DEAR News Of The Area,

I refer to the article by Marlene Griffin in last week’s paper (‘Reduced to a Pile of Rubble’, Marlene Griffin, Opinion and Letters, p16, 3 December Edition, News Of The Area).

I find it an unbelievable fact that Council has totally ignored the local community’s feedback on the proposed Library Update Project submissions.

I believe the community along with my feedback has not been listened to in any way, during the proposal stage.

I totally agree with Marlene’s opinion, and find her arguments still exist during the construction stage.

As progress on the construction stage proceeds, it is becoming clear that the project was not approved by the local community.

The project has major issues, such as:

– Unnecessary loss of revenue from surrounding businesses, which is a silent cost, not added to the already overall budget blowout of the project.

– The disruption to a perfectly functioning and fund producing NCAC Hall.

– The total disruption to the traffic, parking and pedestrians in that whole corner area of the business community.

The comment Marlene made on 3 December was, “The funding for the Nambucca Library Re-Development Project is coming from Nambucca Valley Council and State and Federal Grants one of which is designated to be directed to ‘Community Roads and Infrastructure’.”

This redirection of funding, added to the redirection of over 50% of the $5m Bushfire Recovery funding (mentioned in Brooke Lewis’ News Of The Area article, ‘Council’s Bushfire Relief fund’, on Friday 23 July 21), as part of the funds being redirected to the beautification of the river’s foreshores, makes it questionable.

As I wrote to News Of The Area at the time, ‘It was great to see the Council obtaining the $5 Mill Bushfire relief in our local paper today, but reading on, it became a great example of False Pretences, when you obtain a financial gain, and use it for financial benefits for other purposes.

‘Beautification of the foreshore is not essential damage repair of other council interests/infrastructure.’

The allocation of funds given to Council on previous examples along with the library issue, begs the question, is the Council distributing funds in a legal and community interest way?

In this project we have another example of redirecting road funding and Bushfire Recovery funds from the original purpose.

In the interest of the local community and business transparency, the past practice of redirecting funding appears to be bordering on misappropriation of funding.

Regards,
George MICOLICH,
Nambucca Heads.