Media Release

Friday, 25 September 2009

What makes a city perfect?

This week and next a number of workshops are to be held in the Town Hall as part of Swan Hill's community planning process. The workshops revolve around arts, culture and events, sustainable living (held Wednesday and Thursday this week respectively), sport, recreation and leisure, education, health and wellbeing and enterprise and business.

These workshops provide an important starting point for community planning, with community members providing input and ideas on the issues, challenges and opportunities for our city.

A number of public meetings will also be held on the 10, 11 and 12 of November to discuss the way forward for the Swan Hill community planning process.

So far 10 communities in the municipality have developed community plans during the past two years and are starting to achieve what they identified in their plans, including Manangatang, Boundary Bend and Nyah/Nyah West.

Community planning is the way for our residents to achieve their own aspirations for their area and in doing so, inform Council of what they want to see happen in their community.

In making these aspirations known, Council can then incorporate these projects into future Council planning.

This is your chance to have a say in what you would like to see happen in our city and to shape its future and I encourage all members of our community to get involved in the planning process.

For further information about community planning please don't hesitate to contact Council's Community Planning Officer Fiona Gormann on 5036 2333 or email Fiona at fgormann@swanhill.vic.gov.au.

Murray River Challenge Cup

I also want to make mention of a significant event coming to our region on Sunday, 11 October – the inaugural Murray River Challenge Cup.

The event will see six teams made up of local Indigenous community members, Victoria Police and local cricket members from Mildura, Robinvale, Swan Hill, Kerang, Echuca and Shepparton seeking to take out top honours in Twenty20 cricket.

The round robin competition will get underway at the Swan Hill Recreation Oval from 9am, with the final to take place under lights at 7pm.

This exciting event will not only bring Indigenous communities together from across northern Victoria, it will also seek to build upon partnerships and encourage stronger ties between Indigenous communities, the police as well as other areas of the community.

This is a fantastic initiative and will not only display the talents of our young Indigenous cricketers in the community (state selectors for the Victorian Imparja Cup side will also be in attendance), but as an event itself, has the potential to expand to a state level.

A range of activities will also be taking place on the day for the whole family and it would be great to see our community out there and supporting this event.

Community Pride

Community Pride continues to gather momentum with Council and Victoria Police soon to meet to discuss a collaborative approach on how we can make our streets safer and neater. It is pleasing that Council will be working in conjunction with the Police to help make our streets safer and is a great way to further encourage community pride among our region.

Councillor Greg Cruickshank, Mayor.