‘It’s an insult’: Townsville City councillors speak out against gutting free events
The council has been left with egg on its face after voting to gut funding to a local festival just 48 hours before Premier Crisafulli awarded it ‘QLD’s Best Event’. And it’s not the only one.
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Townsville City Council has been left with egg on its face after voting to gut funding to a local festival just 48 hours before Premier Crisafulli awarded it ‘QLD’s Best Event’.
IndiaFest Townsville’s president Binu Jacob and secretary Nick Attam flew to Brisbane to accept the award directly from Premier David Crisafulli on Friday, June 6.
While the committee remains dedicated to delivering another free IndiaFest for everyone in August, the award was bittersweet after Townsville City Council’s recent decisions to halve the funding it would give to large community events this year from $50,000 to $25,000.
It comes as the council just spent $230,000 on the ‘Our Townsville’ event scheduled to run in Anderson Gardens next weekend.
Stable at Riverway will also see its funding slashed by half.
Reverend Anne Harley said she found out about the funding cut through the media.
“We’re actually shifting from Riverway to Cluden Park Racecourse this year because it was getting too expensive to have The Stable at Riverway,” Rev. Harley said.
“A lot of our grant was actually being eaten up just going back to council in fees.”
Rev. Harley said they would be able to save a significant amount by moving to private property in Cluden.
“It was $7,638 to hire the site at Riverway (paid to council), $9,133 for staff, $7,145 for traffic control and cleaning contracts,” Rev Harley said.
“We were able to get professional quotes for less, but the council wanted us to use specific contractors.”
Council meeting minutes on Wednesday, June 4, shows councillors voted 7-3 in favour of adopting a new community grant system which cuts the tier 1 grants from $50,000 to $25,000 – a staggering difference for non-profit groups.
The minutes revealed some councillors were using the same logic that caused the paid parking fiasco: the cost-of-living crisis justified taking free services away from the community, for the good of council’s own coffers.
Councillor Suzy Batkovic said no one at the table wanted to reduce the amount, but something had to give.
“We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, and something has to give, and we’re getting to a point where everything is so expensive,” Cr Batkovic said.
Acting-Mayor Greaney agreed.
“We are operating now in quite a new environment, where costs have risen substantially,” the acting mayor said.
Councillors Paul Jacob, Kurt Rehbein, and Liam Mooney were the three who opposed the cuts.
“This is going to effectively cut the funding we give to our biggest community events in half, and I cannot support that,” Cr Liam Mooney said.
Councillor Rehbein said the cuts were bizarre.
“It’s an insult to people who work so hard to do good things for this city, it just beggars belief,” Cr Rehbein said.
“When we talk about a cost-of-living crisis, this is the wrong area to cut. We’re ripping money out of grants and saying ‘just find it somewhere else’ without consultation and its poor form.”
Cr Rehbein said the decision was even more bizarre because the amount of money in the grant pot technically hasn’t changed, which means Council actually hasn’t saved a single dollar on their budget sheet – for now.
“We can’t compare ourselves to Brisbane where the State Government hands out a lot of cash to support events (instead of the local council). We need to support what we have here, if we want to keep it,” Cr Rehbein said.
Rev. Harley said the Stable volunteers had just spent 20 hours applying for a Festival Australia grant to help cover the $25,000 they will lose from council’s decision.
“I just heard this morning we didn’t get it. They sent an email that said 140 groups applied for a grant, and only 18 were accepted,” she said.
“Last year we applied to eight grant programs, and only got one.”
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Originally published as ‘It’s an insult’: Townsville City councillors speak out against gutting free events
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