THE circumstances around the $3.2 million Lavington Sportsground redevelopment blowout will be fully explained to the public.
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Albury Council confirmed this month the project cost had risen as a result of the discovery of unsuitable soil base for the secondary sporting fields nearing completion.
Cr Darren Cameron succeeded on Monday night with a notice of motion asking general manager Frank Zaknich to prepare a report for the March meeting addressing aspects of the cost over-run.
They include who was responsible for the blowout occurring, were contractual arrangements deficient in any way, when did council staff first learn of the problems and is there any scope for council to pursue any party to recoup any part of the additional money spent.
If there were any matters deemed to be commercial in confidence they could be dealt with separately behind closed doors.
“Fiscal responsibility as councillors is one of our core roles,” Cr Cameron said.
“We have a responsibility to our residents and ratepayers to make it easily accessible to them when things like this happen to fully investigate why they happened and take action to make sure they can’t happen as far as possible again.
“It is a bad practice for councils to slip into the habit of doing things and explaining things behind the scenes.
“It is a well and good to take credit for the good things council does, but when something bad happens we have to be open about it.”
Cr Glachan said in the absence of a report she wanted to know the circumstances around the contractual arrangements.
“Were they contractual arrangements made by council or were those contractual arrangements made by an organisation that was contracted by council to undertake those arrangements?” she queried.
In response, Cr Cameron said: “It is why I brought this notice of motion here tonight.
“It needs to be dealt with in open council with a detailed report from staff.”
The council is carrying out an investigation why initial geo-technical examinations by external consultants didn’t identify soil was unsuitable for the base of the secondary sportsfield.
