Some Very Big Shoes To Fill

May 26, 2015

by Dafyd Martindale

The announcement by South Burnett Mayor Wayne Kratzmann at this year’s Mayor’s Gala Charity Ball that he will not be recontesting the position at the next Council elections in March 2016 has come like a bombshell to many people.

The Mayor said that after four years in the role, he intended to retire to spend more time with his wife Eleanor running their business in the Bunya Mountains.

His departure will leave a very large hole in the local political landscape, and very big shoes to fill.

In brief, we think Mayor Kratzmann has done a remarkable job in a very short time.

He has done so under often very difficult circumstances not of his own making, and he’s set a work pace that is exemplary.

During his brief three and a half years in office (to date) he’s had to contend with the Memerambi Estate debacle (which he inherited from the previous Council); delayed road repairs from the 2011 floods (ditto); the even worse disaster of the 2013 floods; the abrupt departure of  Brisbane Bus Lines; and now the equally abrupt departure of Pulse Health, which may leave our region without a private hospital.

He’s seen the Grants Commission rip $1.4 million in funding from his Council’s coffers without any warning or explanation; and he had to make the difficult and unpopular decision in mid-2013 to introduce a $200 per year Road Levy to fill the gap.

The Road Levy is something that still rankles many people. But it has finally balanced the Council’s books, drawn a big tick from Queensland Treasury and – a point often overlooked – allowed his Council to introduce bare-bones CPI rate rises in both the last Budget and the coming one. This is effectively a zero rate rise (in real terms) for two of the last three Budgets the Mayor has had a hand in.

On the other side of the ledger, Mayor Kratzmann’s furious lobbying since he took office has also seen many, many millions of dollars pour into the South Burnett from the former LNP Government, and now from the Palaszczuk Government, which have saved all ratepayers from the much greater pain of having to pay for the projects these grants have funded.

His wins – admittedly with the strong support of local LNP MPs Deb Frecklington and Jeff Seeney – have included $10 million for the new Kingaroy waste water treatment plant; $4.5 million for repairs to Gordonbrook Dam’s spillway; $1.4 million to upgrade Kingaroy’s trunk sewer line; almost $1 million to fix Kingaroy’s River Road and Pound Street after the floods; a $400,000 contribution towards Murgon’s new Aquatic Centre; a $290,000 contribution towards Nanango’s streetscape; $2 million for the Kingaroy-Kilkivan Rail Trail …. and the list goes on.

Mayor Kratzmann has also shown an extraordinary vision for our region, pursuing a measured program of civic beautification which has already produced:

• A Youth Park and a very successful free overnight RV park for Murgon

• The first stage of Wondai’s Village Green and an RV park

• Streetscaping in Nanango’s Drayton, Fitzroy and Henry streets (still a work in progress) designed to give the town’s businesses a much-needed lift

• The levelling of Maidenwell Sportsground and a long-term plan to upgrade that village’s CBD

• Improvements to Railway Park in Proston and, soon, an upgrade for that town’s footpaths, and

• A likely solution to flooding problems in Blackbutt’s CBD that have bedevilled Timbertown residents for decades

The Mayor is also currently spearheading a push to get a supermarket for Blackbutt, working on upgrades to the region’s waste transfer stations, and has overseen major repairs to many important civic amenities including the Murgon PCYC, the Wondai Town Hall, the Kingaroy Private Hospital, and the Nanango Cultural Centre.

Under his mandate, Council has demolished and rebuilt many decrepit public toilets in our region’s parks; instituted a 10-year plan to steadily upgrade the South Burnett’s crumbling water and sewerage infrastructure; and another, longer-term plan to demolish and rebuild our region’s ageing and decrepit bridges too (such as the $1.7 million replacement of Nanango’s Drayton Street bridge, completed almost 12 months ago; the $2 million it spent on bridges this year; or the $2.1 million the Council will spend on another three to four bridges in the year ahead).

There have also been improvements at many of the region’s sporting facilities, and flowers have even re-appeared in many of Kingaroy’s garden beds …

In doing all of this, the Mayor has steadfastly refused to countenance cutting any of the Council’s existing services or reducing staff through redundancies, the slash-and-burn approach some critics have advocated.

Instead, he has allowed staff numbers to drop through natural attrition and squeezed budgets hard.

Along the way he also created a public charity – the Mayor’s Community Benefit Fund – which has so far raised and given away almost $200,000 in grants to South Burnett not-for-profit community organisations like the South Bunett Pantry, Graham House and many others whose main work is to assist the less fortunate in our region, as well as provide some relief to struggling farmers after the 2013 floods.

The Mayor instituted a portfolio system not long after he gained office which has seen his fellow Councillors assigned individual responsibility for distinct areas of Council’s operations such as Roads, Parks, Water and Sewerage, Sports, Arts, Community and Economic Development.

This has strengthened accountability, reduced lines of communication, and produced a team spirit and a strong work ethic amongst our elected representatives that is genuinely heartening to see.

He established South Burnett Directions in an attempt to develop broad, long-term plans for the region’s economic future; and he has forged strong links with many regional groups and organisations that show promise of long-term benefits.

The Mayor has also treated our region’s agricultural producers with as much care and attention as he’s given town-dwellers, showing a genuine concern for their special circumstances and a willingness to work on assisting them that has often surprised critics, given that there aren’t many votes in solving some rural problems such as a broken bridge used maybe a dozen times a month or a washed-out road used by a half a dozen cars a week.

But he has always said that he’s in the job to look after everyone. And his actions in the last 39 months demonstrate his sincerity.

Not all the things Mayor Kratzmann has done have won universal approval, of course.

There have been times – such as the introduction of traffic lights in Nanango – when unexpected circumstances have led to long project delays. This has sometimes meant optimistic initial time scales have had to be recast. Sometimes, more than once.

And there have been some decisions – such as the introduction of quarterly rates notices – which have proven in hindsight to be not as good as initially hoped, but which have now become difficult to unravel.

But all in all, Mayor Kratzmann has shown what a motivated and informed Mayor who’s willing to work hard for our region can achieve.

He will be leaving very big shoes for any intending future Mayor to fill.

This is because Wayne Kratzmann has dramatically raised the bar for the job. And he has raised all our expectations of what we should expect of a Mayor in the process.

We believe the South Burnett will miss him when he goes. But we certainly wish him well.

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