Ballarat councillors endorse next 12-months worth of action

A 12-month slice of the City of Ballarat council action plan was endorsed by councillors at Wednesday's meeting. The plan covers hundreds of small to large undertakings council will endeavour to achieve from 2023 to 2025 - from updating its website, to the Ballarat Library renovation. The 2023-24 action plan is part of the delivery for a 2021-2025 plan. Councillor Belinda Coates said having a 12-month plan presented to council was about accountability. "It is essentially fairly procedural in some ways and holds us to account as to how we're tracking on actions in the council plan," she said. "It's good some community members are watching and do exactly that, holding us to account. "As we all should be doing as councillors to to ensure that what we've committed to as strategies and a high level actions are getting followed through in a timely manner." Several community members made submissions to council over the action plan, mostly about the council's actions for sustainability and efforts against the climate emergency, From Ballarat Renewable Energy and Zero Emissions, president Mary Debrett wrote to the council about the plan about supporting Solar Vic's new initiative about helping in-home electrification. "Such programs harness the cost advantage of the bulk buys. The bulk of the public trust invested in local government and the cost savings such programs can offer at a time of rising energy prices," she wrote. Stuart Kelly spoke about heritage, specifically about council progressing Heritage Gaps analysis and work towards a planning scheme amendment to ensure that our built form controls can better balance heritage and urban change. "We really do need to spend more and put more effort onto the heritage gaps analysis, as a matter of some urgency," he said. "It's the second part of the statement which causes a bit of concern, specifically the better balance heritage and urban change, the use of the word balance to be seems to perpetuate a view of heritage as being opposed to development - the idea that you can have old or new, or you can have the past or the future." Mr Kelly said it was a matter of good design whether Ballarat could "complement existing buildings and conserve areas with respect to the historic character, rather than trying to have some sort of opposition between the old and the new". The 2023-2024 action plan has goals around sustainability, community, growth, asset conservation, economy and leadership. Below are some highlights from each goal and demonstrate just some of the work undertaken by the council over 12-months. Sign-up for The Courier's news alerts direct to your inbox. Select Breaking News Alerts in My Newsletters &amp; Alerts in your account preference centre.