A SKATE park in Kangaroo Flat remains just an idea, with no money for the long-running project included in the City of Greater Bendigo’s new budget.<\/p>\n
But the suburb’s leading community group, the Kangaroo Flat Community Enterprise, is determined to continue the push for a park.<\/p>\n
KFCE chair Geoff Bowyer has questioned the city’s priorities in allocating capital works funding.<\/p>\n
“We’re not here to criticise council per se, just to question its priorities,” Mr Bowyer said.<\/p>\n
“We will take a greater role in advocacy going forward when it comes to capital works projects.”<\/p>\n
In 2017, the city agreed that a skate park was needed and even produced a final concept design in 2022, following community consultation. But since then, it has remained unfunded.<\/p>\n
A statement from the City said the project was considered as part of budget deliberations for 2024 to 2025.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, the number of projects competing for funding through the budget process is always over-subscribed with more projects than budget available,” it said.<\/p>\n
“The skate park remains an important project for Kangaroo Flat and will be considered in future budgets as funding becomes available.”<\/p>\n
But Mr Bowyer said a skate park was arguably a far greater priority than some other projects that received funding for this financial year.<\/p>\n
He said a storage shed at the Gurri Wanyarra Wellbeing Centre, renewal of the sky lounge at Bendigo Stadium, renewal work at the Kangaroo Flat library and an upgrade to a caretaker’s cottage at the Bendigo Gas Works site were examples of projects to receive funding ahead of the skate park proposal.<\/p>\n
Mr Bowyer argued that a skate park was more worthy than any of these.<\/p>\n
He said he was confident most people would agree “the need for a skate park is overwhelmingly greater” than upgrades at the library.<\/p>\n
“And a miniscule number of people would even know there is a caretaker cottage (at the Gas Works),” he said.<\/p>\n
“We can’t just snap our fingers as a community and expect facilities to be magically built, but when something dates back to 2017…<\/p>\n
“A skate park is an essential and urgent priority for the youth of Kangaroo Flat and we’ll certainly be advocating for that.<\/p>\n
“We’ll have to have greater dialog with the new councillors that are coming in at the elections in October.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A SKATE park in Kangaroo Flat remains just an idea, with no money for the long-running project included in the City of Greater Bendigo’s new budget. But the suburb’s leading community group, the Kangaroo Flat Community Enterprise, is determined to continue the push for a park. KFCE chair Geoff Bowyer has questioned the city’s priorities […]<\/p>\n