West Wimmera Shire held its meeting last week and with more than 40 people in the gallery, a full allocation of time was needed to cover numerous questions. All you need is a local issue to get people interested enough to come along.
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Part of the agenda was allocation of the local shire grants. These are done twice yearly and the spread of projects covered the majority of the shire.
Two of these grants were associated with the forthcoming celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the aboriginal cricket tour to England in 1868.
Two sites of historical significance will have markers placed on them; the original training site where they learned to play cricket on the banks of the lake at Bringalbert with the Hamilton family and the restoration of Johnny Mullagh’s grave at Harrow.
Under the current native vegetation regulations local government has to provide offsets on freehold land for native vegetation removal from road reserves with a planning permit, as does the general public.
The WWS has had an MOU in place since 2009 that permits the removal for maintenance purposes only on council roads.
The MOU does not require offsets, but a record of removals has to be kept. This MOU will soon expire and a new agreement will have changed conditions.
Before 2007, offsets could be provided on road reserves, but now the requirements mean private land has to be used.
So the council has to buy suitable land or come to some legal agreement with a landowner. One current quote to enter into a legal agreement with an organisation that could provide suitable offsets exceeds $32,000.
The council has decided to seek expressions of interest from brokers who may have timbered land available that is suitable for our purposes.
At the moment we are not in a position to do any major works requiring removal of native vegetation.
This is further complicated if removal involves an ecosystem. Then like for like is required, and as is often the case, these systems are extremely difficult to find, let alone come to a lease arrangement. We have a case locally where another government body’s roadworks are held up due to these requirements.
Cr. Bruce Meyer, West Wimmera Shire Mayor