March 2020 – President Peter Clee

PRESIDENTS REPORT – March 2020

Purpose of Report

To Inform Council and community of activities and to provide the community at large with information that is important and noteworthy.

What’s been happening……

 The CEO has reported that change over to the new CouncilWise Information Technology system has commenced with Xero payroll and finance migration from MYOB being undertaken. Some information feeds are still pending which means finance reports will probably not be ready for this meeting. New reports from the Xero accounting package will be used for future meetings.

One great advantage of moving over to the new PropertyWise Planning system will be that the rates levying will now be a more automated process. The old system was manual and very labour intensive. The new system will free up staff for their usual duties. Interest on outstanding rates will be automatically calculated and applied to ratepayers. This has always been a manual task. It is also probably that ratepayers may well be able to access their own rates file online sometime over the next 12 months. This is a great leap forward.

The new IT system has many additional features which will be advantageous to the smooth operation of council into the future and will accommodate any proposal to expand our council borders into the unincorporated land on the Cox Peninsula.

Speaking of which, the matter of amalgamations has not gone away and there is little doubt that we will see this raise its head in the next 12 months. The council has previously put a proposal (developed thanks to the hard work by past Councillor Alex Richmond) to the NTG to incorporate the area around the top of the peninsula and possibly as far west and south around the coast as Dundee Beach. It is evident that Belyuen wish to be part of Coomalie Shire.

TOPROC and LGANT are developing a wish list to be put to parties and candidates at the forthcoming NT election due to be held in August. Wagait needs to lobby to maintain the proposed development of the Mandorah Marine Facility. We should also foreshadow the need for a mains water delivery in conjunction with the development by LDC on the land situated between Wagait and Belyuen. We need to continue to lobby for the long-term construction of a Transfer Station to service the long term needs of the Cox Peninsula and a Regional Waste facility.

Where have I been ….

18th February                     Ordinary Council meeting 19th February                     Bombing of Darwin Commemoration 25th February                     Council Offices 26th February                     DHLG Disciplinary Committee 2nd March                            Weekly meeting with CEO 6th March                             TOPROC Meeting @ Litchfield 10th March                          Weekly meeting with CEO 10th March                          Budget Meeting with CEO 11th March                          DHLG Disciplinary Committee 11th March                          ABC Grass Roots 17th March                          Weekly meeting with CEO 17th March                          WSC Ordinary Meeting