History

Elec­tions for mem­bers of the ninth Coun­cil were held on 27 May, 2000. Fran Erlich was elect­ed Mayor.

Elect­ed Members

• Rae­lene Beale
• Geoff Bell
• Bob Cor­by
• Samih Habib
• Susan Jef­ford
• Michael Jones
• David Koch
• Jen­ny Mostran
• Rus­sell Naismith
• Annette Smith

Changes with­in Council

• 26 June, 2000: Coun­cil elect­ed Alder­man Rus­sell Nai­smith Deputy Mayor
• 25 June, 2001: Coun­cil elect­ed Jen­ny Mostran Deputy Mayor
• Jan­u­ary, 2002: The May­or Fran Erlich changed her name to Fran Kilgariff
• 27 May, 2002: Coun­cil elect­ed Alder­man Michael Jones Deputy Mayor
• 26 May, 2003: Coun­cil elect­ed Alder­man David Koch Deputy Mayor

2000 – 2001

The Coun­cil host­ed or sup­port­ed a num­ber of civic activ­i­ties that encour­aged com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion, including:

The Mas­ters Games,

The vis­it of crew mem­bers of the HMAS Arun­ta for the Hen­ley-on-Todd and oth­er engagements,

The cel­e­bra­tion of the Council’s thir­ti­eth Anniversary,

The vis­it of the West Indies crick­et team, and

Recep­tions for vis­it­ing dignitaries.

Coun­cil worked with the YMCA Xtreme Sports Com­mit­tee and youth on a plan for a skate park next to the swim­ming pool complex.

The Coun­cil, with Com­mu­ni­ty Grants, assist­ed sev­en­teen incor­po­rat­ed com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions with Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Grants, two organ­i­sa­tions with Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Grants, five with Com­mu­ni­ty Assis­tance Grants, and twen­ty eight com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions with Aralu­en Com­mu­ni­ty Access Grants.

The Coun­cil also sup­port­ed the Alice Springs Town Band with a grant.

The Coun­cil sup­port­ed a range of com­mu­ni­ty events such as the Alice Springs Show, the Cen­tral Aus­tralian Expo, the Mas­ters Games, the Hen­ley-on-Todd regat­ta, the Finke Desert Race, the Cork­wood Fes­ti­val, and the Ter­ri­to­ri­an Dinner.

Depot staff, with assis­tance from Cor­rec­tion­al Ser­vices, help the Finke Desert Race each year by grad­ing car parks, prepar­ing the Start/​Finish area, erect­ing sig­nage of the track, and posi­tion­ing grandstands.

To pro­mote rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, the Abo­rig­i­nal flag was flown each day next to the Coun­cil flag. Coun­cil cre­at­ed a strong work­ing rela­tion­ship with indige­nous peo­ple and a bet­ter under­stand­ing between it and indige­nous peo­ple through var­i­ous initiatives.

The sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing between Tan­gen­tyere Coun­cil and the Town Coun­cil was a step for­ward for com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions in Alice Springs.

A major achieve­ment for the year was the win­ning of the over­all award in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Bet­ter Prac­tice in Local Gov­ern­ment Awards 2000.

The award was in recog­ni­tion of the Council’s work in pub­lish­ing the Eco­nom­ic Pro­file of Alice Springs, pro­duc­ing four issues of the Advanc­ing Alice Springs Newslet­ter fea­tur­ing eco­nom­ic per­for­mance indi­ca­tors and the devel­op­ment of the Alice Springs website.

The library added four new inter­net access com­put­ers, made more infor­ma­tion avail­able through the Coun­cil Inter­net site, devel­oped the data­base of arti­cles in ear­ly edi­tions of the Cen­tralian Advo­cate, and improved the com­fort of clients through an upgrade of the air­con­di­tion­ing system.

Four new refuge style cross­ings along Gap Road and a new school cross­ing near Traeger Avenue were installed.

The Coun­cil dou­bled the amount of lit­ter picked up in sub­ur­ban areas with the intro­duc­tion of lit­ter patrols on quad bikes.

Coun­cil staff con­tin­ued their annu­al pro­gram of:

Inter­nal and exter­nal paint­ing of all ablu­tion blocks,

Reg­u­lar main­te­nance in response to vandalism,

Clean­ing of ablu­tion blocks up to four times a day where necessary.

Coun­cil staff swept roads, car parks, and stormwa­ter pits on aver­age every three weeks with the Council’s two mechan­i­cal street sweepers.

The Coun­cil involved Native Title hold­ers in con­sul­ta­tions over:

• The Todd Riv­er Couch Reduc­tion Project
• The riv­er side land­scap­ing in the Leich­hardt Ter­race upgrade plan
• The widen­ing of the Schwarz Cres­cent causeway
• A num­ber of ini­tia­tives were intro­duced by Coun­cil to reduce the waste stream:
• Imple­men­ta­tion of a user pays sys­tem for com­mer­cial clients of the landfill
• Devel­op­ment of a Tip Shop and tip face sal­vaging ser­vice in part­ner­ship with the Arid Lands Envi­ron­ment Centre
• Progress towards estab­lish­ing a green waste busi­ness with Tan­gen­tyere Coun­cil, and
• Com­mu­ni­ty edu­ca­tion on recy­cling and pro­mo­tion of its benefits

As cus­to­di­an for the com­mu­ni­ty of over 310 art works, the Coun­cil fund­ed the ongo­ing con­ser­va­tion and doc­u­men­ta­tion of the Alice Springs art col­lec­tion. Dur­ing the year, con­ser­va­tion work was per­formed on art works by Albert Namatji­ra and his men­tor Rex Battarbee.

The foot­path Con­struc­tion Pro­gram under con­tract to Arrernte Coun­cil oper­at­ed on a revised sched­ule with some work to be com­plet­ed in the next finan­cial year.

Upgrades of sport­ing facil­i­ties included:

• The kiosk serv­ing soft­ball and junior base­ball at Jim McConville Oval was renovated,
• The kiosk serv­ing crick­eters at Rhon­da Diano Oval received a larg­er stor­age room and the roof at the kiosk win­dow was extended
• Improved car park­ing inside Traeger Park, and
• Pro­vid­ing more seat­ing for spec­ta­tors at Fly­nn Oval and at the Ross Park Net­ball Courts.

Oth­er activ­i­ties dur­ing the year included:

• Extra main­te­nance was car­ried out on kerbs, chan­nels, parks, reserves, and verges due to heavy rains from Jan­u­ary to April 2001
• A fire haz­ard reduc­tion pro­gram in the Todd Riv­er was completed
• Coun­cil upgrad­ed facil­i­ties at the Coun­cil owned Swim­ming Centre
• A study of the drainage require­ments of the Emi­ly Hills rur­al area was com­plet­ed; a detailed inspec­tion of Coun­cil owned assets formed the basis for a pro­gram of required main­te­nance works
• Road reseal­ing work was com­plet­ed on var­i­ous Coun­cil roads

2001 – 2002

May­or Erlich made a pre­sen­ta­tion to Mr Dave Per­ry in recog­ni­tion of his being award­ed the Region­al Ter­rri­to­ri­an of the Year 2001.

The Coun­cil launched a new cor­po­rate image with a new logo, sta­tionery, bus­es paint­ed in com­mu­ni­ty themes, and a rede­vel­oped website.

The Coun­cil web site was re-devel­oped with addi­tion­al resources to ensure infor­ma­tion on this site and the Council’s Intranet site is current.

The three new ASBUS bus­es were com­mis­sioned and were paint­ed to reflect Cen­tral Aus­tralian themes, one of the more notice­able ones being the hon­ey ant theme.

The Ear­ly Bird Draw result­ed in approx­i­mate­ly 1900 prop­er­ty own­ers pay­ing their rates in full by the first instal­ment date.

The Gap Child Care Cen­tre project was com­plet­ed. The project was man­aged by Coun­cil and com­plet­ed with exten­sive fund­ing from the Com­mon­wealth Government.

An Organ­ic Recy­cling Cen­tre at the land­fill was estab­lished. This was a part­ner­ship project between the Coun­cil and Tan­gen­tyere Coun­cil with fund­ing from the Com­mon­wealth Government.

Fund­ing from the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Library and Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices Devel­op­men­tal Grants enabled the estab­lish­ment of the Indige­nous Access project in the Pub­lic Library.

After receiv­ing finan­cial assis­tance from the Com­mon­wealth Government’s Road to Recov­ery pro­gram, Coun­cil was able to com­plete the road works in Leich­hardt Terrace.

Todd Mall mar­kets and a bush Christ­mas were con­duct­ed in the Todd Mall.

A Skate Park was con­struct­ed beside the Swim­ming Com­plex with fund­ing from Coun­cil, NT Gov­ern­ment, and Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander Com­mis­sion (ASTIC).

2002 – 2003

One of the major achieve­ments for the year was the host­ing of the first Nation­al Assem­bly of the Aus­tralian Local Gov­ern­ment Asso­ci­a­tion ever to be held out­side Canberra.

Coun­cil remained focussed on the pro­vi­sion and main­te­nance of infra­struc­ture includ­ing sport­ing facil­i­ties, roads, foot­paths, parks, ceme­ter­ies, and waste facil­i­ties. Some of the key projects that were com­plet­ed dur­ing the year included:

• Rechan­nelling of the Todd Riv­er to improve the flow of flood waters and restore the riv­er to its nat­ur­al condition
• Rede­vel­op­ment of the Braitling Child Care Cen­tre build­ing to pro­vide a safer child care envi­ron­ment and ten extra places
• Con­struc­tion of a retrans­mis­sion tow­er to improve tele­vi­sion recep­tion in the Braitling area
• Con­struc­tion of four and a half kilo­me­tres of new footpath
• Instal­la­tion of new bus shelters
• Plans were drawn up for the recon­struc­tion of Stu­art Ter­race and Simp­son Street under the Roads to Recov­ery Program
• A new haz­ardous waste facil­i­ty at the Landfill

A Skate Park Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee was set up so that young peo­ple could be involved in its ongo­ing devel­op­ment. A new web­site was launched for young peo­ple to share their thoughts and ideas.

The new Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, Mr Rex Mooney, was wel­comed into his employ­ment with the Coun­cil. In the Annu­al Report he expressed his plea­sure in being involved in a num­ber of new ini­tia­tives, includ­ing, the com­menc­ing of a review of all cor­po­rate poli­cies and the for­ma­tion of clos­er work­ing rela­tion­ships with­in the community.

Each year the Coun­cil assists the Cen­tral Aus­tralian Show Soci­ety with prepa­ra­tions for the show. Roads are grad­ed, new signs are erect­ed, and Council’s staff help the police with road closures.

2003 – 2004

In the annu­al report, the May­or, Fran Kil­gar­iff, stat­ed that there were many high­lights dur­ing the course of the year, including:

Com­plet­ing the plan­ning for the new Civic Cen­tre. The devel­op­ment would be one of Australia’s first envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly local com­mu­ni­ty hubs.The key fea­ture of the Civic Cen­tre is the devel­op­ment of more space for the community,

Receiv­ing the best North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Recre­ation Facil­i­ty Award for the Skate Park at the 2003 Heart Foun­da­tion Local Gov­ern­ment Awards.This was a demon­stra­tion of what can be achieved when young peo­ple, par­ents, and the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty work with Coun­cil, the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Gov­ern­ment, and the then Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander Com­mis­sion, and

Con­duct­ing an exten­sive com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion for Alice Springs Town Coun­cil. Around one thou­sand peo­ple respond­ed to the com­mu­ni­ty sur­vey con­duct­ed in ear­ly 2004.Through this approach the plan­ning and direc­tion for Town Coun­cil is tru­ly a reflec­tion of the expec­ta­tions and needs of the community.

The Coun­cil con­tin­ued to argue for the upgrad­ing of the Out­back High­way (now the Out­back Way).

With the com­ple­tion of the stan­dard gauge rail­way line to Dar­win, the first Ade­laide to Dar­win freight train arrived at Alice Springs on 16 Jan­u­ary 2004, and depart­ed for Dar­win lat­er that same day.

The first Ghan pas­sen­ger train to trav­el the new south-north coast-to-coast line passed through Alice Springs on 2 Feb­ru­ary, 2004.