Donna Dunbar has been with the City of Charles Sturt Council for 33 years now.
Councillor Robert Grant nominated Ms Dunbar for her excellent work and long time service.
She was born and raised in Broken Hill and initially worked with the Broken Hill City Council for nearly two years, straight from High school, before she moved to Adelaide to work with the City of Charles Sturt.
“Over my 30 plus years at Charles Sturt I have worked in nearly every service area of Council from Finance to Parks and Gardens to Planning to Engineering and now with Public Health & Safety,” Ms Dunbar said.
“Some people see my present position of Manager Public Health & Safety as an enforcement and regulatory role, revolving around environmental issues, food and hygiene, community amenity, animals, parking and permits.
“However, I view my role and the business units that I manage as vehicles for education, encouragement and prevention with a team approach to contributing positively to a safe and healthy community.
“My role isn’t just about legislation, it is much more.”
Ms Dunbar said the key challenge to her current role is balancing the enforcement component with the educational and encouragement component.
“If I am successful in achieving that environment then enforcement via way of prosecutions and expiations become a minor part of
my role.
“The key to being successful is having a team of Officers who also believe and embrace this approach.”
Currently Ms Dunbar is working on several projects in the City of Charles Sturt including a joint research project with the University of Adelaide investigating dog attacks in the city.
“The statistics obtained in the study will provide the council with the ability to make evidence based decisions on future education campaigns and preventive strategies to reduce the risk of dog attacks in our council area.
“We are also currently evaluating the use of cameras/sensor public car parking enforcement with a new company ESmart21.
“This new technology has increased car park turnover rates by 40 percent in our trial area where we have in the past received numerous complaints from local business traders who rely on car parking turnover for the success of their business.”
The City of Charles Sturt has also completed development of, and obtained Council endorsement, for the City’s inagural Regional Public Health Plan.
This is a new requirement for South Australian Councils under the new Public Health Act and helps to better define Council’s role in protecting and promoting the health and wellbeing of our local community, together with other levels of government.
Ms Dunbar said she was enormously proud that the three business units that form part of the Public Health and Safety team have all individually recently won awards, from their specific industry bodies.
“This is a great reflection on the passion and dedication that all the Officers have towards the difficult role that they undertake on a daily basis.
“Through my various roles here at Charles Sturt I feel very honoured to have been acknowledged by being presented with a Paul Harris Fellow from The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International in ‘appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world’, and to have been included in the 2008 South Australian Women’s Honour Roll for ‘a positive
contribution to local government for over 25 years’.”
