The Snowy Monaro Stronger Communities Funding allocation is coming under criticism from key members of the former Bombala Council area.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
President of the Bombala and District Historical Society, Stuart Hood said that the Snowy Monaro Regional Council had called for people to comment on the list of projects to be undertaken by the Snowy Monaro Stronger Community funding, but said it was difficult to do without any idea of how much had been allocated to each project.
“It makes it hard to comment on the general projects that cover a wide council area without any costing allocated to it.
“Without the numbers, you’re flying blind, you don’t know where you are or how much money is available.
“It would be good to get approximate costing of projects so that you can see it in proportion,” he said.
Meanwhile former Bombala councillor, Sue Haslingden said that the Bombala Swimming Pool Advisory Committee were very disappointed that their pool cover project did not even get a mention in the priority project list.
The Bombala community identified the installation of a pool cover as a top priority back in 2015, which was again reinforced during a community meeting in October last year.
The committee have assessed and recommended that the pool cover be based on the design of the pool cover constructed by the Blue Mountains council at their Glenbrook pool.
“The committee followed protocol by delivering their submission by email and hard copy to Steve Goodyer to be presented to Snowy Monaro Regional Council at the September 2016 budget meeting in Berridale,” Ms Haslingden said.
“The pool cover was also raised as a priority at the Streetscape meeting in October, 2016 and then it disappeared,” she said.
Bombala is not the only town where residents are disgruntled about the allocation of Stronger Communities funding with president of the Delegate Progress Association, Penelope Judge urging Delegate residents to speak up.
“Delegate residents need to speak up about the Delegate projects or risk being sidelined by Bombala projects,” Ms Judge said.
“The streetscape projects have $1.2 million allocated for both Bombala and Delegate leaving $3.4 million for all the other projects.
“If the money was to be divided fairly Delegate would be entitled to about $700,000 while the total allocated to Delegate projects other than the streetscape does not exceed $200,000.
“An added problem is SMRC want to keep $800,000 for ‘general projects’ which further reduces the amount.”