March 14, 2013
A community meeting that had been touted as being a discussion on Yarraman’s de-amalgamation from Toowoomba turned out to be the exact opposite when Toowoomba Regional Council held its first-ever Community Engagement Forum in the town on Wednesday night.
A crowd of about 100 gathered at the Browne Street Community Hall to meet Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio and most of the Shire’s councillors.
At the start of the meeting, the Mayor explained he’d become aware at last year’s local government elections that many people in Toowoomba Shire felt “disengaged” with the Council.
Toowoomba is naturally a city-focussed council because 60-70 per cent of the Shire’s population lives there, he said.
But the remainder of the Shire is made up of small towns just like Yarraman where people often found it hard to have their voices heard.
This was something he wanted to change, and the new Community Engagement Forums were designed to do just that.
Cr Antonio said the idea for the forums had initially come from Cr Anne Glasheen.
Although Yarraman’s forum was the first one the Council had run – and it had been designed expressly for Yarraman and Cooyar residents – nine similar meetings have also been scheduled for other locations in the Shire and would be held over the next year.
The Mayor then kick-started the meeting by announcing the Council was about to employ a Community Liaison Officer (CLO) specifically for the towns of Yarraman, Cooyar and Crows Nest in response to concerns that had been raised at a different forum in Yarraman last October.
The new officer would be assigned to Yarraman for two days a week and would be the Council’s “eyes and ears” in town, the Mayor said.
The CLO would be tasked with making sure that local problems were identified and attended to, and that residents would have someone they could bring their Council problems to easily.
The officer would also help with processing the payment of council charges, saving some residents a long trip to Toowoomba to pay bills.
The meeting then heard presentations from Bendigo Bank’s Yarraman branch manger Anne Woodrow and Stanwell Corporation’s Community and Indigenous Relations Manager John Carey about the relationships that both companies have with the Yarraman and Cooyar communities.
Both speakers said their companies’ involvement with Yarraman and Cooyar was long-term and was intended to be mutually beneficial.
Following this, the meeting heard formal presentations from local community groups about issues of concern, such as the need to develop the Yarraman rail trail and tourism in the town; Cooyar town maintenance matters; the need for a Council service centre in Yarraman; and the master plan for Cooyar’s Swinging Bridge Park.
The Mayor and Councillors answered each of these where they could, and promised to look at unresolved matters.
Mayor Antonio then gave a brief address about Toowoomba Council as a whole, pointing out that TRC has an annual budget of $550 million, an asset base of around $4 billion and employs more than 1600 staff. This made it the seventh largest council in the State in budget terms.
With regard to the local area, the Mayor said that Yarraman and Cooyar contributed about $800,000 per annum to Toowoomba’s budget and the Council spent an average of $1.7 million a year in return.
But this year expenditure would be closer to $5 million thanks to NDRAA funding, which has allowed work to progress on the Ted Pukallus Weir and the Yarraman water main.
The meeting was then thrown open to a question-and-answer session where audience members were invited to talk about any problems they had with Council operations.
Most of the issues that were raised concerned local flooding and drainage problems resulting from recent rain, upgrading public toilets, and road repairs.
The Mayor and councillors provided answers where they could, and promised to look into other matters where they had no immediate answer and then report back when they did.
However one questioner drew a spontaneous round of applause when he said he didn’t really have any complaint but simply wanted to thank the Council for much better water quality he was getting lately and the prompt attention paid to urgent road repairs after recent flooding.
As the meeting drew to a close, Mayor Antonio took the floor again and said he was surprised no one had raised the issue of a “boundary realignment” but said he wanted to make his position on the matter clear anyway.
While de-amalgamation was “not an option” and while there was “no chance” that Rosalie Shire or any other former shire would ever return, boundary realignments at the edges of Toowoomba Shire were certainly possible and if Yarraman wanted to alter its boundaries he had no problem with it.
“The decision about where Yarraman stays is entirely up to Yarraman,” he said.
“It’s not my decision, it’s not Wayne’s (ie SBRC Mayor Wayne Kratzmann), it’s up to Yarraman residents.”
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Video of the meeting (courtesy of Toowoomba Regional Council):
