February 3, 2014
The Kingaroy Chamber Of Commerce and Industry has been invited to have a say on the future redevelopment of Kingaroy’s CBD.
The offer was made by South Burnett Deputy Mayor Cr Keith Campbell at Monday night’s KCCI Meet & Greet held at the Sunshine Mitre 10 complex in Kingaroy.
Cr Campbell attended the meeting as a delegate for SBRC Mayor Wayne Kratzmann to provide members with an update on current Council issues.
He said the redevelopment of the CBD was “on Council’s radar” and would proceed at a future time when the SBRC had sold sufficient surplus land to pay for the work.
In the meantime, the Council had begun seeking input on the project from the community, and wanted the KCCI to be part of the process.
Apart from gathering ideas on what features a new and improved CBD should incorporate, Cr Campbell said Council would also like the Chamber’s opinion on where the boundaries of the CBD should be.
He said at one time the CBD was just Haly, Kingaroy, Markwell and Youngman streets but some people would argue its boundaries were now wider.
Cr Campbell also briefed Chamber members about the Road Levy and progress on repairing the region’s roads.
He said that most people would have noticed there had been a significant amount of road works carried out in the last seven months.
However there were still many roads waiting to be restored.
One of them was Markwell Street in the CBD which would be getting an upgrade in the next two to three weeks, he said.
Speaking more generally, Cr Campbell said the South Burnett Regional Council has 3200km of roads to maintain.
Approximately half of these are bitumen-sealed and half are gravel.
If all the Shire’s dirt roads were graded and resheeted with gravel every year, then the annual cost – at $50 per metre – would be $8 million per annum.
However, the Road Levy only raised $3.2 million so it would be impossible on current funding levels to grade and resheet all the Shire’s dirt roads every year without raising rates even higher, let alone maintain the more heavily used bitumen roads.
He said Council was acutely aware that most residents were already at or near their rate-paying capacity.
“Around 25 per cent of South Burnett ratepayers are on some form of social security benefits,” Cr Campbell said.
Councillors were also very aware that many of the region’s farmers had suffered great losses from last year’s floods, and this year many more were facing problems caused by drought.
He said these issues would be uppermost in this year’s Budget deliberations, which would begin in the near future.
The new awards would be run by South Burnett Directions and would be regional, rather than town-focussed.
He said the Awards were currently in planning, and more details about them would be announced in the next few months.
The five things that most directly impact the success of most businesses these days are talent, technology, travel, tenacity and temperament, KCCI members were told at the meeting.
Guest speaker Colin Graham, from Causeway Innovation, said he had formed this view from his work with more than 100 start-ups and small businesses, as well as 50 of the world’s leading companies such as Rolls-Royce, IBM, Marriott, Unilever and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Mr Graham said many businesses were at risk of “digital disruption”, ie rapid and fundamental change forced by the widespread uptake of new technologies and changes in society – and the only difference between different industries was the “length of the fuse”.
Some industries, such as retail, finance, media, real estate and professional services, are in the “short fuse, big bang” sector where participants must either change rapidly to meet the challenges of the digital revolution or shut up shop.
Others, such as education, agriculture, transport and health, have a longer period to adapt but the results would be just as catastrophic if they neglected to do so.
However those “big bang” industries that do change would reap big rewards, while some others, such as mining, accommodation, food services, manufacturers and wholesalers, are “small bang” sectors where the payoffs for adapting and changing were smaller.
The company was started by two Sunshine Coast families – the Melvilles and the Lanhams – in 2008 in response to the rise of Bunnings and similar mega-retailers.
It changed its name to Sunshine Mitre 10 about 30 months ago. This was partly to create an easy to remember brand and partly because the firm went into partnership with Mitre 10 around that time.
Mr Webb said this was the first partnership with a family firm that Mitre 10 had entered into. The Melville and Lanham families still owned 49 per cent of the group, with Mitre 10 owning the other 51 per cent.
Since then Mitre 10 has entered into similar arrangements with other similar firms.
- Julie Young from South Burnett Family Day Care Centre explained the operations of the business
- Darren Schmidt from the Wine And Food In The Park Festival outlined new features of this year’s Festival, include a deluxe “Dinner Under The Stars”
- Wendy Mogg from the Department of Education, Training and Employment urged members to nominate their staff – and themselves – for the 2014 Queensland Training Awards
- Julie Thomson from the Kingaroy Country Motel talked about the extensive refurbishments she’s recently made to “Kingaroy’s oldest motel”
