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Speaker 1: Heather Duple see Allen eighteen past five. Now listen, it

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Speaker 1: looks like there might be a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: backdown coming on the living burms saga. You'll remember this.

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Speaker 1: The council stopped mowing the berms back in July because

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Speaker 1: they wanted to save some money. And then naturally there

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Speaker 1: was an outcry from residents, and then yesterday the council

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Speaker 1: voted to have another look at whether they make the

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Speaker 1: right call. Bernie London is the mayor of Hatera Fenwa

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Speaker 1: is with us.

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Speaker 2: Now, Hey, Bernie, good afternoon, Heather.

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Speaker 1: What's the problem? Is it a good idea in winter,

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Speaker 1: bad idea in spring once the grass starts growing.

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Speaker 2: Look, we're just wanting to understand what the impacts of

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Speaker 2: cutting cutting out the service it means. It does not

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Speaker 2: mean that we are going to flip flop. All it

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Speaker 2: means is that we want to understand what has happened

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Speaker 2: since we stopped mowing burns. As you can understand, there

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Speaker 2: are some people that are a bit put it out

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Speaker 2: by it all, but and so we just want to

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Speaker 2: understand what's going on.

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Speaker 1: Is the town starting to look a little rough?

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Speaker 2: Look in petches, Yes it is. There's been some good

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Speaker 2: raying lately and a bit of warmth. So the booms

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Speaker 2: are growing. Is this, but we're also seeing.

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Speaker 1: But boodie, is this in parts of town where people

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Speaker 1: like are not mowing the booms? Is that what's up?

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Speaker 1: Some parts are nice, yeah, Lottle are making it efft

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Speaker 1: and other parts are not so nice.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. It is that case. And look, we've

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Speaker 2: got towns in villages, especially Fox and Shannon, where they

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Speaker 2: have very big booms, and that has causing some issues,

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Speaker 2: especially with some of those that aren't physically able or

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Speaker 2: don't have the capacity to be able to mow their booms.

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Speaker 2: So look, we just want to understand those issues and

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Speaker 2: try and I suppose work out a plan that we

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Speaker 2: may be able to accommodate that.

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Speaker 1: Is this also a case of people only really realizing

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Speaker 1: what's happening once it's happening, Like they didn't know beforehand

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Speaker 1: before you guys made this decision that this was on

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Speaker 1: the cards, but once it started to kind of get

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Speaker 1: a bit of traction in the media, they got upset.

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Speaker 1: Is that what happened exactly?

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Speaker 2: So this was part of our cost saving measures put

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Speaker 2: into our long term plan. Yeah, we had eighty eight

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Speaker 2: percent of the people that responded to our long term

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Speaker 2: plan tick the box where they said that they wanted

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Speaker 2: those savings to be made. Of course, now that we've

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Speaker 2: seen the impact of that, they're kicking up a fuss.

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Speaker 1: Now, Bernie, how do we get around this right? Because

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Speaker 1: what the speaks to is the lack of engagement in

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Speaker 1: local government just by your average ratepayers. So do you

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Speaker 1: guys need to make more of an effort to get

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Speaker 1: it out there what you're planning to do before you

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Speaker 1: do it?

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Speaker 2: Well, we try our best, Honestly, We've had more public

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Speaker 2: engagement and more meetings, Facebook live, post, the whole lot,

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Speaker 2: you know. I mean, we try our best to engage

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Speaker 2: with the community as best we can. Obviously, with a

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Speaker 2: long term plan there's a probably thirty issues that they

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Speaker 2: need to deal with and this one may have fallen

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Speaker 2: through the cracks and people not understood exactly what was

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Speaker 2: going on.

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Speaker 1: All right, Bernie Hayt's good to talk to you, mate,

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Speaker 1: Thank you very much, appreciate it. It's Bernnie Wondon what if?

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Speaker 1: And it was mare? For more from Heather Duples Drive

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