Groups wants to talk about City spending

A COMMUNITY meeting aimed at discussing how public money is being spent by the City of Ballarat is set to be held later this month.

The open event is being organised by members of the Ballarat Residents and Ratepayers Association and will take place at the Bunch of Grapes Hotel on Sunday 25 June at 2pm.

BRRA president Bruce Crawford said it’ll be a chance to get the community’s take on how the municipality budgets cash.

“It’ll be a talk about how our rates and public money is being used and about the people behind those decisions in Ballarat,” he said.

“We want to get some feedback from the community. I believe there was a council meeting last Wednesday and I find those things are usually sanitised and set in a direction they’re after.

“We’re throwing this open to everyone because council know the answers they’re looking for and they’ve got those meetings set up for it.”

Although particular talking points are yet to be confirmed, Mr Crawford said he has a few agenda items he’d like to see discussed.

“There’s money being spent on bike paths. Where’s the consultation been? There’s money gone missing that hasn’t been properly accounted for, as far as $900,000 reported a few years ago” he said.

“We’ve got bin taxes going on, the rate capping is being whacked up by 3.5 per cent.”

The agenda will be presented by Mr Crawford and other BRRA members after which the forum will be opened to attendees.

With about 40 members, Mr Crawford said he also hopes to see some new recruits out of the event.

“We’re fishing,” he said. “We want to make ourselves known. Certainly, to be effective we’d like to have more people on board.

“All these community groups in Ballarat have got single issues but we all have common ground on certain things which is where we can pool our resources.”