Moves by some Blackbutt residents to leave the South Burnett and join Toowoomba Regional Council will not bear fruit, SBRC Mayor Wayne Kratzmann said today.
He said he had spoken about the issue this week with Local Government Minister David Crisafulli and was told the State Government had “no appetite” for any boundary changes unless both councils agreed.
“We certainly don’t agree that Blackbutt should leave the South Burnett, so it will be staying,” Mayor Kratzmann said.
The talk with the Minister came after revelations in southburnett.com.au last week that Toowoomba Mayor Cr Paul Antonio had spoken to a group of Blackbutt residents who have organised a petition requesting a boundary change, explaining to them the process involved.
Mayor Antonio said he could see “some benefits” in Blackbutt and Yarraman both being in the same shire because the towns were only 12km apart and shared many common interests.
But he added that officially his feelings on the matter “were neutral” and all he could really do was make sure the petition organisers understood the process on border realignment.
Mayor Kratzmann said today he could understand the frustration of Blackbutt residents but their cultural, sporting, historic, commercial and tourism “communities of interest” were with the South Burnett, not Toowoomba.
“Some residents say that Blackbutt has been neglected for many, many years,” he said.
“I agree with them.
“But we are addressing this with a four-year plan. And at the end of that process I think a lot of these issues will disappear.”
The Mayor said while some kerbing and drainage issues in the town had been already been fixed, a much more substantial program of kerbing and drainage work had been scheduled for the second half of this year.
And while he’d like to be able to schedule it earlier, the Council was looking after a 3200km road network and residents living in other towns had to have their problems looked at, too.
“We are all working as hard as we possibly can to fix as many problems as quickly as we can,” Mayor Kratzmann said.
“We’ve made substantial progress around the region in the last seven months, but there are only 24 hours in a day. So while I understand the genuine frustrations some people have, I’d just ask them to be patient a little while longer.
“Council will attend to everyone’s problems as quickly as humanly possible.”
The Mayor said that since attending a public meeting with fellow councillors in Blackbutt last October to answer critics, he had visited the town frequently and had held “very fruitful” discussions with many residents on a range of local issues.
Nor had the public meeting’s negative tone left him harbouring any personal resentments.
“Personally, I like Blackbutt a lot and I really like the people who live there,” he said.
“On Australia Day I visited as many town events as I could but I had my best time that day at the Blackbutt RSL celebrating with the locals. There are a lot of really great people there.”
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