2015-11-25
Over the past four to six weeks I have had the pleasure of attending many community festivals supported by their local councils. I have been along to the Eltham festival, the Mallahang festival, the Whitehorse festival and the Maroondah Festival. All of them were supported respectively by the Nillumbik, Banyule, Whitehorse and Maroondah councils.
These might seem minor affairs in the scheme of things in terms of the sorts of activities that local government provides, but they actually provide a really important time for families and community to come together, to get to know each other and to participate fully across a range of opportunities in those local areas. They also provide opportunities for families to participate for free, and that is fairly novel in this day and age. Although nothing is for free, those sorts of activities supported by ratepayers are an incredibly valuable part of what local councils do, because the ability to strengthen community cohesion pays enormous dividends to local councils when they have connected communities.
What I fear in relation to these festivals into the future and community grants programs generally is that we will see a reduction of these sorts of activities due to rate capping. That would be an incredibly poor outcome for those communities.