The historic building, which now stands in the North Gardens off Wendouree Parade, caused controversy when the City of Ballarat's total spending on the project was revealed to be in excess of half a million dollars.

The project to transfer and refurbish the 19th century building was unanimously supported by the council group in January 2017. Its strongest advocate was then mayor Cr Samantha McIntosh who represents the Ballarat Central ward. Costs indicated by a council officer report at the time suggested it would take a maximum of $100,000 to complete the project. [You can read the original agenda here].

However, the total costs are now reported as over $565,000, of which $501,546 was City of Ballarat spending.

The request for a report was made by councillor Mark Harris - who also recently announced that he would be standing again for re-election in Ballarat Central.

"I am just calling for a report to council to get some fiscal narrative and timeline around the expenditures in relation to the Gatekeeper Cottage," he said.

"To my recollection, there was no approval sought for the additional spend."

He said it was one of several projects where there had been "failure of appropriate scope or ongoing interference", leading to "cost blowouts or delivery failures".

"The fiscal responsibility and reporting for this project in particular was fairly opaque to say the least".

"While I know it's late in the term Mr Mayor, I feel it would be remiss and perhaps even derelict if we don't confront these particular issues."

"I think it's beginning to test our community's trust in local government."

He also called for more details on the chandelier cited in the Ombudsman's report published in May, which then director of infrastructure and environment Terry Demeo had purchased on the former mayor's behalf.

"If this too was indicative of a culture of doing whatever it took to please the mayor of the day on the mistaken belief that office had its own prerogatives and budget, we need to set this straight for a new council," Cr Harris said.

Cr McIntosh said she would be "keen as mustard" to see a report. She also queried the figures published in this newspaper detailing the year by year expenditure, in particular the figure for 2017/18.

The Courier can confirm the figure corresponds to information supplied directly by the City of Ballarat - which also correlated closely to details in quarterly financial reports.

The chief executive Janet Dore said an internal audit was already under way.

Cr McIntosh said:

"I think that it's really important we do understand the accusations that have been made, understand the financial reports that we have all supported and that information that has been there as a line item that we've supported.

"It appears to me that there's about $16,000 over budget which is a lot different to five times the full amount."

READ THE ORIGINAL STORY HERE

November 2014: Stalemate over historic gift

March 2016:Future of historic cottage around Lake Wendouree to be decided at council meeting

June 2016:Council vote on heritage house

Feb 2017: Historic 'Gatekeepers Cottage' block sells at auction for $680k

March 2019: Botanical Gardens gatekeepers cottage restoration close to completion date

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