As a member of the
Denmark Bowls Club I share the disappointment and frustration reflected in the
Letters columns of Bulletin #816. The
Riverside Club project is an exciting one, the grant application to the Department
of Sport and Recreation was well developed and expectations of success were
high. To be scratched at the starter’s
gate should not have happened – but since it did, we need to understand why
this happened and what it implies for the Denmark Aquatic Centre.
Riverside wanted
Council to contribute $773,833 to the Club for the first stage of its
redevelopment (Stage 2 has not been costed).
When added to the Club’s own contribution, a grant application to the
state government’s CSRFF programme for a roughly similar amount would, if
successful, have secured the capital funds required to build a new club house
on the site of the current Denmark Bowling Club’s historic building. All councillors were obliged to be sure that
the Shire could deliver on its promise if required.
There should be no
criticism of councillors who felt unable to support the request without seeing
where it fitted in to the Community Strategic Plan (10 year time frame) and the
associated Corporate Business Plan.
According to the government’s Integrated Planning Guide, the first of
these “transforms community aspirations into local government objectives after
prioritising community objectives, determining Council priorities and
considering business cases for major initiatives. The priorities in the final plans must be of
community benefit, affordable, realistic and achievable”. Under the revised Local Government Act these
plans are required to be in place by 30 June 2013. Had they been available prior to the
September meeting, the vote may well have been at least 5/4 in favour rather
than 5/4 against.
Most of the above
applies to the Denmark Aquatic Centre.
However, there are important differences between these two
projects. DACCI’s financial plan also
depends on successful government grant applications and seeks three quarters of
a million dollars from the Shire. But it
does not compete with other projects for Royalties for Regions money – not one
dollar has been included in the plan at this stage. Instead we’ve proposed that this should come
from a Reserve Fund - as described in Bulletin #816. The proposal to save for the pool rather than
seek a handout was a conscious one made specifically to avoid competition for
capital with other worthy projects.
Of course another
significant difference between these two projects is that the Riverside
clubhouse, once built, becomes the Club’s responsibility whereas a pool calls
for user-generated revenue to be supplemented by ratepayers throughout its
operating life. For DACCI, the name of the game at present is to
show yet again that these costs can
be kept acceptable … at worst it’s a cup of coffee every two or three weeks for
the average ratepayer.
It's
understandable that Council may prefer to assist projects with no after-taste …
but it also has a responsibility to make every effort to transform reasonable community
aspirations into outcomes.
