Council Connect: 20 February 2026

Published on 20 February 2026

Good morning, everyone. I'm Gareth Curtis, the General Manager here at Dungog Shire Council. I'm standing in for Councillor James Campbell, who is unavailable this morning, and since the Deputy Mayor was on the road and couldn't step in, I'm filling in for everyone today. Let's go over some updates for our community.

This week, we had our first council meeting of the year. And there's a couple of interesting things that went on the agenda this week. Two of the more important ones were the Clarence Town Bridge update, in relation to Duke and Durham streets, and the intersection there. Council considered the community feedback. We got some good input from the community in Clarence Town on all those designs that were put out for exhibition. After reviewing those submissions, particularly the safety assessments, Council adopted option three, the cul-de-sac option in Durham Street. The Council considered that it delivered the strongest overall safety outcome and would reduce traffic conflict points and improve pedestrian visibility and protection. So that's the option that they went with. As I said, the design significantly improves safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and road users in the Clarence Town area. Looking forward to that bridge coming online. It's going ahead really well. It's looking great, if you get a chance, go and have a look at it.

Also, one of the other bridges that we've been fighting for funding for some time for was the new Gresford Bridge. And that's progressing well. There have been some further investigations and some stakeholder consultation. Council has confirmed that there's going to be a downstream alignment which was considered as option three in the report for the new bridge, and this particular option avoids the need for private land acquisition, which is a good outcome for the community and also for those landowners in those previous negotiations who won't need to worry about Council having to go through an acquisition process anymore. It also reduces environmental impacts, which is good, and it improves construction staging and traffic management, which is always a good thing. So hopefully that helps us manage costs through that project. The project is expected to go to tender in early 2026, so soon, and construction is anticipated later in the year, subject to funding confirmation and final approval. We've got to get through the state government, who administers the funding to Council.

We'll move now on from the Council meeting and talk about the Clarence Town Flood Study. I just wanted to thank on behalf of Council all the people who came along to last weekend's information sessions for that Clarence Town Flood Study. There has been a lot of community engagement in relation to strategies, plans, flood studies and the like, over the last year or so, so thank you for coming along. Communities do get fatigued when there's lots and lots of engagement, but please get involved in this. The more people who get involved, the better decisions the Council makes, because we have more input and can consider more points of view. So thanks again. It's great to see the good community interest, the Council is really happy with it, and they're happy to get all those questions and feedback to look at. So if you haven't had a chance yet, there’s still time. You can review the draft Flood Study and lodge a submission. Feedback is open until 1 March on Council's website. So there’s still just over 10 days for you to go onto the website, have a look at the Clarence Town Flood Study and provide some feedback to Council. It will make for a much better outcome. So thank you to those who've already done that.

There’s an Expressions of Interest (EOI) opportunity currently on the website, that's been on for a few weeks. We've had some pretty strong and healthy interest in this, and we've decided to extend that deadline until 5pm Monday, 16 March. There are four development sites. If you're interested, go online, have a look at our website, and you'll see those expressions of interest. If you're interested in exploring those development opportunities, there's plenty of time to get your submission in up until the 16th of March. You can give us a call, the contact details are also available on the website. Our Director of Infrastructure and Assets, Damian Morris, is the main contact, so if you've got any inquiries, you can contact him. I'm looking forward to seeing all the different expressions of interest so that we can put this through a proper process with our Strategic Property Advisory Committee, so in terms of governance, we've got these processes in place that make sure that all expressions of interest are looked at, and we can seek the necessary advice we need, and then make recommendations to Council on how we'll deal with those, or whether we'll go forward, progressed or not progressed. Great opportunity! If you're interested, go online to our website.

I'll move on to our bulky waste collections. So these are all happening across the Shire at the moment, as many people would know. So next week's collection areas are in Clarence Town, Glen Martin and Glen William. Make sure you get your bulky waste out this weekend, ready for collection, and check the website as well for what you can put out. It's a great service that's provided, and I encourage everyone to utilise it.

So that's pretty much all for me this week, hopefully I didn't take up too much of your time. Have a lovely weekend, and someone from Council will see you next week. Bye