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[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://the-terrier.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vault3.jpg[/author_image]Welcome to The Vault – this is where Bluestone will place all sorts of subscriber-access-only material. If you have something you would like to submit, please email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au[author_info][/author_info] [/author]

By Carol Altmann

[box]Bluestone would like to acknowledge subscriber PT for funding the Freedom of Information application used for this piece.[/box]

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] B[/dropcap]luestone subscribers will know that we cop quite a lot of flak for continuing to ask questions about the sacred cows of Warrnambool including Flagstaff Hill, Fun4Kids and the increasing secrecy and lack of transparency around how the Warrnambool City Council runs its affairs – but as long as there are huge gaps in the information, we will keep asking.

Like why is there no formal report on the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival that cost ratepayers $450,000 to run?

Bluestone has just uncovered this fact and it is staggering, irrespective of your views on Fun4Kids or whether it has picked up tourism gongs.

Anyone who has ever dealt with public funds will know that full disclosure on how that public money was spent and the results of that spending is standard procedure.

It’s called accountability.

Indeed I remember when working for the might of News Ltd that we were expected to account for every dollar we claimed when working on a story, right down to producing a receipt for a $10.50 pizza – after all, Rupert might be a very wealthy man, but he was still the boss.

Yet the Warrnambool City Council has spent almost half a million dollars of public money on an event that, until now, has always produced a full report on its budget and the festival results.

When we asked the council media manager for a copy of the 2015 Fun4Kids report, he said the key results of the festival had already been released to the media.

So, what was told to the media via the council’s media unit should be enough.

Well some journalists in Warrnambool might be happy to swallow the pre-chewed lines delivered by the council, but Bluestone is compelled to dive deeper.

So when the council told us that “about 15,000” people attended the 2015 festival and that 24% of these were from Melbourne and that they surveyed 1000 of these patrons for their views, we wanted to know more.

Can we have the full report? We asked.

Nothing was forthcoming, so we lodged a Freedom of Information asking for two things:

i) the report and/or documents prepared for the council relating to the financial results of the 2015 Fun4Kids festival

ii) the report and/or documents prepared for the council relating to the patronage, including any breakdowns or analysis on these figures.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] A[/dropcap]fter the obligatory 45-day wait, the council’s Freedom of Information officer Wendy Clark, who is also chief executive officer Bruce Anson’s personal assistant, came back with this jaw-dropping response:

“I have found no documents that meet the terms of your request…”

This means, we must assume, that there were no reports prepared for the council.

Ms Clark then attached two documents that, we must also assume, amount to the full documentation available on the results of Fun4Kids 2015.

One was a single budget line reference and the other was five paragraphs that included not one single figure, but plenty of motherhood statements like:

“The Fun4Kids Festival achieved a positive percentage increase in the metropolitan market, while maintaining regional attendances. This outcome is a key growth strategy for the festival moving forward.”

I don’t know about you, but whenever I read those last two words – “moving forward” – I know we are deep in the river of public relations spin and far from the shores of plain speaking.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I[/dropcap]n a similar vein, you may remember the uproar that followed the sudden removal of a row of old tea tree along Pertobe Rd just before Christmas.

The trees were removed, we were told, after an arborist inspected them and found them to be unsafe due to infestation by a certain worm and cracking.

A Bluestone reader dared to ask more. In early January, she asked for a copy of the arborist’s report (or at least more detail) and whether the trees would be replaced.

She is still waiting for a reply, let alone any more information.

Such queries could normally be thrashed out  by elected councillors in general council business, but that, as we know, has been abolished and now councillors are timed for how long they talk, even though meetings were usually over within a couple of hours.

All councillors, not just some, should be demanding more, not less, transparency on behalf of ratepayers.

The fact they aren’t, and that this sort of “trust us” mentality is gripping the council, is of serious concern to anyone who remembers that it is the ratepayers who, just like Rupert, are the boss.

Find more in The Vault here…

 

Trees, transparency and the truth

Wilma Wright, FOI and more

The big shed schemozzle: we follow the money

…and more

Analysis  – Carol Altmann

The figures for the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival are in, and it’s a case of good news and bad news for the Warrnambool City Council and, by default, its ratepayers.

The good news is that it didn’t blow the bank.

In other words, it kept within the $450,000 budget that was set aside last October and avoided anything like the $150,000 blow-out of last year. Phew.

The bad news, however, is that the festival is attracting less people and therefore, you can assume, generating less economic and tourism benefits to Warrnambool but still costing $450,000 to run.

While there is still no official report on the results, the council released some figures to Bluestone today which said about 15,000 tickets were sold for the seven day event.

Last year, when the event ran over eight days, it attracted 19,758 people.

Of the 15,000 tickets sold this year, 24% were from metropolitan Melbourne – the highest percentage ever – which sounds like great news, until you work out that equates to only 3600 people compared to 3965 in 2015 and 5590 in 2013.

When you are coming off a smaller base, the percentages start to get wobbly.

It is extremely difficult to run a critical eye over a children’s festival – after all, it is aimed at children for god’s sake – but someone also needs to be the kid in the crowd as the Emperor marches by and point out that he is wearing no clothes.

So Bluestone, at risk of being deemed “too negative”, is prepared to say that the Fun4Kids Festival is getting precariously close to being bare-butt naked.

The reason is that the festival is no longer what it was designed to be, which was a major tourism attraction for Warrnambool.

Indeed in its heyday, the festival was pulling crowds of more than 32,000 people: double what it now achieves.

It was also costing less – far less – and at one point it was thought the council may not need to subsidise it at all because it would cover all of its own expenses. Such a notion now seems fanciful.

Here is the critical stat: in 2005, not long after the festival first began, it cost the council $156,354 and attracted 32,112 people.

This year, it cost up to $450,000 and attracted 15,000 people.

These are the cold, hard facts and why council staff last October recommended that the festival be discontinued because it had seemingly had its day.

But the decision to kill Peppa Pig, as it were, proved too emotional for the majority of the councillors and they agreed to press on in 2015 – turning the festival into more of a grassroots, simple-kids-fun kind of event with an extra heavy reliance on volunteers.

According to council spokesman Nick Higgins, this formula is set to be repeated in 2016.

“Council will shortly call for expressions of interest from local people keen to be part of the festival’s community consultation panel,” he said via email.

“The panel worked well this year and generated plenty of ideas and enthusiasm for the festival.”

It is wonderful to see such ideas and enthusiasm and I am sure most of the 15,000 people who turned up this year had a terrific time, but is this the best use of $450,000 each year to generate more visitors to Warrnambool?

Cr Kylie Gaston asked a question this week of Cr Brian Kelson, when he successfully pushed for free CBD parking over December and January, as to where the $70,000 in lost car parking revenue could be cut from within the budget.

I can think of at least one area….

For my money, I think free off-street parking over the busy summer period will do more for local traders than seven days of Fun4Kids where most of the action is confined to a plastic palace on the Civic Green.

If we want to continue to run a kid’s festival for, mostly, local and regional kids to enjoy, then let’s embrace that idea and stop pretending that Fun4Kids is a major tourism magnet.

It was once, but it is no longer, and there still needs to be a full and frank conversation about its long-term future.