Anglesea Community Network to meet for first time

VICTORIAN Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsley will be the special guest at the first meeting of the Anglesea Community Network, to be held next week.

Anglesea has more than 50 clubs and service groups, and the network aims to provide better representation of the community’s desires to the Surf Coast Shire and other agencies.

Group facilitators note that Torquay, Lorne, Winchelsea and Moriac all have some form of organisation representing their communities to the shire.

“The concept was that from improved information flows through the community via some form of grassroots network, we could build on our community’s strengths to create and communicate opportunities and to embrace issues together.”

Early discussions have identified about 20 topics for further investigation, including maintaining the character of the town and its environment, post-emergency resilience, transport and roads, the ongoing health of the Anglesea River, an alliance for sports clubs and volunteering.

“The next action of the current working group will be to support the establishment of active issues and opportunities (or ‘theme’) groups and then to drive the information arising from the work and activities of these groups out to the community.

“It is intended this will be achieved via the network, which will be able to communicate better with the community via the membership of the service groups, sporting bodies as well as using other communication mediums to inform the town.”

Facilitators also noted that according to the latest shire budget, Anglesea ratepayers contributed 24 per cent of the shire’s total rate revenue but the ward only received six per cent of the shire’s total expenditure.

The Anglesea Community Network meeting will be held at the Anglesea Memorial Hall on January 11 from 10am-11.15am.

For more information on the network, phone Gary Robinson on 0448 117 360.