After the bushfires, when Mogo was basically left on its own to recover until bureaucracy caught up with the chaos and destruction that shattered the community everyone expected that the Council and other agencies might revisit the out of date Eurobodalla Emergency Plan and have it brought up to date in readiness for the next event.
That event happened with the floods yesterday and, no surprise, the Eurobodalla Emergency Management Plan was still the same totally irrelevant document it was in 2019.
Immediately following the floods one might look to the Eurobodalla Shire Council’s Bushfire Recovery Plan of April 2020 to see if there was any guidance. This plan was meant to "assist our community to restore confidence and strengthen resilience. This will be achieved by co-ordinating activities to rebuild, restore and rehabilitate the social, built, economic and natural environment at the Eurobodalla community."
Today the good people who showed up from 7am onwards to help the Mogo community remarked on the same thing, over and over "Where is the Council and what protocols are in place".
The first issue at hand was to remove the flood damage from the shops. Utes were loaded destined to the tip but a hold point immediately arose about tip fees. There was nothing in the Emergency Management Plan about the waiving of tip fees for flood or bushfire damage items. Nor was there any resolution from the Bushfire Recovery Plan.
It turns out that the waiving of tip fees is a retrospective paper trail. Council needs its income from anything being dumped. Because of this they do not waive fees. What they do instead is to find someone like the State Government to pay for their loss of income.
This morning had six full utes loaded with flood damage at the ready to do the first tip run and nowhere to go unless the community took the can around and raised the tip fees.
Fortunately, after a few phone calls, the Local Member, Andrew Constance, advised that the State Government premier had agreed to meet the fees. With that the cleanup operation began in earnest and at some point the tip invoices will be handed over to Eurobodalla Council so they can make a claim for the tip fees.
One of the driving forces behind the Mogo cleanup today was Mat Hatcher. He was there straight after the bushfires bringing in donated food, clothing and goods via the collective he and his volunteers had created overnight to fill the massive void that saw Mogo, and the wider bushfire affected community with no immediate help from Council or Agencies.
Once again Mat was on site yesterday and today helping with logistics and directing the many volunteers who arrived to where they could be the most effective.
By noon many of the flood affected businesses were beginning to find their feet and by this afternoon some had been able to open their doors to trade.
Mat has a passion for his community. This is probably why he stood as a Mayoral Candidate.
Mayors don't just run meetings and use a gavel. They are meant to be civic leaders and actually lead. The Bushfire recovery plan says it is designed to "assist our community to restore confidence and strengthen resilience".
The question has to be "How does a community have its confidence restored if sh*t hits the fan and no-one in authority shows up. Exactly what has Council done to strengthen the resilience of Mogo?".
Disappointingly there was no sign at all of any of the six other Mayoral Candidates in Mogo today. Nor was there any sign of Councillor candidates.
Accolades go to Andrew Constance for stepping in and providing a swift outcome for the tip fees. That is what a leader does.
Accolades also go to the Cobargo crew and crew from Sydney who were hard at it from the early hours today helping with the clean-up.
And accolades to the fifty or more locals who stepped in.
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NOTE: Comments were TRIALED - in the end it failed as humans will be humans and it turned into a pile of merde; only contributed to by just a handful who did little to add to the conversation of the issue at hand. Anyone who would like to contribute an opinion are encouraged to send in a Letter to the Editor where it might be considered for publication
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