July 2025 Oberon Council Meeting

July 17, 2025
Updated July 26 and August 21, 2025

The July meeting of Oberon Council was rather uneventful, as evidenced by the fact that it ran for only just over two hours.

Four matters attracted Oberon Matters' attention.

Closed Circuit TV

Following a period of community consultation, Council resolved to update its CCTV policy. Something like this will inevitably raise security and privacy issues, and you can see the concerns submitted as part of the consultation process here.

Street furniture

Despite what you might think, the term "street furniture" doesn't mean seats and flower beds, it means the things that businesses put outside their shops to advertise their products or to make things easier for customers - think advertising sandwich boards, racks of clothing or items on special sale or tables and chairs for café customers.

A decision was made to defer discussion on this matter until there was clarification of the effect on local businesses that currently display things on the footpaths outside their premises.

Meteorological research mast

Another Development Application for a wind speed measuring mast, opposed for the usual reasons and approved for the usual reasons. As Council had already wasted time (and money for legal advice) about a similar DA, this should have been a matter for the rubber stamp. People objecting seemed to be confusing these masts with wind power turbines, but one wonders if they ever felt threatened by the tall masts used to transmit AM radio broadcasts. (The tower that used to broadcast 2BS was recently demolished after annoying nobody for many years.) 

Communication Working Party

This matter directly concerns Oberon Matters and our relationship with the Council. It seems that the experiment of having a paper based in Portland which provides 3-4 pages of news about Oberon every fortnight (with 28 pages of news from other towns) has not been as successful as was hoped. Apparently, a digital news service isn't enough because there are people who have no Internet service, but the remarkable suggestion was made that if a printed newsletter were to be introduced it could be sent to these people by email.

Oberon Matters will just have to keep telling the news to the large proportion of the LGA population who drop in to the web site every month, without the support of Oberon Council.

You can see the agenda for the meeting here (223 pages)

See the recording of the meeting here (2:03:36)

The minutes of the meeting can be seen here

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