MAYOR Julie Hall and councillors held their third community catch-up for 2023, at the Mt Coolon Community Centre, on Thursday, April 27.
At the catch-up, residents queried the maintenance program for the 1,200km of rural gravel roads that council maintains in remote areas such as Mt Coolon.
The Mt Coolon catch-up attracted about 15 residents and topics discussed included land and natural resource management, on top of the large network of rural roads and their maintenance.
Council’s director of infrastructure Adam Hagy answered the questions and explained the program for grading roads, to maintain them, following the wet season rains.
Mayor Hall has previously explained that the process for gathering funding to repair damaged roads takes time.
“When severe weather events occur, we activate the disaster recovery funding arrangements from state and federal governments, it works as an insurance for our roads, to alleviate costs to ratepayers, but the process takes time,” Mayor Hall said.
“Since October 2021, we’ve had multiple severe weather events impact our roads, here in the Whitsundays, we’ve repaired over 80 damaged roads, costing over $23m of disaster recovery funding.”
Upcoming catch-ups are planned for Gumlu/Cape Upstart, Collinsville, Proserpine, Conway, Scottville, Bowen and Airlie Beach/Shute Harbour.
The next community catch-up will be in Collinsville, on Wednesday, June 21, from 9am until 11am, at the Collinsville Community Centre, 11 Conway Street, Collinsville.
To keep up-to-date with upcoming catch-ups – or if you have any ideas or topics you would like to discuss – check out council’s Online Engagement Portal on ‘Your Say Whitsunday’.
