Building Our Regions Not So Simple

August 2, 2016

The South Burnett Regional Council did not make an application to the first round of Building Our Regions (BOR) because it was too busy acquitting earlier grants.

South Burnett Mayor Keith Campbell said on Tuesday that thanks to representations by Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington, the South Burnett had secured close to $12 million in Royalties For Regions (RFR) funding for projects like the new Kingaroy Waste Water Treatment Plant and the Swickers intersection upgrade.

However, those projects needed to be substantially completed before the Council could apply for funding from the new BOR program that had replaced RFR, and it was unable to do so before BOR’s first round deadline expired.

The Council had put in an application for the second round of BOR funding to upgrade the Murgon and Nanango water treatment plants, but this had been unsucessful.

The Council has now elected to “go it alone” on the Murgon Water Treatment plant upgrade because the work is urgent.

But it intends to lodge another application in the next BOR funding round for a different project.

“Applying for grant funding is not quite as simple as it appears on the surface,” the Mayor said.

“Most capital grants require co-funding from Councils, and they are only given for shovel-ready projects where a Council can supply detailed project milestones and timelines to completion.

“We have plenty of projects we want to tackle – things like streetscaping for Kingaroy, improving Nanango’s water supply, new footpaths for Murgon and many other things.

“But we need to wait for a time when we have money available to co-fund them and a full project plan in place which aligns with the Government’s funding priorities.”

The Mayor was responding to a disclosure made by Member for Nanango Deb Frecklington in an Estimates hearing last week that only $406,000 of BOR’s $70 million first round funding had been spent.

State Development Minister Dr Anthony Lyneham told Mrs Frecklington the main reason for the underspend was that new grants programs like BOR take time to roll out.

Mayor Campbell said he could understand both sides of the debate but it was the job of Councils to provide services to residents, not take sides, and that was what he was focussed on.

“We are always on the look-out for grants, and our region has done well with them over the last few years,” the Mayor said.

“But not every application is successful, and there are times when you simply can’t apply because the numbers and schedules don’t mesh properly.”