The Mount Buller Ratepayers Association (MBRA) held their annual general meeting on 20 May.

After seven years at the helm, outgoing president, Joel Dixon has stepped down to deal with the pressures of his rapidly growing Chiropractic Clinic.

The meeting elected Ian McCall as the new president.

In his opening address to the meeting, Ian highlighted the need for the community to pull together.

“After four out of the last five years being compromised, by COVID and poor snow falls, it would be really easy to fall into a scarcity mentality and negativity.” Ian said.

“We are really fortunate and need to pull together with all the stakeholders on the mountain to make Mt Buller the premier mountain to live, work in play in the Victorian Alps”.

“I was recently invited to the Chamber of Commerce meeting – an invitation from Sox (Pilipasidis) who leads that organization,” Ian said.

“The strong message that came out of that meeting was Buller has experienced up to four out of the past five years very hard, two with COVID lockdowns, two years of poor snow, and it is time that everyone pulled and worked together.”

He said it is very easy for a whole community to start to fall into a kind of excuse city mentally under these conditions.

Taking on the role of president for the Ratepayers (stakeholders) he would like to see stronger ties between his association, the chamber and overall mountain management.

“I believe everyone should have their fair share of the pie and to do this we need to start pulling together,” he said.

“The whole community pulling together and get behind the whole Buller experience, even the ARV to meet as one and discuss how this mountain can survive those tough times.

“I understand that the ARV have a job to do and so the questions is, how can we, as a community – the residents and the businesses on the mountain get behind and help us – to be transparent and engage in that whole process,” Ian believes.

“Part of my agenda is let’s try to find a way of working together that actually Mt Buller is a winner, rather than any particular group or subset, the community trying to be the winner,” he said.

“And that’s what I am on about and I think I’ve got the relationships with the number of the key stakeholders in the community to help make that happen.”

The meeting also had presentations from Alan Arthur (general manager ARV – Mt Buller) who provided an update on works completed over the summer and Noel Landry (general manager BSL) who did a great job of dispelling some of the myths from the Buller rumor mill.

Both talked about the need for urgent progress on securing year-round pumping rights for the Boggy Creek reservoir, which Alan was hopeful would be resolved in the near future.

MBRA committee members Mark Bennetts and Chris Hollier provided updates on a range of issues.

Mark in particular spoke to the significant effort being put into the refresh of the ARV leasing policy.

Ian McCall closed the meeting by outlining priorities for the coming year, which included providing more support and services to members, and enrolling the membership in advocating on behalf of the mountain: “We all love Mt Buller, and the Mt Buller community comprises some of the most influential people in the state. We have to harness this power in support of what our mountain needs.”

BACKGROUND:

IAN McCall has been a part time resident of Mt Buller for some years now but more recently, since considering himself as semi-retired, he has taken on the role of President of the Mt Buller Ratepayers Association.

Ian and his wife Paula purchased their current Buller home back in 2009 after skiing the world for several years.

“You know we were skiers in the 80s, and then you know you get to that stage of life where you’re busy with other things and travelling the world, and so I think around 2007 we were ready to re-engage with skiing in Australia rather than overseas," he said

“My wife, Paula, works as a casual instructor with the ski school and also runs the disabled windows sports Australia up here,” Ian said.

“It is time I settled down, I have had a long career working principally in professional services – worked with a lot of larger companies around the world helping them prepare revenue growth and expansion,” Ian said of his working life.

“I did a lot of work all over the world, helping people grow to a top line in new markets – an interesting job.”