Winter is here

Winter is here Winter is certainly upon us and many would argue winter brings out Melbourne’s best. In my opinion, Melbourne has a real charm and eloquence about her that is certainly unrivalled to any other city in Australia. A good time to enjoy the many shows the arts institutions will be presenting right here in our backyard. Firstly, I would like to congratulate our new representative from the Labor party Josh Burns for his success at winning the seat of Macnamara following the retirement of Michael Danby, who held the seat since 1998 representing us for some 21 years. I would like to extend a big thank you to Michael for his commitment to serving the community during this time and wish him all the best with his retirement. Josh represented the party well at our Meet the Candidates event in April and wasn’t afraid to answer the tricky questions. But without his government being in power, I am not sure how far his reach can go. In any case, Southbank Residents’ Association is looking forward to engaging with him during his term. Commiserations to Steph Hodgins-May, representing the Greens, and Kate Ashmor from the Liberal party. They both put in a great effort and certainly held Josh to account for his comments. How exciting is Boyd Park! The basketball courts are now open and certainly being used and the community garden is established and taking shape, thanks to the Southbank Sustainability Group. The development is obvious in its progress and one can see it beginning to take shape. But what is more exciting is that it is on time! We are hoping to arrange a launch event sometime in spring. Our committee also met with the project managers for the City Rd upgrade and we are excited to learn we will begin to see some tangible works in the coming months particularly focusing on the parks around the City Road tram stop and the Kings Way undercroft. This is just a small part of the whole City Rd upgrade, but considering we have been fighting for many years for this to commence it will be interesting to see just how much will make it into the 2019/20 budget. We will be scrutinising the budget over this month, as we always do, and will make any representations where we think are necessary. It hasn’t been uncommon for Southbank Residents’ Association to have some budgets wins in years gone by. Finally, it is approaching that time of year and SRA will be holding its AGM in July. As usual, we will be voting in a new committee. I intend to nominate to remain on the committee, along with a few of our current committee, but I am hoping a few of our community might like to also offer to join and assist us with representing the interests of our residents. If you are interested and would like to find out more, please contact me at [email protected] Tony Penna - President