With the Maitland Local Government elections coming up the ratepayer and voter members of Maitland Business and Professional Women (Maitland BPW) remain firmly fixed on the issues of fundamental importance to our community.

At council’s meeting on June 24 – responding to calls for feedback in relation to the Community Strategic Plan-– Maitland BPW queried council’s community consultation and feedback policies and asked whether council would commit to the development of an assets register that includes social capital, human and community services.

We wanted to ensure that planning decisions address whether or not proposed developments add to or detract from those assets. We highlighted our concern for our social and environmental capital, our concern for the children as young as 10 sleeping on our streets, and our concern for Maitland's high levels of social disadvantage, domestic violence and lower than average education levels.

Council agreed that "....any planning decision has the potential to affect social capital and human and community assets", but went on to say that "... council's approach to consultation and feedback is both comprehensive and financially reponsible" and that "council's current suite of strategies is appropriate to the issues raised" by our suggestion for an assets register.

Now fast forward to the Mercury article "Suburb 'needs a voice" (July 17) where one councillor is calling for the community to be better informed, for a community consultation group to keep the community updated and for reinstatement of the consultation that was in place when the master planning process for Thornton North began.

He correctly points out that not everyone sees council community information distributed through the administration building, libraries and newspaper advertising. Surely this supports Maitland BPW's view.

Some people can be distracted by short-term political clap-trap, and others by the Matt Dixon "issue", but Maitland BPW is and will remain focused on issues of real importance to our community. Things like social and community services; like environmental concerns; like the partially implemented crime prevention plan; like the implementation of the September 2005 Department of Local Government Review Report recommendations; like the funding, likely motives and policies of political candidates; like assessing the performance of our current elected representatives and the individual contributions they have made to advancing community interests.

If we want outcomes that benefit the community then all of us, as its members, need to do the same.