City of Greater Bendigo is rattled when it comes to foolish attempts to justify the flawed decision to jump into the office bed with the State Government in partnership building a GovHub.
As the complaints and questions from very concerned residents and ratepayers piled up one night this week, council had staff working overtime with fluff responses to serious posts of the official City of Greater Bendigo facebook site.
Now, we’ll give council top marks for trying and not simply deleting the comments. It’s about the only level of openness from the Bendigo Bunch since without consultation, they voted to sell the city’s home for a dud GovHub, hand the cheque straight back to government and become a high-rent tenant for decades to come.
Of course, only six of the nine councillors voted to betray Bendigo. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the council and government.
In case CEO Craig Niemann has been so swamped with the questions and complaints growing by the day, here’s a selection of views from the people who matter, the people denied any say apart from the upcoming curtain selection session. That will put the Spotlight on things!
Here's what people are telling the Bendigo Bunch on their facebook page:
"what will happen to all the current buildings the council operate out of once they move into this new building? stay empty like the ones in the mall? instead of a modern aircon building how about upgrade the current usable buildings and invest the rest in projects that will actually benefit the local and surrounding community."
"Like the hospital, they will bring in outsiders to build this monster ... a couple of local labourers will get hired to meet the minimum criteria..."
"Please now release all the information that councillors had to supposedly make this well ‘informed’ decision on. This includes the business case, structural reports proving the existing building could not -be added to, all consultants reports including the Price Waterhouse Report which ranked this as the 3rd best option and so on. It appears to me there are many questions to be answered and little evidence released to the public to back this decision up."
"I’d like to see less centralisation of services in Bendigo"
"Why are we selling something we own so we can rent the same thing back from the government? Are you people really that thick? Why are we treated different to other cities where we have to rent the govhub offices back when the other cities do not? No wonder this city is in the position that it is.. broke.. with deals like this."
"How can this money be better spent in the community to benefit the community? Or, how can the money not be spent, in the first instance, to reduce current and future rates for residents?"
"Given the money involved I'd expect a better argument than "it provides jobs". Yes, great. So do many other options that would cost less and be of more benefit to residents. Let's look at those, please! "
"Here we go with another Council stuff up, that will cost Zillions and we will get no return for the investment "
Remember to pop along to the curtain consultation session in the town hall on Saturday 27 July from 11am to 2pm.
We’ll plug the event even if council and RDV are a bit slack in getting word out. Perhaps they’re hoping for a poor attendance so the CEO can work on clearing his desk.
