Session fails to inform
I recently attended a prospective councillor information session and left with more questions than answers.
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Firstly, the timing of this meeting left any people thinking of nominating with little if any time to do the following: Get through the mass of paperwork involved and get it posted and returned – which with current postal times could be an eight-day turn around; get their faces out in the community promoting what they stand for.
Close of nominations was Wednesday, August 10, giving nominees only 14 days to get all this done.
On asking a question about this I got a lot of smoke and mirrors about it being the Electoral Commission’s fault.
Any senior staff of council and councillors with any vision would have been well aware when the election would probably be and could have put this meeting on three months ago.
Makes it very easy for the incumbents including the mayor to get re-elected as they have had a lot of time to work on their campaign and no-one knows much about the prospective councillors.
Some of the handouts that were given in relation to accountability and engagement were interesting.
Things like: Councillors are accountable to the community and open and transparent decision making. If this is happening why does this paper carry so many complaints about these issues?
Did council take any notice of the majority of residents’ complaints about moving the clock? Did council take any notice of the complaints about the destruction of Littleton Gardens? Did council consult with the community about the purchase of the Old Bega Hospital with our rate money and no logical vision of its future uses?
You can’t have a partnership without a relationship and you can’t have a relationship without a conversation.
Why bother having a community engagement officer if you are not going to actually engage with community in a meaningful way and actually put into action what you have heard.
“We consulted community” are the three most overused words in the vocabulary of councils. Give them their due, sometimes they actually consult. Problem is they usually go away and do what they were going to anyway.
I would suggest also that the mayor needs to be popularly rather than politically elected.
Frank Pearce, Bega
Enlightening experience
After two months overseas, mainly in Germany where I experienced torrential rain and two days later 38C, which produced floods and enormous amounts of mosquitos, plus the unbelievable air pollution in Beijing during a stopover, I wonder when mankind will finally start to look after this planet?
To my astonishment, all motorized bicycles and motorcycles in Beijing were electric and silent! Still all cars, taxis, trucks and buses stank, roared and caused the grey smog all over the city.
In Germany it was stunning to see so many roofs blue, completely covered with solar cells or gardens and the quiet turning of huge wind turbines.
Although Germany has not handed out free plastic bags in shops for the last 40 years, and has a fantastic cash for container system, they still use a lot of plastic containers, especially for take away food.
They even hand out to every household rolls of large free yellow plastic bags to bag the plastic rubbish for the rubbish collection every two weeks. If they just could see the horror it causes our birds and sea creatures.
Bicycle riding was a delight: wide enough cycle paths, quite often between houses, away from the roads or through parks and along rivers or pedestrian malls with special parking areas for bikes everywhere and right of way at big intersections for cyclists.