By Kerri-Anne Mesner
BRIMBANK City Council could save more than $1 million a year if a proposed amalgamation of council offices to create a civic centre goes ahead.
Council at its meeting on Tuesday night approved process guidelines and agreed to authorise the chief executive officer Nick Foa to call for expressions of interest for the project.
Mr Foa said in discussion with other councils either looking at or in the process of amalgamating council offices post council amalgamations, of which there are about 13, it emerged that between $600,000 and $2 million could be saved annually by individual councils.
He said preliminary figures for Brimbank showed that up to $1.07 million could be saved by moving the Sunshine and Keilor council offices to one site.
A unique part of the process, to date, was council’s appointment of a probity auditor at the end of March, according to Mr Foa.
He said this was unique because a probity auditor is usually appointed at the end of such a project. However, council’s investigations found it was advisable to appoint a probity auditor early in the process.
Brimbank mayor Margaret Giudice said the current council offices provided different services at the different locations, which confused residents at times and public transport issues made it difficult to get across the municipality.
She said the buildings were also deteriorating.
“Tonight is about testing the market and not committing the council to the project,” Cr Giudice said at the council meeting.
“Council has for quite some time thought about amalgamating.”
She said a potential civic centre would provide the community with better accessibility to council services such as planning and animal management services, improve service delivery by having all departments at one location and be more cost effective.
The potential civic centre would also provide the council the opportunity to build a town hall/functions facility, which it currently does not have, to host Australia Day activities, citizenship ceremonies and the mayoral ball.
Potential options include sharing a location with other service providers or alongside a shopping centre and a solely council owned and operated building.
Cr Costas Socratous said the idea of creating a one-stop-shop was good.
“This (recommendation) will give us an idea of how and what is the way to go about this plan,” he said.
Councillors opposing Tuesday night’s recommendation — Cr Anthony Abate, Cr Ken Capar and Cr Natalie Suleyman — raised concerns over why the probity auditor had already been appointed, what services could be cut, how many staff could lose their jobs, how much the project would cost, how much the project had cost so far and what would happen to the existing buildings.
Cr Miles Dymott voted for the recommendation, agreeing existing buildings were deteriorating and amalgamating offices could be more cost effective in the long term.
“When it comes to my list of priorities for this municipality, this doesn’t even come on to the radar,” he said.
“There are scores of things I would like to see in Brimbank before this. However, I would like to hear how much it would cost.”
Sunshine Residents and Ratepayers Association (SunRRA) president Darlene Reilly said members agreed with Cr Dymott that there were more important priorities that needed to be looked at. However, asset renewal for long term financial planning was something Brimbank had to do.
“It’s right to find out what would be the cost and the feasibility,” she said.
“I’ve always complained that we don’t have a town hall. That would be useful.”
Cr Suleyman requested a report from council officers on the costs of the project to date, which will be provided to councillors two weeks from the next council meeting.
