By Hamish Heard
FIVE Hobsons Bay councillors last week snubbed a meeting with residents fighting plans to turn Altona Civic Reception Centre into offices because they were embarrassed, according to a community activist.
Hobsons Bay Community First spokesperson Tony Briffa said the mayor, Leigh Hardinge, and councillor Angela Altair were the only councillors to meet the group to talk about the controversial proposal.
The group, including three former mayors, arranged the meeting in an attempt to persuade councillors not to strip residents of the centre without engaging in “proper community consultation”.
“Cr Altair and the mayor have already demonstrated that they believe it’s not right to sneak things like this through without talking to the community, so it was like preaching to the converted,” Mr Briffa said.
But councillors Mary Ann Lindsay, Carl Marsich, Renee Caruana, Bill Baarini and Peter Hemphill rejected the invitation.
“I strongly suspect the rest of them didn’t want to show their faces because they knew they’d made the wrong decision and they’re too proud to reverse it or they’re just embarrassed,” he said.
Mr Briffa claimed the council had breached its own guidelines when it decided to redevelop the centre “without any consultation whatsoever”.
The group won a temporary reprieve three weeks ago when councillors voted to defer a decision to proceed with the redevelopment after 60 residents stormed out of a council meeting in protest.
But Mr Briffa feared the councillors’ snub last week showed the redevelopment was a fait acompli.
“I think it just shows they’ve made up their minds or that they feel guilty about something,” he said.
Mr Briffa said the only warning of the council’s plans to evict the community from the centre was a one-line entry in a 94-page budget paper.
“Failure to consult is bad governance in an organisation and they recognise that in the council’s community engagement policy,” Mr Briffa said.
“The council has employed a good governance director and I want to know just what this person is doing if this sort of debacle is allowed to fall through the cracks.”
Mr Briffa called on residents to attend next week’s council meeting as a show of support for the centre.
“We’re outraged that we will lose this facility and we want as many people as possible to attend the meeting to show the rage,” he said.
