By Laura Michell
Keilor Sports Club is one of the big winners in the 2022-23 Brimbank council budget, with $50,000 set aside to design and cost a redevelopment of the Joe Brown Reserve facility.
Council adopted its budget for next financial year on Thursday, June 23, after considering community submissions on the draft document, which was released in April.
Council received 158 submissions on the draft budget, of which 134 requested funding for the Keilor Sports Club.
It comes as a bid by councillors Virginia Tachos and Jae Papalia to include $120,000 in the draft budget to upgrade the club’s kitchen and toilets was rejected by a majority of councillors in April.
The funding is among $131,000 in projects and grants added to the budget following community submissions.
This includes $50,000 for the installation of a concrete path around the perimeter of pitch one at Keilor Park, an additional $11,000 grant to support Western Chances, and an additional $20,000 for an arts hub for micro arts organisations working with diversity.
Keilor Sports Club president Hayden Kelly said the club was happy with the funding.
He said the club’s facilities were built in 1986 when it had about 300 members. The club now has about 1300 members, aged five to 99.
“We all agree that we need a larger footprint,” Mr Kelly said.
“The current facilities are still in good condition. They would be fine if we still had 300 members.”
Mr Kelly said the club would work with council and the state government to make the redevelopment a reality, with plans to build a bigger social facility with a commercial kitchen and upgrade toilets to meet current standards.
The council funding will be used to ensure the project is “shovel ready”, he said.
Cr Tachos said she hoped the club, council and the government could work together to “lift the club to a much bigger facility” from which it can deliver its programs, coaching, mentoring and community-building.
“Keilor Sports Club is a club that has exponential growth at the moment, both before and post pandemic, and it is quite clear … it’s requiring a new facility to accommodate this growth,” she said.
“The current footprint of the club is not coping and its membership across all ages and backgrounds, and all parts of Brimbank, have struggled to squeeze into a very outdated and small confine and inadequate toilet and kitchen and club facilities.
“[Keilor Sports Club] is very much a model of a community hub that brings people together … it is a focus point for Keilor.”
