Last week I attended a community meeting at the Gravelly Beach Fire Station which was very well attended. These meetings are a great opportunity for residents to meet councillors and bring up items of concern. I congratulate the organisors for putting this together - there's always a far better response when the community arranges this rather than a council facilitated meeting - they usually get poor attendances as everyone thinks that council is trying to sell something! So if your area wants to meet with some councilors - organise it and I will be there!

There's often lots of small issues - ones we weren't even aware of - and this type of forum can achieve a lot - very quickly. Generally the issues fall into one of these categories:

• We can fix that - easily, now.
• We'll put that in the budget for next year
• That's already in the programme to do
• Sorry, not our issue (often related to the West Tamar Highway which falls under DSG)
• In your dreams  

Of course I'm always available to meet over specific issues - just email me on richardireland@bigpond.com
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Over the next 3 months council will be working on the budget for 2016/17. This is complex balancing act to:

• Do lots of good things in our area but keep the rates to an acceptable level - as an indication, we have about $40 million worth of capital works we'd like to do - one day, but can only afford to do a fifth of them.
• Do things things we have to do - such as replacing a stormwater pipe that will fail soon - versus doing something that ratepayers would like to happen - such as sealing a gravel road.
• Keep an acceptable balance between the basic function of council - Roads, Rates, Rubbish and community functions such as Halls, Parks and Pools.    

I will be spending a lots of time over the next few months with council staff and other councillors in fine tuning the budget to try and come up with an acceptable budget. Not everyone will be happy but hopefully the majority will be smiling.