Council Happenings May 2025

Published on 01 May 2025

It’s Digby Rayward here and it’s my pleasure to present this week's Council Happenings.

As I'm sitting here, I can hear the rain hammering on my roof fairly well again, and the weather's been a real challenge to us for quite a while now. We certainly had a bit of an East Coast low event there last weekend with some, again, nuisance flooding.

All my flats got flooded, but certainly a big shout out to our council crews that are out in the middle of the night often and in extreme weather doing a great job. We certainly appreciate all the effort and work they put in.

And of course, the spin off on that is it's affecting our ongoing road works with potholes and stuff. So that's the trouble with water and roads, and guys trying to work outside. So we will just grin and bear it and work through that one. And it's got to stop raining soon, so we’ll see how we go there.

Another important thing to get your mind around, and some already have, is the Community Strategic Plans that are out for public exhibition and comment. And I've reported this before, and I think other councils have, it's very important if you want to get involved and have a say on how Council works, the budgets involved with this, the road works involved. All Council staff will be at the meetings and I'll be at all of them too, as well as the other Councillors. And we've already had two session, with three more to go, including Gresford on Monday night, we've got Clarence Town on Tuesday night, and we've got Patterson on Wednesday night, all from 4-6 pm. So look, get yourself involved. Get down there, and don't be a passive person who wants to whinge later. I want you to start whinging now! It's important for you to give us feedback, when we need it. So, get involved with that.

Another very important meeting was held this week. We've had a bit of push onto Hunter Water recently. They've got their business to run, and we've got our business to run as a council and we're now trying to work strongly with them to build a stronger partnership so we both understand what we're trying to deliver.

Dungog Shire has a critical role in supplying about 80% of the water for the lower Hunter and we do this with no formal recognition or financial support. You ask anyone who turns their tap on down in Newcastle where they get their water from, but no one knows, and we are at the forefront of supplying this water. There's no formal recognition and no financial support. And in fact, it goes the other way. We have restrictions placed on our community and our businesses as we try and do DA’s, and there's certainly a burden on us that’s not recognised. And we'll be working hard with Hunter Water to make sure that the community, the broader community, understands our role, and we'll be negotiating strongly with them for some support as we go into the future, it's absolutely vital for us.

As you can see we're flat out trying to do many things and what I'm very proud of is Dungog is a small council – we’re the pimple on the pumpkin! When I go to these other bigger meetings, we punch way above our weight, and we're very resourceful, and that's how we will go on to survive. But we certainly want the community to back us. We'll back you, and we're in this together.

So until next time, I'll catch up with you then. Cheers.