LUKE Preston has entered the race to become a councillor at next months election, saying he wants to influence projects that will serve Ararat for future generations.<\/p>\n
Born and bred in Ararat, he told the Advocate this week council needs to be a mix of youth and experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no young voice on council. I moved away from Ararat for a few years and then came back home where I realised Ararat has a lot of potential. There are a big handful of things that just need a bit of a push,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some councillors who are making decisions that probably will see their lifetime out.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of my close friends are small business owners, have moved away them come back to town, we\u2019ve got two, three, four year old kids, so decisions the council makes now will affect our kids and their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Preston said council has clearly improved in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is always getting better. I think there is good and bad with everything and it is hard to keep everyone happy. But I think the council has definitely done a good job. You just need to look at the skate park, the dog park, the Gordon Street Reserve, they\u2019re definitely doing a good job but I just think it wouldn\u2019t hurt to have some younger ideas of what younger people want as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As a small business owner, Mr Preston would like to be part of a strategy to rejuvenate small business and improve Ararat\u2019s business district.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe look of the main street is terrible. There are rows of three and four shops empty with boards over them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know we are if a recession but we can\u2019t let that consume our great town and let it stop people opening businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can still push forward and the locals need to support every new and existing local business especially in our main street,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also supportive of new development around Ararat to build population and employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of locals aren\u2019t happy with certain infrastructure getting pushed ahead in town but what they don\u2019t realise is that\u2019s bringing people to town which is creating jobs. If no one moves to Ararat, those empty shops won\u2019t fill up and every year there will be more and more empty shops.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople drive up that main street heading to Halls Gap, we\u2019ve got to work out what those people want to stop for while driving through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Preston said he wants to be a voice on council for young people and families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people my age who live here with young families and we all want the same thing. A better Ararat.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LUKE Preston has entered the race to become a councillor at next months election, saying he wants to influence projects that will serve Ararat for future generations.
\nBorn and bred in Ararat, he told the Advocate this week council needs to be a mix of youth and experience.
\n\u201cThere is no young voice on council. I moved away from Ararat for a few years and then came back home where I realised Ararat has a lot of potential. There are a big handful of things that just need a bit of a push,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/IMG_7754-Copy-4-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-EK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}