Tara Murray
Keilor Sports Club says it’s not worth doing a half job on works to upgrade facilities at Keilor Recreation Reserve, with the club having outgrown the current facilities.
With more than 1400 members using the facilities as part of the football, cricket and life activities group, the club is struggling to accommodate all their members.
Having received $700,000 state government funding last season to start the upgrades, the sporting club was hoping for funding in the Brimbank council budget.
There was none forthcoming in the draft budget which was released last month.
Sports club president Hayden Kelly said it was groundhog day for the club with the club hoping for significant funding in the council budgets each year without it coming to fruition.
“It defies logic,” he said. “The council provided $50,000 to develop a plan but they aren’t continuing on with it.
“Council staff came to us in early April, they’d had the plan since November, and said we had gone out of the scope of the plan, which was absolute rubbish.
“We drew up a plan in 2016 and we’ve since grown from 800-1400 participants. The current footprint isn’t big enough.”
As well as contributing $50,000 for the club to submit plans for an upgrade, money has been allocated to upgrade the kitchen in the 2025-26 council budget.
Mr Kelly said they had been told there would be no other funding allocated to the club for the next 10 years.
He said there was no point upgrading the kitchen, when the whole facility needs to be expanded and upgraded sooner rather than later.
“We can not fit everyone in,” he said. “We can’t hold club functions and get everyone in.
“We have to hold junior presentation days outside.”
On top of the $700,000 from the state government, the sporting club has raised $300,000.
Mr Kelly said they had concerns that if the upgrades didn’t occur in the near future that they may lose the funding they’ve received.
The club has called for the local sporting community to have their say on the budget and call for funding to be allocated.
Brimbank community wellbeing director Lynley Dumble said the council had yet to be provided with the final results and costings of the design work as well as details of the funding requirement being asked for by the club.
She said funding for the kitchen was a high priority following assessment which will be provided for in the coming years.
“The council adopted sports facility development plan 2018 determines the capital works funding priorities at Brimbank sports clubs, following facility audits and the application of assessment criteria and weightings,” she said.
“Participation numbers are just one of the assessment criterion, other criteria include the inadequacy of current facility, council policy objectives and value for money.
“Council is currently reviewing the sports facility development plan, having recently undertaken audits of all Brimbank sports facilities and will update the priority orders based on updated assessment criteria and weightings prior to sending out the draft sports facility development plan 2023 for community consultation.”
