Brisbane City Council

The Brisbane City Council is the governing council for Brisbane, which is the capital of Queensland, Australia. Unlike councils in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, where the local councils are generally responsible for relatively small areas of those cities, the Brisbane City Council administers the larger part of the Brisbane metropolitan area and has a larger population than any other Local Government Area in Australia.

The Council is the combination of the local cities, towns and shires that merged together in 1924 (see history section). The main offices and Central Library for the Council are at 266 George Street also known as Brisbane Square. The Brisbane City Hall houses the Council Chamber, the offices of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Mayor, the Council Chamber, meeting and reception rooms and the Museum of Brisbane.

1 History
2 Structure
3 Heraldry
4 Wards
5 Sister cities
6 External links

[edit] History

Brisbane City Council was formed in 1925 from a forced amalgamation of twenty smaller councils. These councils were:

Cities:
- Brisbane
- South Brisbane

Towns:
- Hamilton
- Ithaca
- Sandgate
- Toowong
- Windsor
- Wynnum

Shires:
- Balmoral
- Belmont
- Coorparoo
- Enoggera
- Kedron
- Moggill
- Sherwood
- Stephens
- Taringa
- Tingalpa
- Toombul
- Yeerongpilly

The City Council also took over the responsibilities for several quasi-autonomous government authorities, for example the Brisbane Tramways Trust.

[edit] Structure

Brisbane City Council has an unusual structure with power divided between a powerful executive Lord Mayor, a parliamentary-style council of twenty-six councillors representing single-member wards of approximately 23,000 voters, and a Civic Cabinet comprising the Lord Mayor and the chairpersons of the seven standing committees drawn from the membership of Council. The seven standing committees are:

Community Services Committee
Environment and Sustainability Committee
Finance Committee
Public Transport Committee
Roads, TransApex and Traffic Committee
Urban Planning and Economic Development Committee
Water and City Businesses Committee

The council also owns three business units which are city-owned enterprises managed on commercial lines:

Brisbane CityWorks
Brisbane Transport
Brisbane Water

The Brisbane City Council also used to own the QEII Stadium (also known as ANZ Stadium, home of the 1982 Commonwealth Games), before it was handed over to the Queensland Government's Major Sporting Facility Authority (MSFA), which operates Suncorp Stadium, the Gabba, Dairy Farmers Stadium, ANZ Stadium and the soon-to-be built Robina Stadium.

Seventeen councillors are members of the Australian Labor Party while nine councillors and the Lord Mayor are from the Liberal Party. The current Lord Mayor of Brisbane is former civil engineer Campbell Newman who belongs to the Liberal Party and who is only the second Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane. The current Deputy Lord Mayor and the Majority Leader of Council is David Hinchliffe, who belongs to the Labor Party. The day-to-day management of Council's operations is the responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer who is currently Jude Munro.

Elections are held every four years with ballots for the Lord Mayoralty and the individual councillors being held simultaneously. Voting is compulsory for all eligible electors. The most recent election in March 2004 resulted in the unusual situation of a Liberal Lord Mayor co-existing with a Labor majority on Council, resulting in remarkably few conflicts over civic budgets and Council policy.

The Brisbane City Council and its unique structure is incorporated under the City of Brisbane Act 1924, while other local governments in Queensland are bound by the Local Government Act 1993.

Council meetings are held at Brisbane City Hall every Tuesday at 2pm except during recess and holiday periods. Meetings are generally open to the public.

[edit] Heraldry

Coat of arms of Brisbane City Council

The motto of Brisbane City Council is Meliora sequimur, Latin for We aim for the best. Its corporate slogan is Dedicated to a better Brisbane. The city's colours are blue and gold. Its corporate logo was introduced in 1982 in preparation for the Commonwealth Games hosted in Brisbane that year. It features a stylised version of Brisbane's City Hall which opened in 1930. The city's floral emblem is the poinsettia and its faunal emblem is the Graceful Tree Frog.

[edit] Wards

As of December 2006, the twenty-six wards, their councillors and their party affiliations are:

Ward	Councillor	Party
Acacia Ridge	Kevin Bianchi	Labor
Bracken Ridge	Carol Cashman	Liberal
Central	David Hinchliffe	Labor
Chandler	Adrian Schrinner (due to by-election)	Liberal
Deagon	Victoria Newton	Labor
Doboy	John H. Campbell	Labor
Dutton Park	Helen Abrahams	Labor
East Brisbane	Catherine Bermingham	Labor
Enoggera	Ann Bennison	Labor
Grange	Maureen Hayes	Labor
Hamilton	David McLachlan (due to by-election)	Liberal
Holland Park	Kerry Rea	Labor
Jamboree	Felicity Farmer	Labor
Marchant	Faith Hopkins	Labor
McDowall	Norm Wyndham	Liberal
Moorooka	Steve Griffiths	Labor
Morningside	Shayne Sutton	Labor
Northgate	Kim Flesser	Labor
Pullenvale	Margaret de Wit	Liberal
Richlands	Les Bryant	Labor
Runcorn	Gail MacPherson	Labor
The Gap	Geraldine Knapp	Liberal
Toowong	Judy Magub	Liberal
Walter Taylor	Jane Prentice	Liberal
Wishart	Graham Quirk	Liberal
Wynnum Manly	Peter Cumming	Labor