Moorabool Shire has its challenges, but its new mayor said he plans to work with all levels of government, and neighbours like the City of Ballarat, to get on top of them.
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Councillors elected David Edwards as mayor for the next 12 months in Ballan on Wednesday night.
He previously served as mayor in 2016-17, and will be the final mayor for the current four-year term.
"Last time I was mayor was the first year of council, and our role was setting standards and ensuring the governance frameworks were in place," he said.
"We now have a mature council, all of them have experience, they understand the system, so this year's about consolidating what we stand for."
Councillors decided against electing a deputy mayor - Cr Edwards joked he now had five skilled deputies to support him instead.
He takes over the role from Cr Paul Tatchell, who advocated strongly to improve infrastructure in the region.
Cr Edwards said he will use his existing relationships to continue that work, and help businesses create more jobs.
"The reality is that Moorabool's one of the fastest growing shires in Victoria," he said.
"Coming from metropolitan Melbourne, there's huge amounts of population going through to regional cities, but it's the area between people tend to forget about.
"More and more people are moving to peri-urban areas, because it's close, and it's affordable.
"Look at Bacchus Marsh, it's 52 kilometres from Melbourne's CBD, and if you go to the other side (of the city), you're in Cranbourne, that's absolutely an urban area."
However, there's parts of Moorabool Shire that urgently need drastic infrastructure improvements - Cr Edwards pointed to the extensive road network which needs maintaining, and towns like Gordon and Bungaree that are without a proper sewerage network.
"We're coming into 2020 and you don't have sewerage 10 kilometres outside of major regional cities, it's just not good enough," he said.
"It's about advocating strongly and building on relationships I've built with state and federal governments, because at the end of the day, they're our key partners."
Building this infrastructure now will help support the rapid growth, he said - and hopefully keep jobs in the region long-term.
New initiatives like the Parwan Employment Zone and upgrades in Ballan will help this, he added.
"80 per cent of our population travels outside of the shire for work, and that could be two hours travel on the road," he said.
"We need to create jobs in Moorabool, we need to get traffic coming back the other way."
In other Moorabool Shire Council news, nominations have closed for the postal election to replace Cr Pat Toohey, who passed away in September.
Voting packs will be sent out to Woodlands Ward residents from November 26.
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