GUEST SPEAKERS Michael Chesworth Acting CEO and Vito Albicini, Director Assets and Development Murrindindi Shire Council
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| Michael | Vito |
Michael kicked off with some of his earliest memories of being involved with Rotary and then described how, as he is a resident of Yea, he feels the mood and feelings about what is happening and of late, the streetscaping.
Vito came to the country and he said the advantage of working in small country towns is that it is easy to talk about what’s best for the community.
Michael and Vito, then opened up questions by starting with the most frequently asked questions about the new streetscaping.
First was how many parking spaces we have now. We used to have 236 and now we have 239. This led to a lively discussion about the need for long parking bays for caravans, bus parking for tourists and turning room for Bdoubles wanting to turn onto Station Street.
Michael mentioned that Yea would have eventually had to meet VicRoads standards and the work would have been done down the track. Everything has to have approval from VicRo-ads, then that also opens up opportunities to obtain grant money.
Several comments and suggestions were made for improvements in the future and Vito is happy to receive more. You can email him at valbicini@murrindindi.vic.gov.au
Terry raised the issue of shelters which were proposed as a Rotary project celebrating 100 years of Rotary and the meeting was advised that community consultation was a priority and if the community supported the project then planning could go ahead.
Michael told the story of receiving funding to provide more outdoor seating for diners and installing the new aluminium picnic tables in the median strip which are only temporary. Apparently there was a huge outcry from the community about the changes made to the median strip .
3 MINUTER—BOBBY DEWARBobby spoke about apprenticeships as they were when he was apprenticed as a butcher and the differences between apprenticeships then and today.
He said that not all the changes were good.
Back in his day, the apprenticeship was for 5 years and you were indentured. You passed on marks and if you failed you might have to do an extra 6 months as an ap-prentice. At the end, you could be employed and you would learn more depending on the workplace, employ-ees and knowledge passed on by others in the trade.
Changes in regulations were brought about because em-ployers didn’t want to pay award for butchers and appren-tices and this led to the classification of meat workers.
This led to the apprenticeship as a butcher being reduced to 3 years and a huge decrease in the knowledge acquired by an apprentice.
Bobby concluded by saying he has been an apprentice, learning something every day for about 57 years
ART SHOW RAFFLE
Though the Art Show is not going ahead next year, there will be a raffle and David Anderson called for volunteers to add their name to a roster to sell tickets between Saturday December 19 and January 23.
Though the Art Show is not going ahead next year, there will be a raffle and David Anderson called for volunteers to add their name to a roster to sell tickets between Saturday December 19 and January 23.
