I'd like your vote!

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I'm standing for election as a councillor for the Shire of Kent once again.

I've been a councillor since 2003 and have seen a number of changes and important decisions made in that time.

Council have been proactive in working with community groups to develop facilities in each town, including the partnership with the Pingrup Progress Association to build accommodation units in Pingrup and with the Nyabing Sports Club to upgrade the Pavilion kitchen and bar in Nyabing.

Council have recently approved an upgrade of the Pingrup netball courts and agreed to in-kind support in partnership with the Pingrup Ground Improvement Committee. The P.G.I.C have worked extremely hard in attaining community support and putting forward a proposal for grant funding for the upgrade of the courts to be multi-purpose playing surfaces.

Council are very supportive of groups that help themselves and will consider any reasonable request for assistance, be it in-kind or financial. I'm always in favour of such partnerships where council work with volunteer community groups to improve the lives of people in our communities.

I've been on council's Building and Land Committee since I first became a councillor and have seen some great projects undertaken in each of our towns.
We've built superb modern three bedroom units and have partnered with the Government Housing Authority to build a comfortable modern home for the school principal in each town.
Another partnership with State Government helped to build neat one bedroom units in each town. Council also undertook the building of a new home for our CEO.

Council have recently acquired residential blocks in Pingrup and are continually working to try to gain residential land in Nyabing. More people are wanting to retire to small safe towns like ours and Council are proactive in encouraging residential as well as commercial development in our towns.

In the time I've been on Council, I've lobbied for our members as well as our community.

I put forward a motion to change the meeting times to later in the afternoon, starting our Forum at 4pm, rather than 2pm. My reasoning was due to my own work commitments as well as to encourage more men and younger people to join council in the future.
The motion was passed and has proved popular with our male councillors, in particular, since they are able to get more work done before the meeting. Unfortunately, it has moved back one hour as we were finding that we weren't finishing our meetings prior to tea time. It proved difficult to come back to a meeting with full concentration, so we now have Forum at 3pm and our regular meeting at 4pm.

I have recently pushed for a higher remuneration for councillors. Since the minister announced his stance on local government reform to encourage voluntary amalgamation processes, I  have attended countless meetings and seminars.  Councillors have had a great deal of extra reading and community consultation to undertake.
I believe if we are to encourage young people to come on board, we need to be paying a better rate for people to give up their working day to attend various meetings and seminars, not to mention all the work done outside of this time.
We are all taking on more voluntary work in our communities and our time is becoming more constrained.

We have three young people who have nominated for council in the upcoming local government elections, so I'm hoping that these reforms helped to encourage their interest.

I have personally put in many hours assisting our staff with the preparation of Council's reform submission to the Minister for Local Government. This has been a huge undertaking and it is extremely important that we are able to get our message across to the Minister that our Shire does not need to amalgamate in order to achieve many of the outcomes he is looking to accomplish.

I am a passionate and active community member. I'm on a number of committees and have helped to organise many social events, including the recent successful Variety Night held in Nyabing this year. I support our local sporting teams and always help out where needed, be it scoring for netball, yelling for the Hockey girls or producing the Football Budget for each home game.

I also take a great interest in my local school community and have kept abreast of the changes occurring in the way schools are run. I recently lobbied for our school to become a pilot school for the Independent Schools Programme.
This was an enormous opportunity, but, as with a lot of changes, a difficult decision to make, not helped by Teacher's Union scare-mongering at the last minute.
I believe our schools are a vital part of our community and would love to see more partnerships between our Shire and our little primary schools.

The decision to start a blog came about after talking with people in both communities who felt they didn't have access to information about our local government and the decisions that were being made. I hope that my blog has been informative and has kept people abreast of the current happenings in local government and their affect on the Shire of Kent.

I'm hoping that my past performance has proved to my constituents that I have both of our communities' interests at heart and that you will show your approval with a tick next to my name on your voting slip.

Remember, you can vote at the Shire Office any time up until October 16th, or you may vote on Election Day, October 17th.

Authorised by: Cr Megan Tuffley
Written by: Cr Megan Tuffley
4 Richmond St
Nyabing WA 6341
(08) 98291076