May 15, 2013
The South Burnett Regional Council will build a new communications tower at Cushnie in a bid to improve its disaster management capabilities.
At today’s Council meeting, councillors voted unanimously to use the $74,524 remaining in their $250,000 Community Recovery Flexible Funding grant program towards the project.
This State Government grant program is due to wind up on June 30. Any money that remains unspent at that time would be lost.
The meeting was told the new communications tower could cost $110,000 and would be higher than two existing towers at the Cushnie site.
Deputy Mayor Keith Campbell – who heads the Flexible Funding Review Committee – said the Department of Communities had given its assent to the project because it would improve the Shire’s future disaster preparedness.
He also said he was confident some of the $35,000 difference between the tower’s cost and the amount remaining in the grant fund could be made up from previous grant recipients who hadn’t acquitted all their funding.
Cr Debra Palmer noted the region had been hit by severe floods twice in three years, and on both occasions residents in some parts of the Shire had difficulty accessing disaster information on radio or mobile phones because of communication blackspots.
“We need to improve our ability to get information out to the public,” she said.
Cr Cheryl Dalton asked if there had been any investigation into who might use the tower.
Community and Cultural Services Manager Carolyn Knudsen said the Council hoped some communications providers would be interested in the tower once it was built, and council officers intended to start discussions with possible users at that time.
One of the existing towers, however, was already being used by CROW-FM and SBS. Officers believed both current users could migrate to the new tower when it was built.
Cr Campbell said the new tower wouldn’t be used exclusively by radio stations, adding that once it was built the two existing towers would be demolished.
Cr Kathy Duff said she “totally supported this project”, noting that communications in many western parts of the Shire have been patchy for years and that any improvement would be welcome.
Cr Barry Green asked if the upgrade would ensure that residents in Nanango and Blackbutt could get to hear Crow FM.
He said roughly 33 per cent of the South Burnett lived in these two towns but most residents couldn’t receive the station’s signal.
Carolyn Knudsen said Council’s IT Department would investigate the matter but added there had been no discussions with the radio station as yet.
Cr Campbell said “that is clearly one of the objectives, even though the tower is not being built for the benefit of any particular organisation”.
Both Mayor Wayne Kratzmann and Communities General Manager Eleanor Sharpe declared an interest before discussion began and absented themselves from the chamber for the duration.
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