Draft Budget Review: Community Presentation Highlights

Over 90 people attended the draft budget community presentation meeting on the 16 June 2015.

Not surprising the Mayor did not attend, and as usual Cr Lake loves control and chaired the meeting.

In addition to the summary of our submission Presenters’ issues concern:

• Unaffordable rate rise above CPI for pensioners and low income residents/ratepayers
• Community groups advocating for updates to council owned infrastructure amenities that they used. The largest group was the Waverley Gymnastics, who was appealing to Council to allocate $2 mio to update facilities
• The high differential rate imposed on Highvale retirement village residents.

Surprisingly, Cr Lake allows a non-resident/ratepayer to present her case for seeking the $2 million for the Waverley Gymnastics. It appears Council is discretionary or discriminatory and sending mix messages about its compliance to local laws regarding the exclusion of non residents / ratepayers to speak/present during official meetings. That says a lot about the integrity and quality level of good governance exercise in Monash Council.

Wow, we even had some interactive Q&A – amazing? We asked Council what is its priority setting criteria for deciding which community club and assets renewal areas to fund in next year’s budget. The “on the fly” answer from Cr Lake is that the criteria is based on some rankings of one or more strategic direction/s in the Council plan – good bluff/fluff.

Only two Councillors interacted in the Q&A, Cr Lake and Davies, the others said nothing – maybe financial literacy is a barrier?

Anyway, we follow up with a email correspondence to the Councilors forming the budget review committee, or something like that, and see what transpire from it. keep our expectations low so that any response can be a elated experience?