Dubbo City Council and Gwydir Shire Council are the winners of the coveted 2004-05 Bluett Awards for outstanding achievement in New South Wales Local Government. Announced in June, Dubbo won the Local Government Association section for excellent progress in delivering services, in particular its multi million dollar capital works program.
Gwydir Shire Council won the Shires Association section. Gwydir is a new Council formed in 2004 by the voluntary amalgamation of Bingara and Yallaroi Shires together with 40 per cent of Barraba Shire. The AR Bluett Award recognises one City and one Shire Council in NSW that are judged to have made the greatest relative progress during the previous year.
Dubbo Mayor, Councillor Allan Smith, and General Manager, Mark Riley, received their award with pride.
“Council recognises that Dubbo needs to be a living city, constantly growing to meet the educational, cultural and urban environmental needs of its community while addressing its regional leadership responsibilities,” Councillor Smith said. “Council has made improvements specifically targeting the family, the environment, traffic and transport management, waste collection and recycling, local business precincts, community services and infrastructure maintenance.”
Located in the centre of NSW, Dubbo is a service city with a catchment population of more than 120,000 people living in a third of the area of NSW. Dubbo’s own population has grown from 20,629 in 1974 to 40,000 in 2006. Council’s 2004-05 capital works program included new cultural facilities, work on the War Memorial Civic Centre, aquatic and leisure centre and airport terminal, a new grandstand at Apex Oval, new animal shelter, refurbishment of Council’s administration building and improvements to the city’s water and sewerage services.
Gwydir Shire is located inland in northern NSW, running north from Tamworth Regional Council almost to the Queensland border. The Shire’s 9,122 square kilometres include picturesque mountains and rivers, as well as some of Australia’s most highly regarded beef cattle studs. The Gwydir valley is known for the cropping of wheat, barley, oats and sorghum, olives, pecan nuts as well as livestock production and freshwater fish farms.
Mayor Mark Coulton said Gwydir Shire was extremely proud to receive the AR Bluett Award in its first year of operation. He paid tribute to Councillor David Rose, a former Bingara Councillor who became the administrator of Gwydir Shire during the transition period from March 2004 until the first Council election in September 2004, when he was elected to Gwydir Shire Council.
Mayor Coulton received the award with fellow Councillors John Wearne and David Rose, together with Max Eastcott, the former Bingara General Manager who became General Manager of the new Shire.
“This award is a wonderful recognition of the work of the entire Gwydir Shire Council, its towns and communities,” Mayor Coulton said. “It acknowledges the great work undertaken by all staff during the formation of Gwydir Shire and the enormous effort that has resulted in this recognition by our peer group. It is also a real credit to Max Eastcott, who came to Gwydir with a vision to create a new Council that was more productive, efficient, caring and resourceful than the sum of its parts.
“We see this award not as an end point of all the hard work in our first year, but as the beginning of a very bright future for Gwydir Shire.”
