Budget must be reviewed
There are serious problems with this year’s Hobsons Bay council budget (Rate hike splits council, Star Weekly, May 7).
No wonder councillors Jason Price and Paul Morgan voted against it, and even Cr Angela Altair abstained.
The biggest shock is that the proposed borrowings blow the budget out to more than $16 million. This is after the Tony Briffa-led faction paid debt down to $1.6 million in 2012-13 under a policy supported by former chief executive Bill Jaboor.
Further, it appears that council’s independent audit committee has been bypassed in this extravagant venture.
With an allocation of more than $9 million, Williamstown gets the lion’s share. And this may not be the end of it if the rejected Coles Williamstown bid for a $4.2 million multi-storey car park is revived. This will please Cr Peter Hemphill, but what about the other councillors whose wards look set to become Hobson Bay’s poor relations once again?
This debt will cost ratepayers more than $100,000 a year to service. I ask, what else could be done with this money?
I urge councillors to review this policy direction and consider those who they represent.
Diana Hogg, Laverton
Rates rise no surprise
So Maribyrnong council is putting up our rates by 4.7 per cent. Well, I’m not interested in an amalgamation with another council or even acquiring a larger rateable area.
For all the financial pain the Maribyrnong/Footscray council has inflicted on working- class people over the past 30 years, I would like to see this council merged into oblivion – never to be seen or heard from again.
Stephen Fry, Maidstone
East West Link
Opposition leader Daniel Andrews has made his contempt for the people of Melbourne’s west very clear by pledging to block construction of the western stage of the East West Link.
If he gets his way, the west will never get a second river crossing.
Apparently those travelling between the western suburbs and the city will just have to endure more congestion and delays under a Labor government.
It’s been well documented that the West Gate Bridge carries more than 165,000 vehicles per day, a figure expected to rise to 235,000 a day by 2031.
Mr Andrews asserts that his so-called West Gate distributor will solve the problem by taking 5000 trucks a day off the bridge. This is nonsense. Removing less than 3 per cent of traffic off the bridge will solve nothing.
His recent scorn for motorists in Melbourne’s west is all the more extraordinary, given that he has long spruiked a second crossing starting from the western side of Melbourne.
Labor can’t be trusted. It does not care about the west and has no plan to deal with the problem of traffic congestion.
Bernie Finn, Western Metropolitan Liberal MP
Labor has a short memory. In 2010, it was the ALP that first proposed a westlink tollway, a proposal that it now attacks the Liberal government on.
The people of the western suburbs do remember and can see through the hypocrisy.
Then and now, this tollway is not value for money. It won’t address traffic congestion and will burn money needed for investment in public transport and other essential services such as health.
Colleen Hartland, Western Metropolitan Greens MP
