Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

Acting on behalf of our Mayor, as your Deputy Mayor, I attended last months LGA Ordinary General Meeting. A number of initiatives were passed for action by the LGA.

Below is a summary from LGA President Lorraine Rosenberg on the outcomes from the LGA Ordinary General Meeting.

It was fantastic to catch up with many of you at our 2017 Council Best Practice Showcase and Ordinary General Meeting (OGM) in Adelaide last month.

Some of the key outcomes that came out of our OGM included member councils asking the LGA to:

  • Request an update from the State Government about the Waste to Resources Fund, and how much of the money in this fund has been reinvested in waste management programs.
  • Consult with councils as to whether to lobby DPTI to review the Australian Road Rules relating to the provision of legal parking of vehicles on nature strips.
  • Propose a partnership with the Electoral Commission to pilot electronic voting in the 2018 Local Government elections.
  • Undertake a public campaign to advocate for the deregulation of liquor licensing to allow for small bars across South Australia.
  • Investigate whether there is sufficient evidence across local government to declare high speed high capacity broadband to be a utility, defined as an essential infrastructure service to achieve the goal of universal coverage.
  • Lobby the State Government to resource the Office of the Coordinator General to coordinate public infrastructure works between the State Government, councils and public utility providers.
  • Explore business models that could be used by the local government sector to manage commercial operations in order to offset the cost of council services for our community.
  • Investigate ways in which access and inclusion is approached by councils, and assist in making this approach consistent across the sector where possible.
  • Advocate to the State Government for the establishment of a Climate Change Adaptation fund that could be accessed by the sector.
  • Work with ALGA, Federal and State Government, and local universities to establish a national centre for local government innovation, research and development in Adelaide.

These motions will help form a key part of our advocacy agenda for the coming year, as we represent councils to both ratepayers and other spheres of government.

Draft minutes from the meeting are available to download from our website.