Recent and continued derogation of Yass Valley Council, its staff, its managers and its councillors could achieve its virulent mission if allowed to go unchecked. Misinformation, mischief and petulance can diminish the achievements and shatter the morale of workers committed to making Yass Valley a great place to call home.
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Unstopped this paranoia will damage community, peacefulness and the quiet enjoyment of our lives.
I write as an informed reader of The Yass Tribune, reflecting on 15-year experience of living in Yass Valley and drawing on many years of research and teaching social science. This is the first of serial reflection.
Consider the work of Council and name the benefits most apparent.
Parks and the gardens lining main streets of town and villages are carefully tended by dedicated teams of gardeners. Trees lining our country roads are pruned and shaped for their welfare and our safety. Our environment delights and sustains.
The streets kept clean and safe; the roads resurfaced in the wake of storms and rain; new paving, kerbing and gutters extended are all testimony to the operations thrust of Council.
The inveterate problem of waste disposal is studiously and laboriously resolved. The Yass site is upgraded as environmental science allows. Waste is collected, contained, recycled where feasible, and decontaminated. At Murrumbateman, renewal and upgrades, dictated by a burgeoning population, has been planned and funds accumulated for an immediate development. (for Yass Valley not ACT)
And human waste? The sewerage works for Yass have been upgraded to benefit from advances in environmental science and engineering (have you noticed that the inevitable odour in such precincts has largely evaporated?) Murrumbateman is to benefit from the provision of sewerage. The plans are drawn, feasibility completed, environmental authorities have reported and that advice incorporated into design. Funds have been secured; weather and all contingencies allowing, the new plant should be serving the village and precincts by end of 2015.
Water? Yes, minerals lying in mud at the bottom of dams are stirred as the cold moves the water to ‘turn over’. This is a problem of new or radically enlarged dams – as the patient Director of Operations explained in some detail: water safe to drink but not always of the lucid transparency valued and expected in town. Yass Dam has been completed within the limits of time and cost forecast years ago. Water restrictions are of the past. High praise for executive and staff of Operations Division and years of Councillors’ initiative.
Ann Daniel,
Emeritus Professor
Yass
