Upper Hunter scores well
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I had the pleasure of doing some recreational driving out along our north-eastern boundaries recently and it was comforting as a councillor to receive generally positive feedback about our asset management in the form of our roads and bridges.
This aligns with the overview of statistics that have just been published in the “Comparative Information on NSW local Government Councils for 2012/2013” report which show that the Upper Hunter Shire Council spent 31 per cent of its total expenditure on roads, bridges and footpaths and that our actual spending on asset management was again well over the amount required.
It is no mean feat to attain these results in a shire that is around 8,100 square kilometres in size but only has a population of 14,500.
Compare that to our city cousins in shires like Randwick which has over 130,000 people within 36 km2 or Sydney with over 180,000 in only 27 km2!
This is an often and heatedly debated situation with regard to the inequity of how some of our councils are expected to maintain their relatively larger assets base from their much smaller, (comparatively speaking) population.
Taking the high roads
That aside, the roads we travelled in the north-east were in fairly good order and receiving plenty of use out that way due to the recent falls of snow up high and on the Barrington Tops.
I was in the company of some other councillors and it gave us all an opportunity to talk to locals, assess the condition of our shire’s assets first-hand and to compare them to those of the neighbouring shires with which we share a boundary.
I had forgotten that we share a shire boundary with nine other councils and it was interesting comparing things such as road works, bridges and signage to those of our own.
For mine, I believe that we are doing equally as well and in most cases, better than the councils around us; justifying the hard work and effort put in by everyone at council.
Of course this doesn’t mean that there isn’t always room for improvement and plenty of notes were taken to bring back to our chambers for discussion at a later date.
Congratulations to Councillor Maurice Collison who has taken a very active role in keeping all of the council informed about the community’s needs on the eastern side of our shire to ensure that action is taken.
Stacking the stats
Touching back on the “Comparative Information on NSW Local Government Councils for 2012/2013” report, it would appear at a glance that our shire, compared to like councils, is performing well and that we are generally on par with our peers.
An interesting point is that a little over half of our councillors are between 30 and 60 years of age and that the remainder are over 60 and our council has a slightly higher ratio of female councillors to males compared to the state average, but it is still biased towards males at two males per one female - so it is timely to encourage more women to consider standing at the 2016 local government elections.
Other points are that our population has grown at twice the rate of our peers, our unemployment rate is lower, our average taxable income is higher, we have more active businesses and we have more halls and libraries, but less open public space.
All in all, the Upper Hunter is a great place to visit and an even better place to live!
www.merriwa.nsw.au
Congratulations to all those involved in getting the Merriwa Community Web Portal (www.merriwa.nsw.au) up-and-running.
The official opening was on July 17 last week and by all accounts was well attended.
This is the second of four such sites that the council will initiate and sponsor, with Scone and Aberdeen to come on-line in the next few months should all progress well.
These websites will prove invaluable to the community and a big thank you to Rodney Swansborough who has played an integral part throughout the concept, development and installation phases of the project so far.