Council prioritises its future community projects

THE Surf Coast Shire council has recommended four new projects for the Community Project Proposal Master List.

Projects that are recommended are not guaranteed funding, but are referred to council’s future project prioritisation and budget processes, which includes consideration for grant opportunities.

At the June 23 council meeting, Cr Margot Smith said the master list had been of great us to the council and the community.

“This is a really good program to actually determine what’s important to our community, and it does help the council in terms of having projects that are shovel ready, available to be pulled out and used to make grant submissions.

“I think it’s been highly successful, both in terms of getting as much as we can through other avenues and also being able to assess the priority for things correctly.”

The quarterly report recommending the projects for the master list was originally to go before council in March but was postponed when the meeting was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Consequently, one of the three projects to be recommended – the Moriac Greenfields Reserve Nature and Fitness Trail Proposal – was announced to have been fully funded earlier in the meeting as part of the council’s 2020-21 budget.

The other project recommendations were the Torquay Football and Cricket Club Change Room Upgrade Proposal, the Anglesea and District Historical Society Building Modification/Extension Proposal and the Torquay Community Men’s Shed – Future expansion.

The 2020-21 budget also provided $15,000 towards the purchase of a compactus for the Anglesea and District Historial Society, although, the total cost of the society’s planned upgrade is $438,000.

The compactus will help the society store some of its smaller items as it rotates its museum’s display for the public.

Anglesea and District Historical Society president Jan Morris said the plans for the museum’s upgrade will allow them to display much more.

“We’ll turn the whole of the current – what we call ‘History House’ – into a museum. We did have a meeting room come workroom, what we’re putting on the back will be a workroom and a storage room.”

The upgrades will more than double the display space of the museum and will also help improve accessibility to the museum for people with disabilities.

At the meeting, Cr Revell said he appreciated the work of locals such as those from the historical society in helping develop the master list.

“A lot of community effort and time foes into getting these proposals to us, and without that, we wouldn’t have them.”