Cash snatch just a grab for votes

I HAVE a bad feeling about what I see as slush funding by Casey councillors.
Unexpended money has been coming available from the midyear budget review each year and this is whacked up between the councillors to spend in their wards.
But it’s not the way to go and while what they do is legal, it is irresponsible, greedy, and amounts to creating a slush fund. Councillors will argue that the whole council must approve their choices on how they each spend their money, but you can expect heaps of “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”.
Officers earmarked nearly $200,000 of $1 million under expenditure in the first half of the council’s trading year to be set aside for the proposed $30 million Cranbourne Aquatic Centre, but the councillors nicked this to spend in their wards on minor projects. Now they have to find more money for the centre in the next budget.
Officers are committed to finding $30 million to build the Cranbourne Aquatic and Leisure Centre and this is a challenge that means they have to make every dollar count. The Casey Arc at Narre Warren cost nearly $20 million several years ago and pays the council a $250,000 dividend each year, but more importantly is a highly successful facility. The Cranbourne centre, if properly resourced, can be as good and even better. Casey director of corporate affairs Steve Dalton said the councillors needed to be comfortable with taking the money away from the aquatic centre.
I can assure readers that they will be comfortable about it because $17,000 put in the right places can win lots of votes. This is an extremely dangerous practice and is nothing better than creating a slush fund that should not be allowed. It is a way of getting money for unconsidered and unbudgeted projects and a surefire way of gaining support at elections. I can’t believe the southern sector councillors who yelled so much for a fairer deal for the south would support this sort of budget manipulation.
Councillors can now go off and pander to groups to allocate $34,000 in each ward, but at the expense of setting back what is not only a major project for the Cranbourne area, but the City of Casey and Melbourne’s east.Edrington Ward councillors Mick Morland and Brian Hetherton argued and voted against the money grab, while River Gum Ward councillor Janet Halsall said in debate that councillors who voted against the transfer of money should hand their allocation back. I challenge the Edrington Ward councillors to do just that and give their $34,000 back to the aquatic centre.
It is easy for them to argue that the money should not be used in the way it has been channelled when they know they will get it anyway.
It may not be so easy for them to put their money where their mouth is and show they mean what they say in opposition to the deal. To their credit, last year they used their allocation to pay for a report into commercial garbage collection that would ultimately benefit the entire municipality. By not accepting this allocation they would put pressure on other councillors to use unexpended money within the priority system.
Priorities are thrashed out during officer recommendations and weeks of budget debates on how such large amounts of cash should be invested.
This grab for cash stinks.