That’s right. It has been a while since we last posted on the website. And I guess no news is good news or perhaps more to the point is that I can’t be bothered posting all the time.
But I digress. We are now facing the 2024 Swan Hill Rural City Council elections. There are 15 candidates for 7 positions. 5 incumbents are standing again with 2 clearly having had enough and not putting their hand up. So, we will definitely have 2 new faces if all the current Councilors standing get re-elected.
But there has been a little bit of controversy, especially over the Swan Hill Drag Strip and the lease to Skid City Consortium. As an aside, if you would like to hear the RRA meeting held on 3 September where Skid City Consortium representatives spoke about their proposal, please head over too this page and have a listen.
But back to the post. Sometimes Councilors lose an election when they back the wrong horse and it will be interesting to see if that’s the case in this election. 3 Councilors were opposed to just handing over a lease to Skid City, wanting instead to see it opened up to expressions of interest for 4 weeks. They were Crs. McPhee, Kelly and McKay. 2 of those standing again who were in favour of basically stopping any local opportunity were Crs. King and Jeffery. In a bit over a month, we will know whether this was a contentious issue or not.
As you can tell, I’m all for the underdog and in my opinion (humble as it is), the Council should have followed the recommendations and opened it up to others too, not just the big money from down south. But it is done, and we can only hope that Skid City are true to their word and get the track up to speed for October next year as they said they would at our September meeting (hint – go have a listen).