Our Voting Report has arrived!
Dear MADRA members,
We are pleased to let you know that the Voting Report for our community consultation voting has now been completed.
With more than 1660 votes received over the four pillars and many comments added, collating and analysing the data was a huge task and we are very grateful to BRV for taking this on.
The full report is available: HERE
Voting report Introduction
The Mallacoota and District Recovery Association Inc (MADRA) committee had its first meeting in June 2020. Early on, we realised many areas of our recovery were time critical, and we needed to get moving on those things quickly.
First and foremost, people are at the heart of our recovery. Houses and infrastructure can be rebuilt - shattered lives are harder to put back together. Our immediate priorities therefore focused on mental health, wellbeing, case work support and disaster preparedness. We also needed to influence infrastructure replacement early to build back better and suitable for local conditions.
At the same time, we sought your recovery ideas. And, despite COVID-19 restrictions, you responded with enthusiasm via letter, email, phone calls and utilising our good old-fashioned suggestion boxes! We received 68 great suggestions for projects that build on our core recovery effort.
Thank you to the many members of our community who submitted ideas for our recovery, and to those who voted. We asked you to vote for several reasons:
So our community’s thoughts could be heard and shared
So we know which projects have the most support – as volunteers with limited capacity we need to know where to focus our efforts
So we could further shape the nature of projects based on your insights and comments.
We knew not all projects could be funded and some projects might be funded from the same finite ‘bucket of money’. We therefore needed to understand community priorities.
We asked you to vote on projects that had not yet commenced. Many of the projects in the Recovery Plan are already underway – either through our advocacy efforts or the hard work of community groups and individuals. So, if it looks like something is missing, it’s probably already happening.
This voting report has been put together by Bushfire Recovery Victoria. We thank them for undertaking this enormous task which comprised of analysing over 1600 votes and extracting the underpinning comments, which are important in shaping and refining project descriptions!
Every project put up for voting received a majority vote; that is, over 50% of community members who voted supported the project. Based on the results, we have incorporated all suggestions into our community-led Recovery Plan and changed the status from ‘draft’ to ‘endorsed’.
Where to next? Project implementation will depend on two things: funding availability, and project working groups. If there is a project you are passionate about, please raise your hand for a working group. Those projects which are the purview of government agencies will be pursued through them.
Of course, our recovery is ongoing – new recovery projects will emerge as will new funding schemes. This is the start of ongoing community consultation. Please continue to share your recovery ideas with the MADRA committee.
Thanks,
MADRA