Councillor Column With Deputy Mayor Mary Brown

I believe the Month of February 2025, will gain a new place in the history books as the event that has reset the historical benchmark for floods and their impact, in the Hinchinbrook Shire.  

Our community has been through some incredibly challenging and sometimes distressing times, in the past few weeks and we also acknowledge that for many, the hard work is just beginning, as we move to the recovery phase.

As Chair of the Local Disaster Recovery Group, I can assure the community that no time has been wasted in commencing the process of planning, bringing together the various stakeholder groups to gather information on impact, provide input on potential solutions and to commence the process of formulating  the Hinchinbrook Recovery Plan 2025.

The Recovery Plan, is a framework that brings together as many relevant and impacted community groups, government agencies and representative organisations, to inform the “community lead” pathway to recovery, that will guide how the Hinchinbrook Shire rebuilds into the future.  The plan will incorporate short, medium and long term goals,  to achieve and in addition to the practical outcomes, will be valuable advocacy document when communicating with political leaders and decision makers.

The announcement last week of former State Member and Deputy Mayor of Hinchinbrook – Andrew Cripps, as State Disaster Co-ordinator, to assist all impacted communities navigate their pathway as we emerge from these weather events, has been welcomed.  

Andrew has an existing knowledge of some of the key issues that impact these communities and not wasted any time in getting on the ground in the Shire to speak to community.  Andrew was also able to attended the first meeting of the master recovery group, last Friday and this has provided some early insights into the challenges being faced.

The structure of the recovery framework, in simple terms, includes myself as Chair, Cr. Pat Lynch as Deputy Chair, Chairs of Sub Groups that engage with the various stakeholder groups being:-
• Infrastructure – Cr Andrew Carr
• Economic – Cr mark Spina
• Human and Social – Cr Donna Marbelli
• Environment – Cr Kate Milton

The chairs of the sub groups continue to reach out to the community, to gather information and understanding of impact, to enable them to provide the best possible details and data into the meetings, that will then be captured and incorporated into the recovery planning.