Council CEO lands a longer contract

Jonathan O’Neill oneill.jonathan1@outlook.com

Southern Downs Regional Council has moved in line with many local governments in Queensland, offering their CEO a 4-year contract term.

Current Council CEO, David

Burges entered into a 3-year contract with Southern Downs Regional Council in September 2020, with an option of a 2-year extension requiring mutual agreement between Council and the CEO.

Every Councillor in the chamber on Wednesday were unanimous in their support of CEO David Burges receiving an extend- ed contract.

Councillor Cynthia McDonald praised the CEO’s work steering the ship during the Covid pandemic saying it hasn’t been an easy ride.

“End of the drought, Covid-19, fires, floods, a housing crisis… certainly a lot of challenging periods that this community has had to go through, and the CEO has certainly kept this ship upright and sailing ahead,” Cr McDonald said.

An extended period of 4-years would allow Council to have a leader through a turbulent election.

“During that time, an organisation such as ours with 360 employees, contracts etcetera, needs to be steered with a steady hand… and you’d need,” Cr Bartley said.

“Also, we need to say this is how much much maintenance we will do on a road or track of that nature,” Cr Bartley said.

It was noted that currently, these remote roads need to be built to a stand to support all-weather access in the event of an emergency.

Southern Downs Council CEO, David Burges indicated that Council were in the process of tweaking the planning scheme, but this issue may not be resolved before the planning scheme is reviewed.

I’m certainly comfortable with endorsing that the CEO should be there through the duration of an election period,” Cr McDonald said.

The new employment contract for the CEO is due to commence on the 14th of September with the Councillors voting to delegate the Mayor the authority to finalise the new employment contract.

EVERYONE’S ENTITLED with Andrew Gale

We just had a funny old week weather wise. Plenty of rain was predicted for the week but as we got towards the weekend, the rain did its usual thing and held off, and off and off.

I wasn’t actually surprised. I was thinking the rain would stick to the coast mostly, or down the hill as I like to say, instead of up here over the range. That was until Sunday morning.

That’s when I was out in my boat working on Leslie Dam. It hit hard and fast. Pretty soon I had an inch or two dumped on my head. It didn’t worry me though. It’s not like we’re in the winter months yet. But I was soaking wet and very quickly had the dam pretty much all to myself.

Not long into the cloudburst however, I did make a run for it after all. Not because I was wet, but because the big hairy guy with the giant hammer. You know, Thor. The god of thunder and lightning and all that, decided to announce his imminent appearance by issuing a few thunder-claps.

If there is one thing that bothers me in an open boat out on the water, it’s lightning. And for good reason. According to Wikipedia, the energy in an average lightning strike is about 10 gigawatts. 10 billion watts! That’s a lot of lightbulbs or about 8 times the power required (1.21 gigawatts) to make Marty McFly’s DeLorean time machine travel through time in the movie “Back to the Future.”

Yes, I know that was Hollywood fantasy, but this lad does know that lightning ain’t. Hence my hasty retreat.

It wasn’t the first time nor probably the last time I have had to deal with electrical atmospheric phenomena on the water. Once, I was out there on a pretty typical summers afternoon. It was fine above us but there were passing scuds and storms in the near distance just north of us. All of a sudden you could feel the air start to change. It felt dry and crackly and the hair on a female passengers head started to just stand straight up and out of her head. It was like a giant hair halo or helmet. Everyone was giggling at her. I was giggling, but mine was more a nervous titter.

I recognised what I was seeing straight away as a sign of an impending lightning strike. I throttled the boat up and got as far away from those clouds as we could. Fast. Thank goodness I had paid attention to those survival lectures when I was a boy scout. It must be the only thing I did pay attention to because I’m hopeless at putting up tents and tying knots to this day.

I also know that I’ve said and done plenty of things in my life that might make me a target for a higher deity that may or may not hold influence over clouds and the things that fall from them.

Best to just be safe.