The health and wellbeing of our community is paramount. As we face the biggest public health challenge of our time, I want to reassure you that looking after our community is at the heart of all our decision-making. The City of Melbourne is committed to supporting all residents and businesses by delivering essential services and helping combat the spread of COVID-19. Every Councillor and City of Melbourne staff member is committed to doing whatever we can to help our community get through this unprecedented time. We have established a COVID-19 Taskforce to implement the advice and actions from the Victorian Government and the National Cabinet for COVID-19 across our operations. We know this is a stressful time – so ensuring we continue to deliver for the community and look after those most at-risk has never been more important. You can count on us to continue to deliver services such as waste and recycling; support for the elderly, isolated and at-risk; children’s services; homelessness services and animal management. It’s what we’re here to do, and we won’t let you down. We’re continuing to deliver meals and in-home support services to frail older people. More than 600 people rely on these support services. While we must adhere to the most up-to-date health advice, I urge all Melburnians to support each other and our business community. The measures taken to slow the spread of the virus are hitting our local economy hard. Without our ongoing support many businesses will be forced to close and locals will lose their jobs. About 80 per cent of our city’s 16,000 businesses are small businesses. These are sole operators, family operations and small firms with just a few employees. Real people are being severely impacted. The City of Melbourne is doing what we can. We have announced … Continue reading Lord Mayor’s message, April 2020