Message from the Mayor: 10 February 2023

Published on 10 February 2023

Hello, I'm John Connors, the mayor that Dungog Shire, reading this week's message.

The week was a mixture of good news and bad news. The good news started earlier in the week with the announcement of $1.316 million from the state government for pothole repair. The money can be used for heavy patching rather than merely filling potholes. And the program of works is being currently finalised. The funds have to be spent this calendar year. So, there'll be no delay, it will be delivered as quickly as possible.

Then, of course, there was further good news on Thursday of this week when the Premier Dominic Perrottet came to Dungog Showground and in the course of his visit, further funding announcements were made by the Member for Upper Hunter, Dave Layzell. Of those announcements two of them are for the benefit of the Showground. One was $441,000 for the construction of a new amenities block including shower facilities, and the other was $248,000 for radio Dungog for the reestablishment of their studio facilities or the establishment of their studio facilities on the Dungog Showground in the building formerly being occupied by the Girl Guides. There was a further $175,000 for the Top Blokes Foundation, bringing them to service the Dungog Shire.

That was a great afternoon well attended by members of the community and the premier was very hospitable and listen to the views that anybody had that they wish to express to him. And a special thanks most go to the Dungog Showground ladies, Dungog Show Society Ladies Auxiliary who put on the afternoon tea for all those present so a special thanks to them for their efforts.

The bad parts of the week was the middle of the week when I received a very abusive, libellous and ill-informed email from a rate payer on the western side of the Shire. It was a rant that ignores the truth and shows how ill-informed members of the community are and shows the need for Council to indeed better communicate, even though we try to do it as well as we can at the moment, but to better communicate, and, in the vernacular, brag about our successes, rather than allow people to focus on some negatives.

And it was ironic that the day the email was received, within a matter of hours of that email, advice was received, a further good news, which was $2.1 million for Allyn River Road, which will enable a $2.8 million spend on that road for the areas between Halton Bridge and Gringhi Bridge. So that was a further bit of good news but regrettably tainted by the bad news.

But to highlight very briefly, some of the efforts of the Council over recent years, in the last three years Council has secured $70 million in funding for roads and other infrastructure. This is an unprecedented amount of money and delivering it is extremely difficult, particularly in the current climate. A conversation I had with the Premier yesterday, with unemployment running at such a low rate, it's near impossible to recruit staff, it's near impossible to get contractors. And this is exacerbated by the government and the former federal government, putting so much money out into the public and private sector for infrastructure bills at the moment. It makes a huge demand of available resources.

But some of the good news out of that $70 million is that the Timber Bridge Replacement program, which started off at $16.4 million, and has ended up being funded by the government, they've topped it up to over $20 million. And with Council’s meeting next week, all the 23 timber bridges will either be have been replaced, be in the process of being replaced or contracts will have been led for their replacement. So that's a very significant achievement to deliver that within that period of time and see all the timber bridges in the Shire disappeared, and with that, the maintenance cost of those bridges.

There's also been despite the constant criticism and the reality of the presence of potholes, there's been a $1.4 million spent on pothole patching works over the last 18 months. I know people will say well, where's it gone? Well, it's gone into the holes but regrettably it comes out of the holes again when it rains or more holes are created. The heavy patching money that we've now received will hopefully alleviate some of that in enabling not just the filling of the holes, but the heavy patching of the area in the vicinity of the holes.

There's much more I could say to elaborate on the monies we've spent and where we've spent them, but they're generally throughout the Shire and certainly the beneficiary has been roads which are still undergoing and further works are scheduled, roads such as Paterson River Road, Summer Hill Road, Salisbury Road Flattops Road, Allyn River Road, as I referred to earlier, Gresford Road, where works still being undertaken. And then of course, in due course, that we've worked on Stroud Hill Road and the expenditure in the $25 million, the balance of the $25 million in that five year program.

It's also worthy of note that the grant funds that Council receives a tied to particular projects and their time limited. So it might be that a project has to be rescheduled because some other project comes in with funding that has a more restrictive time limit and that's occurred with disaster relief funding, and it will probably occur very shortly with further disaster relief funding, which will cause other scheduled projects to move out because that funding has to be spent in a much shorter time frame than the other funding. And that, I know, upsets people when they have heard a particular date that a particular road will be redone, and then it doesn't happen on that day. But one of the reasons on a regular occasion is that some other funding comes in that has to regrettably take precedence over the works that have already been scheduled.

Another cause for delay is the times that the design work is incomplete and you can't do the work in reconstructing the roads without there being a design, and Council has had great difficulties in contracting out design work and in getting design work done in a timely manner with its own staff because of the volume of work that's been on hand. So that's caused some delays. And when money such as the $25 million arrives, there's no designs for the work that was intended to be done by that. So, you start very much on the backfoot, having to do the design and then get agreement from Transport for NSW as to where the money should be allocated. And then having the designs satisfied in due course.

So I hope that very briefly, very quickly, will go some way to explaining to the community some of the reasons that roadworks aren’t being carried out at the pace you would like. But there's a large pool of money at the moment and will get spent on roads as quickly as humanly possible. It's not Council's desire to sit on it. Its Council's desire to deliver the project quickly as it's done with the Library in Dungog, the amenities complex at Gresford Sporting Ground for $1.2 million and of course the sporting facilities at Clarence Town Sporting Grounds, which were $2.2 million dollars. So those, those other infrastructure projects have taken place at the same time as the road works with the same workforce and the same limited workforce where there's regrettably, a number a large number of vacancies that can't be filled at the moment despite Council’s best efforts, but we'll keep on trying. All I do is seek some patience tolerance from the community, it’s not a lack of effort, I can assure you on the part of Council, and particularly Council staff.

So until next week, goodbye, good luck.