Candidate info now online | 2018 LGA Conference & AGM | LGA submission to ESCOSA | LG population policy | Waste collection No Images? Click here Vol 3: Issue 37 - Tuesday 2 October 2018 It’s not long to go until our 2018 Conference and AGM on 25 and 26 October. The meeting papers are up on our website, and we’re hoping to announce the full program by the end of this week. Best of luck to all of you who will be campaigning in the next few weeks, and I trust the rest of you will enjoy your final month or so in local government. Please remember that voting for the next LGA President closes on 18 October so get your ballot papers in by then! LGA President Sue Clearihan Candidate info now on LGA websiteIndividual and searchable profiles for all council election candidates are now up on the LGA’s website. It is unfortunate that this process of loading candidate profiles was delayed. However, we did not receive the information from ECSA in a timely or coordinated fashion so were unable to load the information until late last week. Candidate photos will be uploaded as soon as they are all supplied by ECSA in a consistent and usable format. I would like to acknowledge that the LGA team has been working very hard under difficult circumstances over the past week to ‘go live’ with an accurate and user-friendly candidate website. All candidate information on the LGA’s site is as supplied by ECSA, so we are unable to correct any incorrect information. If you believe your profile contains incorrect information then please contact ECSA. Ballot packs will be sent out in the week commencing 22 October, and completed ballots must be lodged by 5pm Friday 9 November. 2018 LGA Conference and Annual General MeetingThe agenda and papers for our 2018 AGM are now available. I would encourage you to download and read these papers ahead of the meeting, and consider the key issues for our sector that will be discussed and voted on. As announced last week, author, trainer and motivational speaker Andrew Horabin will provide the keynote address at Thursday’s conference, and a final program will be available by the end of this week. This year’s Conference and AGM will be held at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 October and registrations are now open. LGA submission to ESCOSAThe LGA has made a submission on ESCOSA’s consultation paper on a South Australian Local Government Rate Oversight Scheme. While the proposed legislation is still unable to pass in the Legislative Council as it is opposed by SA Labor, SA-BEST and the Greens SA, it is important that our sector continues to remain engaged in all discussions about a legislated rate capping scheme. In providing this response to ESCOSA’s model, the LGA has reinforced that local government remains opposed to rate capping policy. We believe that any centralised rate capping scheme imposed by another level of government will have detrimental long-term impacts on South Australia communities. Addressing the following issues may limit – but in no way will overcome – the harmful impacts on local services, infrastructure and democracy:
The LGA remains committed to working with the SA Parliament on sensible local government reforms, and working with member councils to promote best practice and continuous improvement across the sector to deliver benefits to ratepayers Population policy for local governmentAs reported in last Thursday’s Advertiser, the LGA has engaged the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies to produce a Strategic Population Policy for the local government sector (subscriber link). This will include gathering and analysing data to develop a region by region snapshot that will encompass demographic profiles, population and compositional changes (such as natural increase and migration, including to and from other South Australian regions), employment changes, and immigration and migration policies, trends and issues. The goal of the project is not to set a specific target for population growth, but to look at who we have and where they are, and how we can attract and retain the people we need. This will give us an evidence-based vehicle to advocate for the Government to work with us on a State Strategic Population Policy. We’re anticipating this project will be completed by the end of this year, and I look forward to sharing further details with you soon. No changes to waste collectionLast week I attended a KESAB breakfast with representatives from the waste sector. The Hon David Speirs MP, Minister for Environment also attended, and was very critical of the LGA for raising the idea of fortnightly metropolitan waste collection. I would like to once again emphasise that the recent media reports around the frequency of future landfill collections were not initiated by the LGA, and we do not have a policy on this issue. While the coverage has led to some good discussions about how we can improve our recycling performance, we have no plans to advocate to the government on relaxing requirements for metropolitan councils to collect landfill waste weekly. For further information or to submit |