From the Desk of the CEO: March 2026

Published on 26 March 2026

Hi Everyone

Apart from Cyclone 'Narelle', it's been a fairly quiet month. Everyone should be used to wet feet with all the rain that came our way with that event, but I hope everyone has come through the event safely. Sad to say, we may now need to deal with 'Maila' which is in the Solomon Sea. Whilst they say it is heading to Cape York, there is still no definite tracking that is being applied, so I don't think BOM is confident about which direction it will go. Now it is sitting in the one place, and it is expected to be near the Queensland coast towards the end of the week. Well, it's nearly the end of the week, and the threat is minimal. We'll just have to wait and see, as we do, but our Local Disaster Committee is on the case.

From the council's point of view, the wet weather has kept our parks and gardens crew busy. They have been doing a great job trying to keep on top of the grass, especially in the centre of the Town. They even cleaned off the slippery cement from under the Tree of Knowledge. This was really slippery.

We have been working on removing a lot of the car bodies from around the town to tidy the place up and make it safe from snakes and other vermin that can live in these wrecks.

They have been taken over to the rubbish dump and stacked there, so if anyone wants parts, they can go and get them over there. However, eventually we will dispose of these to a metal recycler.

Just in relation to dumping rubbish, it would be good if you could ensure that your bins are placed in the correct position so the truck can actually empty your bin. It needs to be placed so that the handle of the bin is on the side where your house is located and the front of the bin facing the road. The bin should then be placed on the edge of your gutter. This allows the bin lid to open when the truck lifts the bin up. If your bin is not placed correctly, we may not be able to collect it that day.

As I have said in my last post, we have actively been employing where we have jobs. There have just been 6 jobs advertised, and the applications closed last Friday. We will now go through the process of interviewing the applicants and making the appointments. This is a great feeling to be able to employ people within the community, so people don't have to travel to work or be away from family for long periods. We are also looking at trying to get some traineeships in place to help younger people get some skills training. There are more positions on our outside crew that we will advertise, and we encourage young school leavers who have a licence to apply for these jobs. Don't panic if you think you don't have the skills or don't have the right qualifications. Come and speak with us, and we will see what we can do to help you gain those skills. We are even prepared to pay to cover the cost of your blue and white cards, or Police checks if required. Just remember, you need to be drug free if you want to work for the council.

In my last post, I mentioned purchasing more software to manage the cemetery. This has been done, and now we are going into the next phase, where surveyors will come to Hopevale to survey the cemetery and start building the records around the existing gravesites. As I said before, we will need as much help as possible from the community to identify the graves and provide a history so we can embed that into the software for future references for the family and records. The surveyors are expected to be here on 14 April.

The budget process is well underway with input from everyone on staff and the Councillors. This is a reasonably involved process, and if it is done properly, it needs to be done over a period of time. Legally, the budget cannot be adopted before 31 May each year, so Council has planned their budget meeting for the middle of June in conjunction with their normal monthly meeting.

I also mentioned last month that we were in the process of reviewing our fleet of vehicles so we could get a more cost-effective outcome from the performance of our vehicles. Less maintenance means more money for the community. It also leads to people being more respectful of the vehicles and maintaining them in a better state. As a consequence of this review, we have purchased 2 x Hilux 4x4 utilities and 1 Isuzu MU-x Utility. This is the beginning of the process to ensure our vehicles are safe and to help improve the working conditions of our employees. We will be offering the replaced vehicles for sale in an "as is" condition. Keep an eye out for our reminder when we get around to that. There will be some great bargains with a lot of other used equipment that we wish to upgrade.

Getting projects up and running always takes time. It's like building a house; it takes ages to get the foundations and footings in place, but when construction starts, it happens quickly. This is where we are at with a number of capital works projects at the moment. When they start, though, you will see a lot of things happening quickly. We have security lighting and cameras happening in the town, we have the Everlina bridge which is in design mode, we have the MPC building upgrade work being assessed and costed, the airport upgrade is in its planning stages, we want to upgrade the Aged care centre with brighter painting and better furniture, and that is all in the budget to be approved.

We have a little way to go to get mobile, but it will be great for everyone when we get it happening.

Have a great month and stay safe in the cyclone.

Lew Rojahn

CEO