End of days for Tidy Town group

KIAMA"S Tidy Towns Committee is set to be replaced with another council initiative, the Kiama Sustainability Project Group.

Former committee chairman Les Davey said while he is sad to see the Tidy Towns projects laid to rest, he thinks the council is moving in the right direction.

"I believe we have to change and look to the future," said Mr Davey, also a former councillor and Deputy Mayor.

"You have to move with the times."

The committee was a council initiative and consisted of council and community representatives.

Mr Davey was a founding member of the Tidy Towns Committee in 1987 and became chairman after the original chair, Paul Gale, retired. The third and final chairman was the late Robert East.

The committee"s achievements that Mr Davey said he thought were the most significant were the Model Town 2000 plan, the Plastics in the Sea and Clean Beach programs and the street of the month and year competitions.

"The Model Town 2000 was started in the early 1990s and was a plan to take out the state and national Tidy Town awards by 2000," he said. "The planning through council and the support of the community was such that we actually took out those awards in 1995."