Regional Projects - June 2014
By: Regional Projects Coordinator, Daniela Gambotto...
Cross Region Events
After much deliberation and review, the Best Practice Guidelines for Events in the FNQ Region have been endorsed by the FNQROC Board. These guidelines are designed for use by both Council officers and event organisers and apply to events which cross more than two local government boundaries. They are not intended to replace guidelines for individual Local Governments, nor do they hold any statutory weight. They set out basic benchmarks for aspects of event organisation such as essential services, food permits, etc as well as key contacts in the region. They are designed to ensure a certain standard is met for events which are held in our region, thus improving participants impressions of FNQ. The guidelines are available on the FNQROC website.
In line with a more regional approach to events, Cairns Regional Council was approached by an organiser who wishes to establish a new event on the FNQ calendar. As a result of the establishment of the FNQROC Regional Events Group, we and other relevant Local Governments were invited to participate in these initial discussions. This proved to be a very successful approach as collectively we were able to discuss the pros and cons of hosting this events as well as details such as the course route and proposed stops. Through these discussions, we are better able to influence the nature of the event and thus ensure that the benefits are better spread across the region. Further to these talks, we will be meeting with another event organiser later this month for the same reason. Thanks to Cairns Regional Council for involving us in these processes!
Street Lighting and Sustainability
With the end of the financial year fast approaching, so is the return of the Alternative Control Service (ACS) Charge for Councils' street lights. As I have mentioned in my previous updates, the ACS has been wholly subsidised by the State Government under the Customer Service Obligation for the past two years. However, come 1 July 2014, 10% of the ACS charge will be passed back to Councils. For this region, we are looking at close to $550,000 in addition to your standard power charges for street lighting (which incidentally will also be going up by 13.6% on the 1 July 2014...but that's a whole other story!).
The ACS is calculated using a set fee per luminaire per year. The number of luminaires is broken down by Council area and is currently based on data collected through the Ergon Energy audit two years ago. As part of the audit process, Councils have been negotiating with TMR about the ownership of each individual street light, which as you can imagine is a tedious chore. As I understand it, most of the FNQ Councils have not yet finalised their negotiations and Ergon Energy will have no choice but to charge Councils the ACS based on the old data sets. It is therefore important that Councils are aware of what their street lighting fleet is made up of and that all ownership issues have been sorted out with TMR prior to the ACS pass through coming into effect. It is unlikely that you will be reimbursed if this matter is not resolved before the next billing period.