Mayor’s Message

WORDS: Mayor Tom Tate PHOTOGRAPHY Supplied

The 2022-2023 City Budget has several key focus areas including safety, transport and sustainability.

As Mayor, I am acutely aware of the cost-of-living pressures we all face. These pressures are driven by inflation and are impacting all Australians.

The Federal Election has come and gone so it will be interesting to see if commitments made to reduce cost-of-living pressures are now delivered – not just spoken about.

The 2022-2023 City Budget is my 10th as Mayor and continues our city’s record of ensuring any rate increases are capped at, or below, CPI (Consumer Price Index).

A focus this year is on ensuring greater community safety through further investment in CCTV, street lighting and community infrastructure including disability-compliant change rooms and park facilities.

Since 2011, we have increased our city CCTV network from 110 fixed cameras to a fleet of more than 700 units today including mobile CCTV and anti-hoon cameras.

Safety starts at home and the City is currently partnering with Queensland Police to run a CCTV program called Community Camera Alliance (CCA). The trial is currently focused on Yatala and Varsity Lakes but we hope to roll it out in more suburbs later this year.

Home owners can register with the police to confirm their home has CCTV and that they are willing to provide that footage if requested. As we all know, visual footage greatly helps catch offenders.

As the network of private CCTV cameras increases, our hard-working police will know they can access footage your home device may have captured. Your private CCTV cameras will never be hard-wired into the police system – this is more a case of the police knowing which homes have private CCTV, which homes are registered through the CCA program and who they can contact to access your system’s USB storage.

I applaud the Queensland Police Service for launching this initiative. Please read more about this initiative at: https://bit.ly/3FgFzYN