In May, the new State Cabinet held its meeting in the Brighton Municipality and were able to utilise and enjoy our facilities at the Brighton Regional Sports Pavilion in Pontville to facilitate this. The visit gave Council the opportunity to discuss a range of issues and opportunities, delve into our shared goals and build critical relationships between Council and the State Government.

As Mayor, I was able to provide a snapshot of Brighton today, where Council is at and high­light a few key challenges and opportunities, ones that we believe are best tackled by col­laboration between two, or even three, tiers of government.

More specifically, the meeting allowed me the opportunity to emphasise and reiterate the following:

Brighton is booming! You can see it all around the municipal­ity. Critically, more than ever in the past, this boom is a healthy mix – not just housing. It’s now industrial, commercial, gov­ernment and both public and private residential growth.

There is a misconception that high growth means a council is flush with money. In actu­al fact, it is a huge financial challenge. High growth areas need huge investment in a wide range of infrastructure to “feed” this growth, to react to changes and to respond to the higher expectations of more densely urbanised communities.

The best way to ensure growth is a good thing for commu­nities, is for the three tiers of government to all play their part and to collaborate where possible.

At Brighton, we pride ourselves on building good relationships and partnering with others to increase our impact. We think there are great opportunities to work together more with the State Government. There are so many opportunities to create fantastic outcomes in our region.

Another thing we pride our­selves on is thinking long-term. We all know that some actions both state and local govern­ment make, will take years to start showing benefits – but these are often the actions that have the biggest benefits. We believe there are wonderful opportunities to make regional­ly significant long-term impacts across: Housing, Industrial and Economic Growth, Growth Planning, and Community Wellbeing by working more collaboratively.

In the next five years Council will have achieved:

• Construction of $5 million worth of major park up­grades across the municipal­ity.
• Over $7 million on the Brigh­ton Regional Sport Pavilion and sporting precinct.
• Approx $5 million this year in Brighton across Seymour Street, Brighton Town Square and the Brighton High School precinct.
• Completion of $6 million GP clinic and additional health precinct leases.
• Close to $1 million in place-making for Brighton Hub (formerly Brighton Industrial Estate).
• Development of a new ‘re­gional’ waste transfer station.

Some time this year, Brigh­ton is predicted to overtake Burnie’s population. We have hit 20,000 people. We are a significant player in Tasmania now, including playing some important regional functions, such as in affordable housing and industry and logistics.

Council’s achievements and successes in the last five years have included:

• Climate work (including modelling coastal hazards/ inundation and bushfire mitigation work).
• Establishing a dedicated community development function and focussing on supporting and empowering young people.
• Long-term planning (land use, social infrastructure, transport networks etc).
• Planning for strategic property use – commercial, health, residential and social benefit.
• Increasing road and pedes­trian spend year on year.
• Delivering political stability, leadership and collaboration.

We not only want to be success­ful for our local community, but embrace our roles as both a regional hub and as an import­ant part of Greater Hobart.

Finally, a huge congratulations to our community leaders and organisations who won awards for Bridgewater at the Nation­al Keep Australia Beautiful awards in Western Australia in May. Congratulations to Centa­care Evolve Housing for Bin to Win, Joselle Griffin for winning the prestigious Dame Phyllis Frost Award and our Brighton Youth Action Group (BYAG) for being highly commended for the Brighton Big Bangin’ Youth Night.

These awards are a tribute to the strength of our communi­ties and I have no doubt that everyone will feel very proud of these awards at a time when our troubled world means we need every little bit of hope we can get for the future.

Brighton Mayor

Leigh Gray