Interview CEO South Gippsland April 28th, 2020-part 2
Municipal Office Confirmation

In the second half of last year the officers briefed the administrators on the Leongatha Community Hub and the Council Offices-site options and costs analysis. The budget approved in July 2019 confirmed the allocated spending for the library at $105,062 for 2019-2020, $1373,036 in 2020-2021, and $1407,362 in 2021-2022.
The same amounts were also put in for Office Refurbishment Stage 1-exactly the same amounts for each of the three years. These amounts and the line item for the Office Refurbishment did not appear in the proposed budget put out for consultation in the s223 process in March 2019. This line item was not seen until a week after the Councillors were dismissed when the officers brought to the administrators the final proposed budget 2019-2020.

The public were not given any opportunity to review this during the s223 process. An amount of spending of $2.9 Million. With the changes made to the 15 year capital works costs in this years budget (see interview-part 5) now no longer visible it is not known how much or when this project will be expended and of course, people will still have no idea it exists unless they look up last year’s budget papers-its not shown in this one.

I asked Kerryn about the Municipal Office Precinct.

“How are the plans for the municipal office precinct progressing and when do you expect to start work on that?”

“They are not progressing the only thing that’s in the proposed budget for next year is a traffic study in the Leongatha business area. I suppose for want of a better term and that’s work that needed to be done anyway just to ensure that traffic is managed appropriately around that central business area of Leongatha. There’s no other funding in the next year’s proposed budget”

“So, I am not sure if you misspoke, a traffic study? I thought that was done a few years ago but I am aware that they are planning to do a location study for the precinct”

“Yeah that’s not funded or proposed in next year’s budget so I can’t comment on any of that commencing it’s not proposed to commence within the next year or couple of years it’s not in the budget”

“OK but I thought there was in this current year’s budget a proposal to fund the investigation of the location.”

“No there’s not. There was discussion about that and it may have I’ll confirm this for you it may have even been in the first version of the proposed budget that was developed but post covid you would be aware that the council made the decision to delay the budget a month and that work around the feasibility I think might be I think we’re talking about the same thing the feasibility study for a hub in Leongatha, that’s no longer in the budget and that’s part of what was removed to fund the community support package”