NEWSWATCH
ORANGE CITY
LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED WITH — INTEGRITY — WISDOM — BALANCE Saturday 25 July, 2020
FREE
www.orangecitylife.com.au
Talking POINTS
with BOB HOLLAND
Our Councillors continue to come out with some concerning questions and comments at Council meetings. I keep mentioning these because Councillors represent us, and we expect them to be up to the job, and that they conduct themselves in a businesslike manner that shows they know what they’re doing and have our best interests at heart. In my view, many of them fail at this too often.
Flying Kangaroo’s first hop
Engineers of the future
QantasLink – local service for the famous Flying Kangaroo — intends to be Australia’s premier regional carrier, a senior executive said after their first regular flight from Sydney to Orange recently.
Old-school studying for years at university before going-out into the workforce could be very yesterday if an innovative internship program being utilised by Orange City Council to train workers of the future takes-off.
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See page 4 for full story
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See page 6 for full story
“Duration Cottage” heritage listings
No Guts, No Glory — Response
Built for local workers during World War II, but are Orange’s “Duration Cottages” of historical importance? East Orange locals want to know!
Democracy being what it is; there was a varied and diverse response from Orange’s elected councillors to “Orange City Life Newswatch” publisher Bob Holland’s recent feature “No Guts, no Glory!” n See page 8–9 for full responses
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See page 5 for full story
At Tuesday’s meeting, Councillors discussed and then passed a motion to give Orange 360 an additional $100,000 to do a marketing campaign to encourage visitors to come and stay in Orange midweek. During the discussion one question that should have been asked wasn’t, another that was asked seemed to suggest the Councillor hadn’t thought the matter through, and another question/comment suggested at least one Councillor doesn’t fully appreciate how spending ratepayers money should work. The question that should have been asked was “what are the chances of encouraging people to come to Orange midweek in the first place, who might this type of person be, and what would they do when here, that they couldn’t do on the weekend?” The question that was asked about how the $100,000 would be spent and wasn’t thought through was, “All local contractors will be contracted to do this work?” What local contractors? It seems to me the marketing campaign will all be spent outside Orange on social and other media platforms. Finally, the half question/ half comment by another Councillor that should raise serious questions among ratepayers was “Is (the $100,000) in the budget, but if not, the skill of our accountants can certainly find it.” This after several other ad hoc commitments recently where money appeared not to have been budgeted for. Why do we have a budget, I ask? If anyone thinks raising questions like this is unhelpful or unfair, tell me! Just on that, one Councillor Newswatch contacted this week claimed I didn’t know how Council works. Maybe not, but I know how it should work.