FAMILY FAILURE: City’s spending priorities under fire from women’s group

A GEELONG union says women and families will be unfairly affected by the City of Greater Geelong’s draft budget as criticism continues to mount at cuts to library services and its Community Life portfolio.

Geelong Women Unionists Network (GWUN) members were among the large crowd of protesters at the city’s meeting last week, which was primarily focused on a funding dispute between the city and the Geelong Regional Library Corporation.

GWUN also highlighted a previously announced changes to staff resources for the community services as contributing to what it called a “gendered” city budget.

“Women primarily work at libraries and in community life and are far more likely to use libraries and community life services,” co-convenor Adele Walsh said.

“The draft budget prioritises infrastructure, which is still a male dominated industry, over women, vulnerable people, families and communities.

“GWUN condemn the gendered nature of the City of Greater Geelong draft budget, and are highly concerned that COGG and its draft budget, is worryingly out of step with current community expectations regarding women’s safety and equality, families and communities, and public, democratic engagement and debate.”

GWUN also criticised the city for retaining its $616 million spend over four years on capital works project despite facing a budget squeeze that caused it to cut back other exiting services.

Under its draft 2023/24 budget, the city will spend $58.8 million on Community Life services – $4.76 million less than the previous year, and $6.85 million below its predicted outlay 12 months ago.

The department will also have about 68 fewer full-time equivalent staff on its books – with part-time staff primarily affected by the changes.

Most other departments had increased in their staff funding allocations except customer and corporate services, which had functions shifted into the strategy, governance and corporate department.

The organisational restructure – announced to staff in April and to the public in May – included 16 redundancies and removal of three vacant roles.

The city has previously refuted claims all of the redundancies were from that department, but refused to clarify precisely how many when asked this week.

Most functions of the previous Community Life directorate will shift to a newly created Community Service Delivery department. The new division will scrap a previous subdivision for social planning and investment and move those responsibilities to the planning and design directorate.

The city’s acting chief executive officer Kaarina Phyland said this week that the changes aimed to improve “efficiency and the level of service we provide the community”.

“The changes have grouped all ‘like’ functions and skillsets together.

“All of the teams in the reshaped Community Service Delivery directorate are alike in that they provide a service directly to the community.

“The teams and staff who moved out of this directorate are now in directorates that are most closely aligned with their skillsets.”

Submissions to the city’s 2023/34 budget have closed. The city will host a submissions review hearing on Wednesday (June 7) ahead of a final decision on the budget at its June 27 meeting.