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Wonthaggi highball stadium

17/2/2017

5 Comments

 
Prudent financial decision or missed opportunity? The three local (Bunurong Ward) councillors were at odds on whether the council should proceed with an application for State Government funding for a Wonthaggi highball stadium. The Post asked them to explain why they voted as they did.
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Cr Les Larke voted not to proceed with the project.

​In essence, I became aware of the request for a $2 million council co-contribution to the Wonthaggi Highball Facility at 2.45pm on Wednesday, February 15, just two or so hours prior to our council meeting.
 
At this stage, the new council is yet to develop its Council Plan, Strategic Resource Plan, Budget (Operating and Capital) and Statement/ Summary of planned capital works and agreed priorities for 2017-18 and 2018-19 and later years.
 
The Local Government Act 1989 states that Council "must implement the principles of sound financial management".
 
The proposal put before Council lacked these principles and in my view would have created undue financial risk in advance of our planning over the next few months, particularly in the light of our community engagement forums in January 2017 and the vast array of community needs and aspirations arising from those sessions.
 
During the course of my electoral campaign I committed to providing strong financial leadership and that was demonstrated last evening.
 
It should also be noted that the decision last night in no way impacts the Wonthaggi Secondary College education precinct project including highball facility funding.
 
That said, I also respect and acknowledge the considerable angst and disappointment being experienced by all basketball/highball stakeholders, and encourage their further representations in the upcoming council/community budget sessions.

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Cr Brett Tessari wanted to proceed with the application.

​I respect Cr Larke’s and Cr Brown’s position – I know we are trying to sort out our finances – but what most disappoints me is that we have missed an opportunity to grab a big slice of state money without having to match it dollar for dollar.
 
We had to put forward up to $2 million – it could have been a lot less. Now we won’t ever know because we didn’t take up the invitation. And we’ll never know how much funding we could have got.
 
The Wonthaggi Basketball Association put a lot of work into this. They are very disappointed and I share their disappointment. There is not a lot to encourage the local kids. The sports facilities throughout Bass Coast are pretty run down.
 
This was a project that could have helped build a sense of community pride in our town. And not just Wonthaggi but the whole of the shire. Kids from the island and Inverloch come to the school and would have used the stadium.
 
Families from all over our shire are off to Shepparton this week end for a basketball tournament. One mother told me the whole family is going and they are staying three nights.
 
Imagine all those families heading to our area. If we had a three-court stadium, we could hold tournaments. We would get families from all over the state staying, using our accommodation, eating in our restaurants, bringing money into our town. It would be an opportunity to increase our tourism dollar and spread right across our shire.
 
There are plans for a two to three court stadium near the YMCA but I don’t think we’ll see it in my time on the council.

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Cr Julian Brown voted against proceeding with the project.
I understand that there will be disappointment for some in relation to Council's decision on the Wonthaggi Highball Court proposal.
 
The first basic outline of the proposal was recieved by Councillors last Friday (10th)
 
It is the only Council proposal I have received so far that didn't say what the cost to residents was going to be.  There was no figure whatsoever.  The cost was literally "xxxx".
 
We didn't have a figure on Monday or on Tuesday or even Wednesdaymorning.  We received the figure at around 2:45 a few hours before starting out public meeting.
 
The question is this - would you commit millions of dollars of resident's money to a project with just a couple of hours consideration? I'm sure that some people would have.  I took the view that it would have been irresponsible for me do so with such flimsy planning and detail.
 
As for the future of highball facilities (whether they be at the future high school site or the YMCA site), my approach will be simple - work out how we are going to fund the project first and then commit to the project.  Not the other way around.

5 Comments
Chris Day
18/2/2017 10:14:06 am

Finally we have some councillors showing some common sense. Council is a business it needs to get back to the basics of providing services it's responsible for not going off into dreamland spending millions of reports that then never happen because surprise there is no funding . Yes their are many needs for our communities but normally they have to be funded whether by federal or state governments or mix of all three levels of government .
In San Remo area the council was looking to extend the town boundary and add 700 new blocks of land in addition to developments like keams land already within existing boundary. The issue was and still is how would the infrastructure cope with this expansion when it was coping with current size of town especially in tourism season.
After numerous meetings with community , hours of work 2 independent reports which council and state government approved and signed off what's happened over 5 years? Well the developments are happening land is being sold , great more rates for council . What's happened to all the recommendations for council and state government to implement , basically nothing !
When recent meeting with councillors held same issues came up only now getting worse , lot of head nodding but when is anybody going to do something about the issues affecting every resident and visitor highlighted in the report? The solutions are there but if nobody starts doing something about it , it's just going to get worse and worse as the population and visitor numbers increase. Doing nothing doesn't solve the problem .

Reply
Andy Thomas
18/2/2017 01:40:55 pm

My concern over this sorry decision is the lack of vision ,the incompetence of all involved and the fear of what is the future ? It just seems so amateurish that councillors have to vote on a proposal presented to them with no price tag until the last moment . In saying that this project has been on the radar for that many years it's not funny . Countless numbers of people have looked at the project for over 20 years yet not one group of councillors have had the intestinal fortitude to look beyond the price tag . Not one has looked at how other councils not only build these facilities but use them . We have councils in bush fire areas and flood areas using stadiums as emergency shelters , we have councils using them for flower shows ,wedding expos, tournaments for all ranges of sports .our neighbours in the south Gippsland shire at korumburra regularly use theirs for big Caberets ,music shows, big football functions etc. This is without the basketball ,volleyball, every kind of ball you could imagine being bounced ,hit thrown and the use by football clubs in the middle of winter . I accept that previous administrations have let down the people of bass coast by not building the infrastructure that is desperately needed throughout the shire . Someone has to have the guts to start building some of these projects or there are generations of people that will miss out on so much that other shires take for granted .

Reply
Lou Godfrey
20/2/2017 08:07:04 am

All councillors were briefed on Nov. 23rd. If Crs Brown and Larke were so concerned why didn't they asked for a costing back then? Where is the mention of anything to do with people or community in Browns excuses?
Cr. Larke for all of his fiscal excuses and his pursuit of financial responsibility from Council Officers, could have asked way back about costs to ratepayers. The figure that council could have gone ahead with was up to 2 Million. Until the submission was funded the local sporting bodies could have pursued other funding thus reducing councils cost. The facility would have been profitable and thus provided a return to council. Unfortunately we will never know as the blind five had no idea what was possible and a very narrow view of excuses around money instead of deferring a decision and doing some investigating. The five showed their unsuitability for a Council in need of providing for all its community.

Reply
Mandy Lean
20/2/2017 08:09:55 am

The CEO presented this funding opportunity to council on 23 November 2016.

Reply
Cr Michael Whelan
20/2/2017 12:00:33 pm

Yes we were briefed last November. We were also briefed again by the CEO the week before the Council meeting - we knew the order of magnitude but not the specific amount.
A key consideration in this, as Cr Tessari points out, is that unlike many grant rounds we were to be given the opportunity to pursue other grants money and had the prospect of substantially reducing our contribution. $2million was the outside provision we had to make and we could have withdrawn at any time.
Stage 2 of the Swimming Pool development includes a high ball stadium we will still have to find that money at that time.

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