By all accounts last week’s Barefoot Skiing Tournament was very successful with over 40 participants with many locals taking part. Show skiing and fly board demonstrations proved particularly popular.

This week I visited St Laurence’s Parish School and Forbes North Public School to hand out reusable water bottles. This initiative will encourage young people to take advantage of Forbes’ terrific drinking water and to discourage the purchase of bottled water. Most disposable water bottles end up in landfill and shorten the lives of rubbish tips, not to mention the fact that the bottling and transportation of water is extremely damaging to the environment. Eventually all Forbes Shire primary school students will receive an environmentally friendly, reusable water bottle.

While at Forbes North Public School I was able to sit in on the student parliament. They were undertaking a very similar process to council with its Community Strategic Plan. It was great to see our next generation of leaders developing their plans for the year.

Five New Committees

Forbes Shire Council’s new Section 355 Committee structure is in place with chairs for the five committees appointed at the Council meeting last week.

Natural Environment Chair is Cr Jeff Ni- cholson, Leadership Chair is Cr Susan Chau, Infrastructure Chair is Cr Chris Roy- lance, Enterprise Chair is Cr Phyllis Miller and Community and Places Chair is Cr Jenny Webb.

Each committee will develop plans for engaging with the community and develop- ing strategies and actions to meet Council’s long term objectives.

General Manager Danny Green said the new structure would incorporate working or focus groups that report back through the committees.

As discussed last week, Council’s new Section 355 Committee structure is in place. At last Thursday’s Council meeting we elected the Chairs of the five committees. This week I will focus on the Natural Environment Committee. Its purpose is to support Council by recommending programs, pro- jects or actions that have the potential to progress the Community Strategic Plan in relation to protecting the environment and achieving effective land use planning, in the interest of the Forbes community. Council- lor Jeff Nicholson was elected the Chair of this committee and Councillor Grant Clifton is also a representative of this committee.

I have fielded a number of questions regarding some of the roads that are still damaged due to the floods last year. All roads have been inspected by the Shire and works will continue on a priority basis on flood damaged roads. Some of the work is also awaiting funding allocation by RMS. Council is very appreciative of your patience and our crews are doing a great job on the repairs.

At last week’s Council meeting, the new Community Funding Program Policy was approved. This new policy will allow equitable distribution of Council’s annual donation’s allocation and we will be calling for applications for the funding shortly.

Council’s new committee structure is now in place and there will be five core committees that meet as required to cover the key fo- cus areas of economy, environment, community and spaces, infrastructure and lead- ership and governance. Over the next five weeks I will discuss each committee and its purpose. The Economic Development Committee’s purpose is to support Forbes Shire Council by recommending programs, projects or actions that have the potential to progress the Community Strategic Plan in relation to sustainable economic develop- ment within the Forbes Shire. The Councillors representing this committee are Phyllis Miller, Jeff Nicholson and Steve Karaitiana.

On Thursday, 2nd March, Council is host- ing a Back to Business Week networking event for the Forbes business community. The guest speaker for the evening is NSW Government Department of Planning’s Chief Planner Gary White. Gary has a lot of great information to share and it will be an extremely beneficial night for the Forbes community to attend.

Due to the predicted high temperatures on Saturday, the Bedgerabong Picnic Races have been postponed ‪until Saturday, 29th April. The new date will be a beautiful time of year and it was a decision that had to be made because of the extreme heat we are coping with at the moment.

The flood recovery debrief was held last week and I was very pleased to hear that our communications during the flood and recovery process set the benchmark for other Local Government Areas in the region affected by flooding. The flood event and the recovery were well managed and professionally handled by Council staff and all agencies involved.

‪On Monday night we had our first briefing session for the year and there were a number of items on the agenda. One of the items was the Forbes Community Plan 2027 engagement results. It was very interesting to see the priorities that have come out of the engagement that will form our 10- year plan. The draft plan will be presented to Council in March.

Australia Day was a great day last Thursday and all three events were well attended from the Rotary Community Breakfast, the Diggers Family Swim to the afternoon celebrations at Colin McKenzie Park. We will now have a debriefing session and look at what changes we can undertake to make the day even better. Our Ambassador Sandra Bates had a great time during her visit and was made very welcome by everyone she met.

On Tuesday the AMAZING sculpture went through town on its way out to its home on the stock route along the Lachlan Valley Way (South Condobolin Road). It looks great and there will be an official opening in the next few months.

Orange MP Phil Donato was in town on Tuesday to visit the community groups who received funding as part of the Community Building Partnerships Program. The Forbes Amateur Swimming Club received $6,000 for clubhouse upgrades, Forbes Community Men’s Shed received $40,000 for its new men’s shed, Forbes Wiradjuri Dreaming Centre Indigenous Corporation received $12,000 for the dreaming centre and the Forbes CWA received $6,000 for dance floor upgrades at the hall.

Councillors have our first briefing session for the year on Monday. The first Council meeting will be held ‪at 1pm on Thursday, 16th February. Everyone is welcome to at- tend.

Mayor Graeme Miller

It was Australia Day yesterday and I am very pleased to announce our Forbes Shire Citizen of the Year is Rob Willis and Forbes Shire Junior Citizen of the Year is Aidan Clarke. Both Rob and Aidan are very deserving of these awards. A number of outstanding nominations were received this year and I thank all the community members who took the time to submit nominations. It was an absolute pleasure to have our Ambassador, Sandra Bates in Forbes. Sandra was the Governing and Artistic Director of the Ensemble Theatre and retired last year after 30 years at the helm. I presented Sandra with her Australia Day Ambassador pin at the Rotary Community Breakfast and she attended all our events with her daughter Susan.

The foundations have started to be laid for the AMAZING sculpture on the stock route along the Lachlan Valley Way (South Condobolin Road). The committee is looking forward to announcing when the letters are in place and ready for the community to see. I will keep you updated on dates when they are announced. The support from local businesses has been unreal and the sculpture is a fantastic cultural asset for Forbes, which will bring tourism and economic benefits to our town.