Summary
I reported on the Rowville Men's Shed open day and the Knox Repair Cafe, which reports 90 per cent successful repairs and close to 900 kg of waste diverted from landfill this financial year. I attended the Eastern Region Group meeting on its election advocacy platform, visited Outer East Foodshare, and chaired the Community Safety, Health and Wellbeing Advisory Committee, where we discussed the latest crime statistics for Knox with police.
Transcript
Edited from the meeting's auto-generated captions.
Thank you, Mayor. And we are very pleased to have Councillor Considine back with us. Lovely words. And I just extend my acknowledgement to our young leaders of tomorrow in the gallery with us tonight. It's nice to look up and see some young smiling faces. That's not a reflection on anyone else in the gallery, but thank you for joining us. It's great to see you here.
A bit on over the last month. I'll run through and try and skim over what's already been said.
Open day at the Rowville Men's Shed was fantastic. Great to meet President Michael Walters, Secretary Mario Bernardi, and I think I saw Gordon there, the treasurer. Council proudly supports this fantastic facility. I did also get to have a chat to Dr Mark Glazebrook, who is the founder of the Knox Repair Cafe. They were on site at Rowville Men's Shed on Saturday, and he shared with me some metrics which I thought I'd just quickly share.
The Knox Repair Cafe, it's not only about repairing and repurposing things that break down or stop working, but also really helps with social connection and chats and coffees, and tackling loneliness and social isolation. Just this financial year to date, demand is up. They're reporting 90 per cent successful repairs across the board. They've diverted close to 900 kg of urban waste that was otherwise destined for landfill, and saved more than a tonne of carbon dioxide in the process. They're preparing to launch a new matching app to better connect people that need things repaired with the people that can do the repairs at the Knox Repair Cafe. So we had a chat about potentially looking at ways to help them get the message out about their new app. I look forward to supporting that over the journey.
Friday the 21st of March, I attended the Eastern Region Group of Councils meeting. This is a really important representative voice for Knox. There are five councils that make up the ERG, representing about 15 per cent of the population of greater Melbourne, about three quarters of a million. We talked about the advocacy platform for the upcoming election, which is actually included in tonight's agenda at item 8.3, and we were joined by Mary Doyle, MP for Aston, and Victorian Senator Lisa Darmanin at the meeting on Friday. So it was a very good discussion there.
I attended Outer East Foodshare. Incredible. I think there was about half a tonne of mince arrive in the hour or so that we were there. About a tonne of food. It was incredible. There was about 100 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts that were flying out the door. So just amazing to see them in action and seeing what they do.
We had a budget workshop on Sunday the 16th of March. The budget's on track. I think we're due to publish a draft in May, so that's coming around. I attended the opening of the Knox athletics upgrades on the 15th of March.
We had a Knox Community Safety, Health and Wellbeing Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday the 13th. That was an interesting one. We did discuss the latest crime stats for Knox as part of that meeting, with VicPol and with support of Council officers. It was no surprise to anyone in that room that crime is trending up, and in some particular categories trending much higher. Not quite at pre-COVID peaks, but certainly moving in the wrong direction. Now, you didn't really need to see the stats to know that was the case, because anyone that's been out talking to the community over the past year or so absolutely got a sense of that unease and concern around safety. And this committee, which I'm really pleased to be chairing, is really looking at the local government opportunity to look at policy and practice in meeting the police in their work around prevention.
And just a quick shout out: tomorrow morning is Coffee with a Cop at Stud Park in Rowville. It's 10:00 am at Quirky Bean Cafe. It's a great opportunity to connect with our wonderful, hardworking local police, tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.
World Day of Prayer I attended with Councillor Considine and others, and I'll just skim through. The only one I really wanted to mention specifically was the announcement on Thursday the 27th of February, feels like a long time ago now, at the Knox Historical Society, where I was pleased to represent Council. Former Mayor and Aston candidate Manny Cicchiello made an election commitment, a significant one, and Council welcomes all commitments from all candidates and members of parliament, and this was one of those. The team at the historical society do a wonderful job, a volunteer team. They maintain an impressive collection of documents, maps, photographs and artefacts, and the commitment was for some new, much-needed facilities there, and I know Council will be on board with those if they come to pass.
Councillor Lockwood mentioned the seniors event out at Swinburne Uni, that I also attended, and I think I might wrap up there. Thank you.