There it was, reported last week in the Bendigo Advertiser that City of Greater Bendigo had returned a $62 million surplus for the past year, more than double the previous year’s surplus.
That’s a whopping lot of money. How much more of these many millions should be used to fix roads, footpaths and, heaven forbid, actually lower the rates paid by homeowners?
Of course, the surplus would have been higher had the Bendigo Bunch not wasted valuable resident money on flawed schemes and dud plans.
Disasters like the aborted Carter Farm acquisition at Marong or calling for a second report when the original $90,000 spent on looking at office accommodation options in Lyttleton Terrace was rejected.
Or even negotiating agreements and executing legal documents for a dud GovHub before the final decision has even been made to sell our land and buildings, see them demolished and hand over money to the State Government and overseas investors to be a tenant on land we once owned.
The maths just do not add up. After trumpeting the doubling of a multi-million dollar surplus without any increased return to the shareholders (your and me the residents of Bendigo), the Bendigo Bunch has some real explaining to do.
They could start by actually releasing the business plans on office accommodation options and selling our assets to the government without consultation.
Better still, with all this money being made at our expense, another year of surplus and Bendigo could have afforded to build its own new offices, kept our independence and had nothing to do with second-rate schemes from the State Government.
That’s what is happening in Geelong. And don’t forget our regional rivals in Ballarat are being gifted a GovHub by the government without needing a cent, an inch or land or anything from the Ballarat council.
Come on Bendigo Bunch, we all want to be millionaires. Don’t keep ripping the dollars from us on dud deals like GovHub.
