With one week left for residents to have their say in the Future Orange community conversation, a number of key trends are emerging.
According to an online survey, the top 'challenges' facing the Orange community in the coming years are:
CHALLENGES: A lack of social housing in Orange and 'housing affordability' emerge as key topics of community concern.
- Lack of social and affordable housing
- Problems surrounding poverty and social equity
- Lack of recreational options, and
- Giving a priority to the environment, employment growth and the business community
Since November last year Orange City Council has been running a wide-ranging conversation with the community to produce a Community Strategic Plan (CSP), a blue-print to guide the
Council's work for our city's next ten years.
The online survey takes around 7 mins and can be completed now at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FutureOrange1
The deadline for the online survey is Sunday 6 March.
To complement the online engagement on YourSay Orange, last week a string of face-to-face events were held, asking:
- What do you love about Orange now?
- How could it be better and what would you change?
- What would you like Orange to be like in ten years' time?
With one week left to run, Orange Mayor Cr Jason Hamling is encouraging anyone who has not joined in so far to complete a simple online survey.
"I'm delighted that hundreds of people have been a part of this community conversation either online or face-to-face. It shows how enthusiastic and committed our residents are
towards building a better community," Cr Hamling said.
"The Orange community has strong community values. I think that's why we're hearing concerns about social injustice. Working towards making Orange a fairer place to live is something we could push for state and federal government to address, but there could also be steps that a local council could take.
"There's some interesting trends around more diverse recreational options. It's interesting to hear that while many people really like the Aquatic Centre, they want to see an expansion of what's on offer there to make room for people to simply play and have fun in the water."
"They love the Anzac Park indoor sports stadium, but they want to see it expanded, or another indoor, all-year-round space for a playground or a climbing wall or other recreation
that's not organised sport. It's about more diversity."
"It's important to hear a wide spectrum of views from across the community. It's interesting that two-thirds of the people who've completed the survey so far are women. It would be
good to hear from more men. It would be good to hear from more locals who are aged under 25."
