Anger over Toowoomba Regional Council push to reduce opening hours of community rooms

TOOWOOMBA Regional Council is trialling new opening times for its community rooms at Toowoomba City Library, which will prevent groups using the rooms after business hours.

What is the point of having community rooms, built with ratepayers money, that the community can’t use?

That’s the question Margaret Marshall is asking after Toowoomba Regional Council began trialling reduced operating hours at its Toowoomba City Library community rooms until June 30.

The rooms offer groups a comfortable, modern, and secure venue for their meetings.

TRC have made decision to close the community rooms at the Toowoomba Regional Library at 5pm each day making them unavailable for many community groups who use the facilities in the evening. Margaret Marshall, is a member of Toastmasters a group that will now need to find an alternative venue.

The new hours will be from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Thursday, 9am to 4pm on Fridays and 10am to 3pm on Saturdays.

Existing bookings outside of those hours are being honoured up until June 30, but any groups who are unable to meet during business hours because their members have jobs will be prevented from making new bookings throughout that period.

“Why have they chosen to close these rooms when they were packed pre-COVID-19?” Mrs Marshall asked.

The rooms were shut for several months during and after lockdown last year.

“What has the council done to get back those people that have probably ceased to book because of having not been able to use the rooms?

“What have they done to contact those people back? Because I can assure you, as a regular hirer of (the rooms), we’ve received nothing.”

TRC environment and community services general manager Nick Hauser said the results of the trial would be considered by the council as part of its overall service delivery review process and that the council had a responsibility “to allocate ratepayers’ funds equitably to services that meet community needs”.

“Council is assessing the demand for the meeting rooms as community groups return to their regular schedule of activities,” he said.

Mr Hauser said the council was monitoring feedback from community groups around demand for the rooms.

But Mrs Marshall said that was “curious”.

“They’re not seeking feedback from hirers at all. No one contacted us.”