Project excesses
Well done Baw Baw Shire councillors Danny Goss, Keith Cook and Michael Leaney on standing up for ratepayers when you voted against the West Gippsland Arts Centre debacle.
Although you were unsuccessful, it appears that you have several years ahead of frustration in not having enough votes to do the job we voted you in for which was fiscal responsibility.
You were out voted by the usual weak links Crs Joe Gauci, Michaela Power, Peter Kostos, Darren Wallace and Jess O,Donnell, none of who can show a valid business case for the arts centre to proceed especially after they recently spending several million dollars on an upgrade last year. When do these excesses stop?
One thing council forgot to inform the public about is what happens to all the staff currently employed in the WGAC whilst the project is undertaken as these people will have no work to do. Do they still keep getting paid for 17 months for doing nothing whilst the project is underway? Yes we want answers for this. What is the real cost to ratepayers?
So unfortunately it looks like it's going to be another three years of spending of ratepayers money on useless projects such as this and the Warragul Streetscape project where no benefit to the community can be shown for the spending of the money.
Failures have been the failed attempt at planting trees in the roadway in Queen Street, the Howitt Street tree planting. Yet again in the roadway but this time with ugly bollards, Smith St raised pedestrian crossings and narrowing the roadway creating stupid centre plantations that will require huge maintenance with street closures when the shire workers undertake maintenance
All this money wasted yet again and on top of that we will have a huge reduction in parking spaces.
The council will say we did this for road safety but again no proof that the CBD in this area had any injury collisions which warrant this ridiculous spending.
Bring in an administrator please. He or she could not be as stupid and financially irresponsible as this council. Keith Salmon, Yarragon