Cr Lesley Hewitt
Firstly, in good news for the Shire, a number of Tiny Town grant applications were successful in receiving funding from the state government. Of particular interest to Birch Ward residents was $50,000 towards a new Master Plan for Victoria Park. The last Master Plan was completed around 2006 and since then many of the user groups including the Daylesford and District Agricultural Society, the Daylesford Soccer Club and DFNC’s netball section have outgrown their facilities so this is particularly welcome news.
Councillors and officers are currently working through the Draft Town Structure Plans. Thank you to all those residents and ratepayers who had a look at the Plans (there were over 7500 views) and to those community members (over 500) who provided feedback in one form or other. This included the project page on Participate Hepburn, the community panels, various community information sessions, webinars, the survey and of course submissions. We are working through all of those, and the outcome will come to a future Council meeting. You can keep up to date with this on the Participate Hepburn webpage.
Currently Council is consulting the community on the 10-year Financial Plan. There is a project page again on Participate Hepburn, where you can read about the services Council provides, their cost and what they achieve. Council has held community information sessions in each of the wards and several residents have participated. It’s not too late to have your say. There is a survey where you can allocate points to each service to indicate where you want your rate dollars to be spent. Some of the services are mandated, some are not. As you know, Council needs to increase its income or cut its services to cover a $4m deficit. If it’s not done, it will lead to a $40m deficit at the end of the 10-year Financial Plan – clearly not what anyone wants. So please have look at the survey and give us your priorities.
This Council term is nearing an end and an election for a new Council will be held on October 26. You can find out information on updating your enrolment at the VEC website. If you are considering nominating for Council the VEC website provides information about how to do this. Nominations close on 17th September.
And finally welcome to our 10 residents who became Australia citizens earlier this week and who will continue to make a worthwhile contribution to our community.
Cr Lesley Hewitt is a Daylesford resident and an elected councillor for Birch Ward.
Councillor Columns are a regular feature in The Wombat Post. We offer this space as an information channel from Council to the community. Councillor Columns are not subject to editorial review by our editorial committee but are published as we receive them from our elected Councillors.
