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Mayor’s Message

I am honoured to have received the trust of my fellow Councillors to fulfil the role of Mayor for the forthcoming twelve months and my special thanks to Cr Bligh for her generous leadership over the past eight months.

By South Gippsland Shire Council - 3rd December 2004 - Back to News

My objectives are to provide effective and efficient leadership via cohesive teamwork with the councillors. I believe people want to see clear communication among councillors, staff and the community. They have endorsed our model of open and transparent governance and we will continue this inclusive management style. There are occasions however when we need to meet in private and the media and community need to trust our judgement. Information from such meetings should be made public as soon as practicable.

Our communities need to be listened to and we should be community driven, with leadership provided from councillors and the Mayor. I plan to maintain regular contact with the Chief Executive and ensure issues are dealt with in a timely manner, keeping councillors updated.

Many of the issues we all identified when we came to council are still pertinent two years later. We now have some experience to deal with, or at least start to formalise our approach to some of these strategic and ongoing issues such as planning, budget issues, sewerage and rates. We also need to address farming and tourism, how to best manage Coal Creek etc, all matters I will elaborate on at a later stage.

As councillors we need to identify clearly what we want to achieve over the next twelve months and the next three years. We need a vision for the future of South Gippsland. There will be only three wards after next November and we should identify the impact this will make on councillors and explore how to best service the three wards.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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