| By The Editor
Passion and progress missing
ALMOST by its own admission, the City of Greater Bendigo council has produced a budget devoid of imagination, innovation, energy and inspiration.
In explaining its lack of vision, council says the budget will enable a future council to undertake major projects should it see fit to do so.
What can be made of this? After four years of developing strategy after strategy, council has admitted it does not know what to do to take the city forward.
All of the impetus Bendigo gained from council amalgamation 14 years ago has finally dissipated. The council has run out of puff.
This could have been the budget that included a new car park and a new tip, to mention just two items which, without doubt, are needed, and that even the most cautious would concede cannot be put off much longer.
Why put them off? There is no need for a council to mark time.
Council has allocated $2 million for car parking initiatives but, astonishingly, has absolutely no plan for how that money will be spent.
After having botched, and then scotched, the proposal for a new car park on the corner of Hargreaves and Edward streets, the council has thrown its hands in the air, hoped the problem would go away, or at least decided to leave it for a new lot of councillors to deal with.
Next financial year the only significant project which the current councillors have initiated and undertaken, the upgrade of Hargreaves Mall, will be finished.
If the reason for spending $5 million on this work was to encourage vastly increased patronage of the CBD, the question must be asked as to where the shoppers are going to park.
Council might imagine shoppers will ride their bikes, or the buses, but the reality is otherwise.
We live in an age when the majority of people drive cars to go shopping. A glance at the Bendigo Marketplace development should be enough to convince the council that extra car parking goes hand-in-glove with improvements to retail.
When the Hargreaves Mall was created, the present multi-storey car park was built at the same time for the very reason that the mall would not succeed without additional parking.
The same argument applies today, even more so given the growth of the municipality over the past 25 years.
By delaying the project, council is retarding the growth of business in the CBD, and the economy of the city overall, not to mention failing to honour an obligation it entered into in relation to the new Bendigo Bank office building.
Spending $3 million to cart Bendigo’s rubbish to a Melbourne tip is farcical.
After council amalgamation the commissioners purchased a square mile of land at Huntly for a new tip.
That the commissioners and every elected council since that time failed to zone the area for a tip is an indictment on the organisation as a whole, but still is no excuse for the council continuing to fail to act.
There is also a line in the budget for employment of a new staff member to advise the community about waste. Good grief!
Before amalgamation the city had a motto: ‘Progress’. In a word it summed up the aspiration of the council.
The current council has chosen ‘Living our potential’. This budget may represent the potential as seen by the present council, but we think Bendigo is capable of much, much more. What do you think?
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