2025 Disaster Reconstruction Funding Arrangements - Emergency Reconstruction Works For The Noosa Council Road And Infrastructure Network

Frank Wilkie0:00

Well good afternoon and welcome everybody to the Special Meeting on Wednesday the 21st of May 2025. Declare the meeting open at 1pm. We're here today to discuss the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements, Emergency Reconstruction Works for the Noosa Council Road and Infrastructure Network. Begin by acknowledging that we're meeting lands of the Kabi Kabi people. I'd also like to reiterate their invitation for us to join them as joint custodians in respecting and caring for this place that we all love and respecting and caring for each other. I notice that all Councillors are in attendance. We have Councillor Nicola Wilson, Tom Wegener, Brian Stockwell, Amelia and we have Councillors Jessica Phillips and Karen Finzel online. We have Director Infrastructure Services, Shaun Walsh, and Disaster Reconstruction Coordinator, Julie Calvert, here for this report. Would you care to the give us a summary of this report, please?

Certainly. As a result of the, sorry, good afternoon, everybody. As a result of some poor weather conditions experienced post-tropical Cyclone Alfred, but late March. There has been some damage sustained within the asset network of the Shire, mostly around gravel roads and asphalt roads. And then there's a few larger sites. Today, I just want to focus on the most immediate actions we need to undertake. The damage that was sustained is significant enough for us to engage Queensland Reconstruction Authority and activate with them and start progressing a grant program called the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. And that gives us recourse to be recourse to be able to start emergency repairs of roads so that they can be safe and trafficable for the community. Today we wanted to propose to Council to allow us to expedite that process for a couple of different reasons. The roads are in not a great state we do want to keep the community safe. By improving that. We have a deadline from a funding arrangement for those grant programs, which is 90 days from the date of the event, so we're targeting to achieve all of those. Typically this would be some work that we would undertake using some Council resources but unfortunately at the moment we don't have all those Council resources to available for us to do this so the team has been progressing a project to outsource that work contractors who can undertake that work. So today I just wanted to walk you through that background answer any questions that you may have about why we want to expedite it and how we plan to expedite it. What is the funding source? So the funding source is part of a Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements where we have assets in the community that are classified as essential assets they're eligible for Reconstruction of Essential Public Assets under a particular program. That is about emergency works. So these are the works that need to happen in the period most frequent post the event that's occurred that 90 days and it's about us making things safe until we can do more work if is required if more work is required. So an example that I can provide here is that Middle Creek Road in Federal had a culvert, had washover, severe asphalt scouring. We need to fix that scouring on that particular road but that's just the first work. Further down, we'll look to work with QRA to get some funding submissions approved to do some further work to repair that whole culvert system as well. So some of it will be minor works, we'll just grade the road and tidy it up and then we'll go back to general maintenance. Some of it will be grading and it if determining needs further work that goes into a more broader submission with Queensland Reconstruction Authority.