Youth get say in city

IN the wake of the Geelong council sacking in 2016, came the Democracy in Geelong Project.

Essentially the project delivered a citizen’s jury, made up of 100 locals who wanted a say in how any future council could be comprised and what form it should take.

The unique method of community engagement was just what a smarting municipality needed — a chance for engaged and enraged locals to have their voice heard in the hopes of having some positive effect on what had been labelled a “toxic culture”, and to ensure the mistakes of the past were not repeated.

One of the jury’s key recommendations was the establishment of a Youth Council to ensure the city’s young people also had an effective voice on any future elected council.

Last week, almost three years after the previous council’s sacking, Geelong’s first Youth Council was announced, with 15-year-old Josie Horne elected as Youth Mayor this week.

The Year 10 student has already pledged to prioritise the issues she has found most important for young people. Not surprisingly these issues don’t differ all that much to the problems front of mind of many of their older counterparts — the environment, mental health access and the improving safety in the CBD.

Something tells us Josie and her 11 fellow councillors won’t be a pushover. The passion and determination of an engaged young person can be a force to be reckoned with. And the Youth Council is being billed as no toothless tiger — they will be making recommendations to council during at least four appearances at full council meetings in 2019.

We hope and suspect that the city knows enough not to ignore all of the recommendations of this body it helped set up.

We wish Josie and her 11 fellow councillors every success in this innovative new venture. And we look forward to seeing what fresh, young minds can contribute to some of Geelong’s age-old problems.