How to have your say on the Economic Development and Visitor Economy Strategies
South Gippsland Shire Council is encouraging all community members, local businesses and visitors to share their thoughts on how to best position South Gippsland as a prosperous and thriving economy and a key visitor destination.
Community consultation is now open and participants have the opportunity to shape Council’s 10-year Economic Development and Visitor Economy strategies.
These strategies will be developed with consideration of all feedback received and with the support of expert Economic Development and Visitor Economy Advisory Groups.
A feedback report will be collated in May and the resulting Economic Development and Visitor Economy strategies are expected to be presented to Council for consideration in June.
South Gippsland is a unique and beautiful part of the world. It is home to distinct coastlines, rolling green hills, fertile agriculture and dairy land, and a growing visitor economy where more than 1.2 million people choose to visit annually.
South Gippsland Shire Council is preparing new Economic Development and Visitor Economy Strategies to guide the Shire’s economic direction over the next 10 years.
In developing the Economic Development strategy, Council wants to better understand community values and priorities on innovation and skills, creating jobs, supporting business and industry, building community wealth and liveability.
The region is home to the world renowned Wilsons Promontory National Park and is a popular destination for its spectacular coastline and rolling hills, boutique food and drink experiences, rail trails, unique towns and villages, and vibrant arts and events calendar.
In developing the Visitor Economy strategy, Council wants to better understand community values and priorities on how we can grow this important sector, provide unique visitor experiences, encourage visitor spend, support and create jobs and responsibly leverage our most valuable
Those interested in participating in the consultation are encouraged to visit Council’s website before Friday 23 April: www.southgippsland.vic.gov.au/thrivingsouthgippsland
This digital engagement hub provides several ways to share your views, from adding your thoughts to the ‘Ideas Wall’ and completing our survey.
Council will continue to hold individual conversations where needed, allowing the community to give us their views and will also be providing additional ways to engage through online Townhall meetings in the near future.
Editorial Comment:
Will Council be using their new -fangled committees of mainly outside the Shire appointed people to provide the advice to Council? They appear to have one month to do this review. Council administrators then will presumably approve the two strategies at the June Council meeting and these two documents will then be handed over to the incoming Councillors to include in the 10 year vision.
Whilst this process looks good and interestingly has been outsourced to a private firm rather than use the usual in-house Council staff it does also appear to be circumventing the new Councillor group by handing them a 10 year vision which would have been constructed from Administrator appointed committees mainly composing people residing outside the Shire and who are not ratepayers.
We are Melbourne’s foodbowl and now it appears that we are also to be Melbourne’s mining camp with outside influences and people comprising the decision making bodies at Council that provides the recommendations to an elected Council. Said elected Council appears to be left out of all bar the final approval stage when this all comes to the Council meeting. Councillors appear to be excluded from all working groups at Council and it also appears that the new Councillor group will have their meeting day shortened so they can run off to do community works that day.
Councillors attended many community groups in the past, the Administrators came in and removed themselves from nearly all those groups and seems they intend to go back to those ways-perhaps to keep the new Councillors busy!
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