The fundamentals

I’ve been waiting for this subject to “come up in conversation” for some time... Anyway, here are my thoughts on the fundamentals....

Rubbish, Water and Sewerage

Rubbish, water and sewerage are some of the important “back room” functions that council controls that we often take for granted. They are a bit like Oxygen, We don’t realise how much we need it until it is not there.

 Often water and sewerage infrastructure is installed and maintained in an ad-hoc manner as issues arise. We need to ensure that water and sewerage infrastructure is managed and programmed replacement can occur as necessary. We don’t want to wake up one morning to realise that the whole thing is worn out and needs replacing NOW. The cost would be astronomical.

 Waste disposal is an issue that is going to become more and more of a problem as time goes by. As communities grow, there is more demand for waste disposal, but it gets harder and harder to construct and maintain these kinds of facilities. We are already seeing this with the recent decision by DERM to disallow the construction of a new refuse pit at Mitchell. Council will need to look for new and novel ways to manage their waste.

Roads.....

After my trip to Roma today, I got to thinking about roads again, so I have decided that the “Issue of the day” is roads.

Town Streets

I believe that in this day and age, it is unacceptable for our urban areas to have town streets that are unsealed and without kerbing and channelling. Council should set a plan in place to seal the remaining unsealed streets in urban areas. Council should also look to install kerbing and channelling in town streets where block sizes are 2 acres or less.

Rural Roads

I would propose that a program of upgrading the more heavily used local roads within the shire. Roads such as the Bollon Road, The Redford road, the Mount Moffatt road, The Maranoa road and many more besides should have a plan in place to bring the formed earth sections of road up to a gravel sheeting standard with a view to sealing these roads as finances allow. Any works being undertaken now should be done in such a way to allow for the further improvement of the road without significant reworking. For example, when gravel sheeting these roads, the material used and the amount used should be such that, if required, the road could be sealed at a later date without significant further work.

A study must also be undertaken to identify the weak links in the council road infrastructure network, for example, there is a pressing need for the installation of a raised crossing on the Womalilla creek on the Middle road.

Main Roads and Highways

In the last 10 years, we have seen a continual decline in the condition of the State and federal roads across the shire. A continued neglect and lack of funding has become evident as the state government becomes more centralised in their focus narrowing to the South East corner.

The Warrego highway from one end to the other is mediocre in the good bits and downright disgraceful in the rest. Council must take on a lobbying role to get some works done.

The Warrego Highway has the highest ratio of Heavy vehicles as a proportion of total daily traffic, yet we continue to see minimal standards of design and no bonus for rideability in road construction contracts.

Main Roads needs to be actively working on a plan to get all state controlled roads up to at least a 6m bitumen seal. We still have State roads with single lane timber bridges on main roads within the shire! The time has come to drag the condition of state and national controlled roads in the shire into the 20^th century, let alone the 21^st century.

The task ahead of me....

I attended the council meeting in Mitchell today to give myself an insight into the meeting procedure of this particular council. I was made to feel most welcome and was treated in courteous and polite manner by all concerned. It also gave me the opportunity to meet with some of the other candidates and to discuss issues that may come up in the campaign.

Also during the day, I sorted out more campaign flyers and posters so I can start in getting some of these up. I’m still undecided about coreflutes, they are an excellent medium for getting your name out, but they are so hellishingly expensive!!!

Tonight I came home and sorted out my email contact list to start sending out campaign updates. I’m thinking of sending out some of the info that goes in some of my blog posts as an email to my mailing list. I now have over 100 people on my email list and I am hoping that this will become a valuable source of information.

Tonight I have sat down to look strategically at the list of candidates and tried to start and work out their strengths and weaknesses. It is now that the task ahead of me becomes apparent.

There are 16 candidates, from which we must elect 8 councillors. There are 8240 voters on the roll for the Maranoa Regional council, each voter gets 8 votes therefore the total vote pool is 65920 votes (assuming every eligible voter votes) if everyone where to get an equal amount of votes, the target quota of votes is 4120 votes.

This is unlikely to happen as there is always a “Favourite” candidate who polls well in excess of the borderline number, but it is also true that there is often also an “Unpopular” candidate who fails to get any votes at all.

In reality, I will have to acquire somewhere around 3500 to 4000 votes to be successful in obtaining a seat at the table. The task starts now...

Time to roll up the sleeves and get into the campaign

I have been taking a bit of a break from Blogging over the last couple of weeks, but now it’s time to get stuck into it.

There have been 16 nominations for councillor, from which we have to elect 8, so half of us will have to miss out.... Is the number a bad thing or a good thing? Well we will just have to wait and see.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks doing some background work. I’ve organised and printed some flyers to go out later in the campaign, as well as started a campaign diary to organise all of the upcoming functions and appointments.

One of the things I have been working on is a policy overview document outlining my position on issues such as Centralisation, Equalisation of Services, Roads, Flood Mitigation, The Neil Turner Weir, ULDA, The Resources “Boom”, Emergency Management, Community Events and Organisations, Local Suppliers, Communications, Community Consultation and many others.

Over the next 5 weeks, I will post a different issue in each post, interspersed with posts of issues of the day or my thoughts on campaign happenings.

So, Here we go....

Equalisation of Services

There has been much talk in this term of council about the equalisation of services where different levels of service where provided by different councils prior to amalgamation. This is where Issues such as the Maranoa Retirement Village and the Booringa Bulletin became hot issues.

It is important to review all of the facilities and services offered by council and it is equally important to standardise these things across the entire Maranoa region. This does not automatically mean that we all have to have the lowest common denominator. Equalisation of services is not automatically about the simplest/least/most basic, it is about providing the best/optimal/most suitable. We shouldn’t automatically be doing away with things that other parts of the region don’t have, we should be looking at whether or not it is a good idea and if it is, maybe we should be rolling it out across the entire shire.