September 12 2017

The counting has been concluded and the results are in and following are members of the ERC.

Norm Brennan
Pat Fogarty
Ashley Hall
Peta Betts
Mac Wallace
Norm McAllister
Margaret Bull
Peter McCrabb
Nick Metcalfe

The Council is packed with experience with five ex Conargo Shire Councillors in Norm Brennan, Mac Wallace, Norm McAllister, Peter McCrabb and Nick Metcalfe

Pat Fogarty and Ashley Hall served as Deniliquin Council Councillors and Ashley Hall was also the administrator of the ERC until elections could be held this year.

Peta Betts and Margaret Bull were not part of either Deniliquin Council or Conargo Shire between 2012 and 2016, this could serve the ERC well as they will bring both a new perspective and new ideas to the table.

The election turnout was 82.07% and out of the 5,269 votes cast, 182 (3.45%) of those votes were informal and the quota for a candidate to be elected was 509.

A total of 15 counts were required to elect the Council as the predicted system of preference distributing and candidate exclusion became true.

8 of the 9 candidates were elected by reaching quota, the ninth (Nick Metcalfe) was elected as nobody else could reach his total amount of votes.

How they were elected
Norm Brennan and Pat Fogarty were elected after the first count
Ashley Hall was elected after the second count
Mac Wallace was elected after the eighth count
Norm McAllister and Margaret Bull were elected after the eleventh count
Peter McCrabb and Peta Betts were elected after the thirteenth count
Nick Metcalfe was elected after the fifteenth count

Congratulations to all elected members of the ERC and commiserations to those who were not elected, we hope that they will continue to be a voice in the community for many years to come.

The story isn’t quite over yet, a Mayor will have to be picked and based on votes Norm Brennan would have a pretty strong case then it is time to get to work as roads need smoothing, recycling needs to be reality and the many more jobs needing to be done among the many wants, needs and desires of the people of the ERC.

September 12 2017

A Community Clean Up Day has been organised to clean up the Cemetery on Sunday September 24 for the hours of 8am until 5pm.

This has come about after visitors to the graves of friends and loved ones noticed that weeds were in large numbers causing unnecessary mess in a place that is meant to be tidy in respect for the dead.

Weeding, Raking and general clean up will be part of the work done during the day.

Shovels and Rakes are advised to be brought as well as tools that can get weeds out of the ground.

Refreshments will be provided, examples of refreshments are Tea, Coffee, Slices & Cakes , a Sausage sizzle and Cold drinks thanks to many donations from Riverina Funerals, Deniliquin Friends Of The Cemetery, The Salvation Army and private donors.

The reason why the cemetery has been in a poor state is because of personnel changes and that Community Service was cancelled as they formerly kept the Cemetery in good shape.

Reminders will be posted in the daily news on DNS until the morning of the 24th.

Edit from September 16 2017:

Further details of the Working Bee can be found on the event page that has been set up to ensure that everything will be coordinated on the day and judging from past comments, a large turnout is not outside the realms of possibility.

If you are interested in being part of the working bee, please visit the event page and indicate your attendance by clicking/pressing on ‘Going’.

September 12 2017

Local gamer ‘Belcat‘ has recently received his 1,000th stream view on his Twitch Channel.

Earlier this week, DNS decided to watch him play Rainbow Six: Siege and he was helped by an international cast of gamers as he got the hang of the game.

Rainbow Six: Siege is a game where you get to play as a member of some of the elite Police squads and other organizations and you play in a variety of scenarios such as storming a house or an aircraft.

Belcat plays a wide range of games and viewers can watch almost every second night and hopefully he will continue to gain viewers locally and from other place and build up his gaming reputation.

September 11 2017

The wait continues on election results as there has been no news for over 24 hours.

We’ve taken a look at an AEC video and the way our Council is being voted in is pretty much the same way a Senator gets elected.

Last report we talked about quotas and that Norm Brennan had 515 votes over the current progressive quota of 509 and we said that those 515 votes go to whoever all those voters, it is actually more complicated than that.

Readers may wonder why we mention Norm a lot, it is because he is the only candidate well above the quota to use as an example.

Now assuming all the first preferences votes have been counted and the quota is finalized as 509, there is a bit of mathematics involved to the next step.

Now you’re wondering how on Earth do they pick 515 ballot papers from the 1,024? To put simply they don’t.

They have to look at all of Norm’s 1,024 first preference votes and first find out who is preference #2 for all 1,024 ballot papers.

Here is where it gets tricky, preference #2 doesn’t get a full vote, they only get a fraction of the vote which is called a transfer vote.

First off to figure out a value of the transfer votes, you got to divide the number of surplus votes (515) Norm has by the total of Norm’s total votes (1,024).

So 515 divided by 1024 is 0.5029296875.

Next we’ll say Mac Wallace was listed as #2 preference 140 times, it will be 140 x 0.5029296875 and that will give Mac a voting boost of 70 votes plus decimal places which would still be too short to get him over the line.

The rules actually have it that the numbers stop four places after the decimal point but still makes things complicated.

But wait there’s more,What if there are not nine people with 509 or more votes?  The candidate with the least amount of votes is excluded and his or her votes gets distributed just like Norm’s (but less complicated) and the process of exclusion and transfer is repeated until all the candidates, except the number required to be elected, have been excluded.

After all that is done, the continuing candidates who have not already been elected are elected.

Hopefully all the above makes sense because there is a lot of terms involved, however Local Government (General) Regulation 2005 provides the answers in great detail, to find the details go to Schedule 5 and read from there.

A line from Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’ sums things up pretty nicely when it comes to the election process………’Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?’.

September 10 2017

The counting for the election goes on though it is very clear Norm Brennan has been the most popular candidate of choice for voters as he has double the votes as the next candidate.

The other eight positions are not as clear cut though Pat Fogarty and Ashley Hall are pretty good odds of being locks two and three as Pat Fogarty is just above quota and Ashley Hall is just a little below.

So far the election site says the quota is 509 vote and if we have read the rules right, once somebody gets past the quota the vote counters give the above quota votes to the candidate listed by the individual voters as preference number two.

Right now the quota is progressive as the formal vote total is still unknown, once all formal votes are tallied, a target is set.

There is the possibility that when the dust settles the ERC could comprise of the following

2 x Deniliquin Council 2012 Councillors (Fogarty and Hall)
5 x Conargo Shire 2012 Councillors (Brennan, Metcalfe, McAllister, McCrabb and Wallace)
2 x Not from the above two (Betts and Bull)

Another possibility is 2 DC, 2 CS and 3 not from the previous councils.

Candidates like Rob Sobolewski, James Sides and Peter Connell may have great luck outside first preference and sneak into the Top 9, they are in range of the candidates running 6th to 9th.

Stay tuned readers, we’ll find out by Tuesday.