By Kristy McDonald
BRIMBANK City Council has made what it hopes will be the first of several submissions to the Federal Government inquiry into a new regional development funding program.
The inquiry, commissioned following the axing of the former Regional Partnerships program, is aimed at developing new framework and administrative procedures for a regional funding solution.
The inquiry process will involve a series of round table discussions with relevant stakeholders, including municipal councils, in addition to the current written application process.
At Tuesday night’s Brimbank Advisory Committee meeting, council general manager community wellbeing Kelly Grigsby presented the council’s submission, which highlighted the lack of infrastructure development in the rapidly growing western suburbs.
“The submission that council has made emphasises the need to target really significant projects in local areas that have an impact on reducing community disadvantage and to target projects which impact on reducing community disadvantage,” Ms Grigsby said.
“There has been a tendency to funding some of the growth municipalities and it’s a pertinent point, there’s a lot of communities like Brimbank that grew rapidly through a period of time, but the extension of infrastructure was not actually made.”
While councillors were pleased with the executive’s pro-active approach to putting Brimbank on top of the federal funding agenda, some were concerned that greater effort was not made to seek councillor input for the submission.
Councillors voted in support of the submission, with amendments including a delegation of councillors to be nominated for attendance at round table forums and an emphasis in future submissions on the effect of cost-shifting on council infrastructure projects.
