General Business - January 29 2025 Ordinary Meeting

Published on 30 January 2025

Councillor Dan Ballard

I think we all understand that 2025 is going to be a challenging year for Council and for our community. But Ben Franklin famously said that out of adversity comes support, and I absolutely believe that that’s the case for Mount Isa.

There’s going to be plenty of pain felt in our town this year, but if we focus on leveraging our strengths and we prosecute our case well, we can emerge from these challenges as a stronger and more resilient community.

I’d like to thank Chileya, our outgoing Director of Corporate Services, for her patience with myself and four other new councillors as she guided us through the budget process and worked to improve our financial literacy, and I wish her all the best in her next professional endeavours.

I’d also like to congratulate all of our Australia Day Award recipients and welcome our new citizens.

Mount Isa’s strength has often come from the diversity of our community and I’m proud to say that that legacy is still alive and well in our town.

Lastly, I’d like to say that, with nearly nine months in Council, I’m confident that our councillors will hit the ground running this year.

It’s been a steep learning curve for me and I hope that, with the benefit of time, I will make a more valuable contribution to this Council and become more effective in my role, so hopefully we can take the training wheels off at some point and we can begin to move the needle.

Councillor Travis Crowther

It was great to see all the applications come in for the Australia Day Awards, as well as the awards being presented. The pride the new citizens take in getting that citizenship is quite outstanding – they really do appreciate getting made citizens and then being able to get the rights of an Australian citizen, so it’s really great to see.

Congratulations to all the kids starting back on their first day of school, especially all the preppies. I’ve seen all the photos. It’s quite exciting, you know, to see them all. There’s a few tears there and a few bits of joy, but then I think the joy of the parents putting all the kids back into school and getting over the school holidays.

I trust everyone had a good Christmas and New Year break. As mentioned, I’m looking forward to 2025 and seeing the changes that we can make, and with the challenges ahead of us, really getting in there and making some differences.

Councillor John Tully

Hopefully this year we get the wheels rolling a bit quicker and try to get results happening a bit further, with 12 months into it. We’ve got some new staff that have come on board and hopefully we’ll head in the right direction and get some good results by 2026.

Councillor James Coghlan

I just wanted to thank Chileya for her efforts here at the Council over the years. She’s been a great help to some of us new councillors in understanding the figures and so forth. It’ll be a shame to lose her and her family – her son is a brilliant little drummer. I look forward to seeing him in a band in the future, because he is a very talented and lovely young man.

I was in Brisbane for several weeks and I managed to visit Rockhampton and Redlands and was able to ask questions of people down there regarding their councils.

In a lot of areas we’re doing pretty well, in other areas we’re not, so I look forward to bringing that back here.

On February 15 Allan Hazle, who was one of our Senior Sportspeople of the Year, defends his World Title in Townsville. It’s Valentine’s Day on February 14, so I can think of no better present for the wife than to take them over to Townsville for the weekend. They can have a shop and then they can go and support Allan on the night to bring back the belt. Good luck to him.

Deputy Mayor Kim Coghlan

I would just like to remind everyone that the Sign On Expo on Saturday 1 February starts at 9am at the Mount Isa Mines Entertainment Centre, which is located at Buchanan Park. It goes from 9am to 12 noon.

We’ll have plenty of food and drinks available to purchase because we’ve got the Rodeo Queen Quest entrants, we’ve got Zonta, and a few other local organisations.

This is a great chance for new people to Mount Isa, or someone just maybe looking for something different to do, because you have all the community groups there.

The following week, on Friday 7 February, I really want to encourage all the new people, or any young people in Mount Isa, to come along to the Welcome to Mount Isa function that we’re having at the Civic Centre.

It was a great success last year, even though it absolutely poured rain on the night, but one thing we got from feedback from last year was, we thought we’d invite all the new people, but a lot of other people that were living in Mount Isa wanted to know why they couldn’t come along.

So we have opened it up. It’s $15 entry, which gets you a drink on arrival, there’s grazing platters, and we have entertainment for them. Even though I didn’t see it last year, apparently the goldfish races were a real hit, so we’re having them again.

I would encourage all newcomers to Mount Isa in all areas to go along and have a great time.