Mayors Message Thursday 25 November 2021

Last weekend really saw summer in Ballarat kick off, with the sun out and a host of colourful events for visitors to enjoy including the Sportsbet Ballarat Cup and the Dragon Boat Regatta on Lake Wendouree.

As part of the VicHealth Local Government Partnership the City of Ballarat is putting local young people in the driver’s seat to help create healthier communities.

The ‘Creating Environments and Opportunities for healthy tweens in Ballarat' project will involve the City of Ballarat working closely with young people to implement key Municipal Health and Wellbeing Plan actions, focusing on increasing physical activity, healthy eating, and social connections.

This is an extremely important initiative as it will see strong and lasting outcomes for those who face barriers to reaching their full health potential, because of circumstances such as their income, cultural background, gender, age, or where they live.

We are pleased again to be providing the opportunity for everyone to have input on the 2022-2023 annual budget, based on the Council Plan 2021-2025 priorities on our mySay webpage.

Residents are asked to rank the Council Plan’s six goals in order of priority, and then provide their top five priorities from its 40 strategic objectives. 

I would encourage everyone to have a look at the Council Plan online and let us know what projects and strategies they would like their rates to go towards. This helps us make sure we are using those funds responsibly and transparently.

A draft budget is scheduled to be made available for public exhibition during May 2022. 

This week saw the launch of the 2022 Federation University Cycling Australia Road National Championships.

‘RoadNats’ will run over five days between 12-16 January and will see more than 80 national champions crowned over a number of category events.

This will be the 16^th time the event has been held in Ballarat and it will be broadcast both nationally and internationally.

Mayor

Cr Daniel Moloney