By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
IN THIS austere rates-capping era, perhaps it takes some magic feat for Casey council to deliver a sound budget.
Never fear, Riley Baird of Narre Warren South was on hand – with magician’s cape, wand and basket – to conjure some suggestions at a special council meeting on 28 July.
Mr Baird, with several other residents, were there to give five-minute presentations to councillors and council officers about the draft 2016-17 budget.
With some pizzazz, Mr Baird planned to ask the audience and councillors to vote on his suggestions as he pulled them out of the basket.
There were plenty of tough savings measures such as scrapping the artist-in-residence at Berwick’s Old Cheese Factory, $140,000 electronic scoreboards, and the annual replacement of flags and banners.
Also under the knife was the $800,000 playground renewal program – a maintenance regime that could be partially redirected to building new playgrounds, Mr Baird said.
He agreed with another submitter Free Software Melbourne which estimated $1.2 million in savings if the council administration switched to open-source software.
Unfortunately for Mr Baird, his powers were no match for Mayor Sam Aziz’s “no shenanigans” policy. In short, he was told to take a spell from his magic act.
Cr Aziz told the sorcerer that the meeting was not to be trivialised by a “clown’s audition” but allowed him to resume without magic props.
“He gave us some superficial and irrelevant issues, and some questions that were misguided.”
Cr Aziz was solely impressed by Garry Page’s “intellectual and thoughtful” 55-page submission.
The rest were “lacking in the depth of understanding how council works and completely short-sighted in ignoring the growth pressures that council is confronting”.
