Apollo Bay

Voice News

Interim Committee for Apollo Bay - Report # 1

Dear residents and ratepayers,

I’m delighted to advise that the inaugural meeting of the interim Committee was held on Wednesday May 17.

Our thanks to Tiph for providing the Project Space to us free of charge and to Pamela Carey for volunteering to look after admin and minute taking. The meeting spanned more than 3 hours and was full of passionate and informed debate. In as far as possible, we intend to meet weekly over the next couple of months to deliver against the commitments made at the Community meeting in April.

The main areas which we tackled included the name of the group, governance structures, how and how frequently we communicate with the community and ways which make it easy for  community members to contact us with their issues and ideas. Additionally, we revisited questions around the group’s mandate, purposes, funding and membership. This wasn’t just a talk-fest, we actually made decisions!

The Minutes of the meeting will be published shortly, so if you are interested in the details please check them out. Alternatively, feel free to contact any member of the interim Committee.

Please also note that in response to commentary at the Community meeting, we have co-opted Bill Hurley Fraser and Fran Roberts onto the interim Committee: expanding the talent pool and considerably lowering the overall age profile!!

We received around 40 suggestions for the name of the representative community body. We were able to collapse these into two groups. In coming days we will start a polling process to register your vote for either (a) Apollo Bay Action Collective or (b) The Voice of Apollo Bay. Whichever name receives the most votes will also have “On Gadubanud Country” sitting below the name. This reference to our Traditional Owners is both a sign of respect and an indication of the geographic spread of the group: from Separation Creek, the rainforest plateau to the coast and bounded by the Gellibrand and Barwon rivers.

Please do let us know whether you found this communication useful. Contact us via email at apollobayvoice(at)gmail.com or by phone. We intend to place comment and polling boxes in a number of local businesses to make it easy for you to keep us on our toes!

Best wishes to you all.

Nikki Williams, Chairman of the interim Committee

For more information please email apollobayvoice(at)gmail.com.