​Early retirement for Council's President

11 December 2015

At the MacDonnell Regional Council meeting today, President Sid Anderson announced his resignation from the executive role on the grounds of health issues. Effective at the next Council meeting on 26 February 2016, Mr Anderson will continue to represent the Pintubi Luritja Ward as a Councillor. The timing of his announcement gives fellow Councillors good time to organise new leadership to take them to the local government elections scheduled for August 2017.

Sid Anderson has served on the MacDonnell Regional Council since it was formed as a Shire in 2008. He was elevated to President in its first year and has overseen the Council through its formative years, bringing direction and stability and seeing it become one of the highly regarded local governments of the Northern Territory.

Achievements of the MacDonnell Regional Council under Sid Anderson’s Presidency:

turning around the disrepair of Council’s inherited asset list of buildings and vehicles by upgrading them to be cost efficient and safedelivering and maintaining budget surpluses following initial investment to establish a new council and upgrading its depleted assetsmaintaining a consistently high Indigenous workforce of between 75 – 80% in real and meaningful employmentsupporting and promoting a community based Indigenous workforce into leadership rolesdelivering and improving both core and non-core local government services in 13 remote communities across one of the country’s largest council areasintroducing new community infrastructure such as family parks and children’s play areas, giving people pride in their communitycontributing to its establishment and leading council to deliver on its Vision of many voices, one dream, building a quality desert lifestyle

Sid Anderson announced his resignation to his fellow Councillors with a heavy heart, stating that he was no longer able to travel the thousands of kilometres each year to attend Local Authority meetings in Council’s 13 sparsely located communities across a jurisdiction the size of Victoria.

Listening to the community is very important for a Councillor, I need to know what people want and get that done. I enjoy talking to people about what they want to see in their communities he said.

END

Sid Anderson’s most recent interview was with Australia’s national local government newspaper LGFocus in April 2014 and can be read online.

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