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Council To Retain Management Of Its Marine Facilities

East Gippsland Councillors have accepted a recommendation that the management of the Shire marinas and other marine infrastructure assets is retained ‘in house’ and that they are run as businesses.

By Wellington Shire Council - 24th August 2005 - Back to News

The Shire’s Manager Commercial, Matt Youell presented a report to this week’s Council Meeting recommending the shire creates a marine ‘business units’ structure, establishes a stakeholder liaison group and a Marina Customer Consultative Committee.

Mr Youell said that business units would now be established for the Slip Bight Marina, Metung Marina, Chinaman’s Creek Marina and Moorings and associated land based assets as well as private and public jetties, boat ramps and their associated land based assets that are funded by grants from council, marine safety and/or other related organisations.

"Council currently manages the three marinas each with different standards, conditions and operational requirements that are situated on Crown Land and for which Council acts as Committee of Management," he said.

"Each marina will now be incorporated into a separate unit and a user-pay pricing model established to meet individual marina customer’s service level expectations, with no cross-subsidies between marinas."

Mr Youell said the move to manage marine assets within business units foreshadowed what was planned for other shire assets including caravan parks, aerodromes, the livestock exchange and other premises where committee of management contracts were in place.

"It represents a fundamental policy shift that will better address customer needs and within a structure where each asset must be financially self supporting and where charges are more transparent and justifiable to those who are exclusive users of the asset.

"It also signals the end of the era where in the case of marine assets for example, the structure that stretches out from the foreshore is the only consideration."

"Adequate parking, toilets and other facilities will be upgraded for existing facilities and will be a requirement for anything new," he said.

Mr Youell said that the policy change reflected an important and welcome move by council where the higher expectations of asset users were recognised and direct costs were born by customers, not shire ratepayers.

"Within the business unit model, financial accounting will recognise what each asset costs to run and maintain, the revenue needed to service these costs and over and above this, each will deliver a dividend to the Shire."

Mr Youell said that a case in point was the fact that since 1994 while there has been some expansion of the Slip Bight Marina at Paynesville, the management approach has been purely in a ‘maintenance mode.’

"Servicing the marina has been based on budget priority in competition with the whole of Council maintenance requests," he said.

"Under the new business model the marina will ‘stand alone’ financially and its revenue will cover its costs as well as be used to expand and upgrade it without the need to compete with other shire owned assets or projects."

"For our customers this will provide the level of service they require and complete transparency as far as costs and charges are concerned."

Mr Youell said that the Shire had assigned dedicated existing staff to these activities.

"This will eliminate costs associated with the external management option and enable us to provide a better and business focused service for our customers.

Source: www.gippsland.com

Published by: news@gippsland.com



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