The City of Ballarat has deflected blame for its failure to consult the community on its contentious commercial grants program, saying it fell to members of the community to notice it at the back of the council meeting agenda.
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"Bringing the policy to the open council meeting provided the community with the capacity to have their say," said City of Ballarat director community wellbeing Matthew Wilson, who didn't deny council should have consulted the community on the new policy.
Referenced at page 335 of the August agenda, the commercial grants policy encourages businesses and private enterprise to apply for three-year uncapped grants for initiatives that facilitate "economic return on investment", produce "community benefit", align with the council plan and/or meet a "project need".
Noting the "radically different" nature of the commercial grants compared to council's usual community-focused grants, former mayor John Barnes said it remained incumbent on council to justify and explain it to residents before committing any substantial expenditure to it.
"They're proposing to fund private businesses with no limits - we're talking grants here that can go to private sector recipients; let's be clear, this hasn't been done in the past," he said.
"Very few people in Ballarat would be aware that this is something entirely new and that the case for having council play an entrepreneurial role in the private sector hasn't been properly prosecuted to the community.
"I think people would need a fair bit of reassurance before they would feel comfortable with this."
Mr Barnes added that in no way could council interpret the lack of public comment on the policy at the last council meeting as a form of "tacit agreement".
"Council really does need to actively engage the community and assure itself that this is something that will have long-term support from ratepayers, rather than think it's adequate to simply list it on the agenda," he said.
Adding to the controversy, there is expressly no limit as to the amount applicants may apply for under the program, and nor is there any limit imposed on the program's final budgetary scope, with the totality of grants to be approved in the formal budget process the following financial year.
The program also lacks any detailed evaluation process and states that applications would be determined at a delegated committee meeting - not the open council chamber - with publication of meeting minutes subject to commercial in confidence considerations.
Mr Wilson justified council's shift to a closed decision-making model on the footing it would provide "clear commercial in confidence cover" for applicants under the program. He later added it would align with the manner in which other council grants are typically decided.
Council's community and tourism grants, however, are expressly capped at a maximum of $20,000 per grant, and are therefore of a considerably smaller scale to the commercial grants.
University of Newcastle local government expert Roberta Ryan said both the nature and structure of the commercial grants program ran contrary to ordinary definitions of sound and transparent governance.
"At minimum, this is opening up the council to a lack of transparency about their management of interests; at worst, it's opening them up to fraud," Professor Ryan said, describing Mr Wilson's explanations as specious.
"If public money is being spent, there's very few reasons where commercial in confidence could [validly] apply.
"There's no doubt ratepayers have a right to see these decisions being made in public; how else can they have confidence that matters of merit and conflicts of interest are being transparently managed?"
When asked, mayor Daniel Moloney told The Courier that it wasn't council's "intent" to remove public oversight over the grants.
"It wasn't our intention to hide anything away; it was more a case of addressing small-scale items as a delegation and dealing with the bigger [grants] through the council chamber," he said.
"If that's not come through the new rules, then I'm happy to have that looked at."
Local businessman and resident Andrew Collins, who previously served as president of the Liberal Party's Buninyong branch, said the apparent failure of councillors to read and understand council reports put before them for serious consideration "bordered on incompetence and contempt for ratepayers".
"These are people we trust to represent us and spend our money in our best interest," he said.
Citing council's analogous failure to grasp the full significance of recent changes to public question time, Mr Collins added it wasn't "acceptable for councillors to say 'convention means we'll do otherwise'."
"They can't say, 'well, here's the rule, but don't worry, we won't do that' - there's no excuse for cutting back transparency," he said.
"The community should have been consulted and informed on these decisions - that's what democracy is about.
"This council has a poor record when it comes to being open, transparent and accountable, and the community shouldn't tolerate it any longer."
The City of Ballarat community engagement policy, which exists by force of the Local Government Act s 55, states that council is required to provide the community with "accurate, timely and accessible information" to inform residents' input on council decisions.
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