Group says closures not financially justified

Closure of the Trafalgar shire office and Noojee library cannot be economically justified, according to the Baw Baw Shire Ratepayers and Citizens Association.

Association president Geoff Anderson addressed Baw Baw Shire’s special council meeting last Monday night to hear submissions on the draft 2014-15 budget.

Mr Anderson said the association was concerned about the closure of Baw Baw Shire’s customer service centre at Trafalgar and the Noojee library, which proposed to generate savings of $87,000 and $16,000 respectively.

“We have heard the logic for the closures, understand it and support the principle.

“If the same logic of efficiency was applied to some of the big ticket items, savings made could be significant.

“But, this is local government providing local services and if services can no longer be provided locally, it begs the question why have local government?

“Some local services cannot be economically justified, but they can be justified by the service they provide - even to small numbers of people,” he said.

Mr Anderson said the logic was fine but he would rather see council tighten some of the big ticket items.

Mr Anderson said it was “in our genes” for the ratepayers’ association to complain about the rates each year, but in this case the associations believed the 3.6 per cent rate increase was realistic.

“While we would like to see a lower, or no increase, we do appreciate the efforts taken to contain the increase.

“We are pleased to see high levels of expenditure on capital works, particularly roads infrastructure as well as funds for associated maintenance and repair.

“We are hopeful that the newly awarded road maintenance contract will see improved efficiencies in spending in this area,” Mr Anderson said.

The association also congratulated council on its staff restructuring process, saying it hoped this would be a “continuing process in the search for efficiency.”

Bruce McDonald of Coalville also raised concerns about closing the Trafalgar customer service office.

Mr McDonald said the proposed savings achieved by closing the Trafalgar office represented less than 1.5 per cent of the budgeted cash surplus of $5.18 million.

“For $80,000 surely the council could look at maintaining the Trafalgar service centre and still maintain a cash surplus.

“Year in, year out you have multi million dollar expenditure on wetlands developments but apparently you can’t find very small amounts of money to maintain services in Trafalgar,” Mr McDonald said.