’ll try and be quick. A quick update on the organisational restructure of Council. This is from a business point of view. You’ve heard me say many times that to run an efficient business, you have to have the right people on the bus and the bus going in the right direction. Stage three of our organisational review is well underway and progressing well, and the recently appointed Director of Corporate and Customer Services, Stacie McGowan, has hit the ground running and is starting to build the team around her. Interviews for the Chief Financial Officer have finished with excellent candidates. An offer has been made, so watch this space as Stacie and the GM continue with this final stage of our review. Stacie has come in as the final member of our excellent new Executive Leadership Team that we’ve now got in place. They’re all showing plenty of enthusiasm, a new set of eyes, and a great desire, like all of us, to see Dungog Shire move forward and grow. So I’m very confident you’ll see things happen over the next 6 to 12 months as the teams fall into place.
At the last council meeting, a number of important business papers came forward, as Councillor Ley spoke about in last week’s video, but one that I think needs consideration is the Draft Business Improvement Strategy 2026-2035. That’s a draft business improvement strategy. That’s out on exhibition for 28 days. This is an important document, and in some ways it’s the backbone of organisational resilience. So, those who have an interest in this space, jump onto Council’s website and check it out.
Council and council and staff were invited by Hunter Water up to Chichester Dam Wall the other day, and we thank Hunter Water for showing us the work that they’re undertaking to ensure that the dam doesn’t fail. Luckily for us, we had our Councillor Fred Paton, who is a dam engineer himself, and we thank Fred for keeping Hunter Water on their toes. It was quite an interesting meeting.
Moving on, I want to quickly acknowledge the Community Builders Groups that have developed across the Shire in each village, and they’ve all launched their own Community Builder Plans. The last one to do so was Clarence Town last week, and there was about 70 people attending, and I was there. It’s a great turnout! It’s just so positive because the community is what drives the whole of the Shire. You’ve heard me say that volunteers and communities, you’ve just got an empty shell. We also saw at the last council meeting some positive outcomes from some of those groups where they put forward recommendations into next year’s Operational Plan, and it was accepted. So, well done, keep that up. If you saw this week’s newspaper, the Paterson Community Builders have certainly got their hub going and drawing people into it. So great, I’m a big supporter of that.
The General Manager and I got home from Canberra late last night, after attending the national gathering of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA). This is a group of all Councils across Australia. A few days of this is hard yards. You’ve got 243 motions being debated, not an easy task. There were also some very interesting presentations, but certainly the recurring theme was the lack of financial sustainability for many councils, especially small regional councils like us.
There’d been a strong push across the whole board for the federal government to increase the Financial Assistance Grant package to Councils from 0.5% to 1%, where it used to be, but in fact it went backward to 0.45%, which was not well received. The presentation from Minister King explaining the position, I can tell you, fell very flat. But a presentation from the Shadow Minister Jamie Chaffey was more positive, and I think that’s because he was actually a Mayor before he joined Parliament in a small regional council, and he understands the position well, so we’ll just watch this space and see what happens.
A quick final heads up on a couple of things. The Future of Farming. Those who have an interest in agriculture, this is being organised by the Dungong District Chamber of Commerce. The next meeting is on Friday, 24 July at Dungog RSL from 4-6pm.
That’s enough from me, there’s a lot happening, and I’ll catch you next time. Cheers.
