The United Services Union has serious concerns regarding the financial viability of today’s decision to shut the Kiama Municipal Council central Kiama depot where road, parks, and maintenance council workers ply their trade.
The United Services Union (USU) represents council workers at Kiama Municipal Council.
The council is proposing to move staff to a new site in Minnamurra at the current waste facility and reclassify the current depot as residential.
The union understands the current central depot is built on a former gas works site and has serious concerns regarding the overall cost in remediating the site to make it safe for residential purposes.
The United Services Union’s Stuart Geddes says the numbers don’t stack up.
“While we are not opposed to the development of a new depot for staff at the current Minnamurra Waste site, the concern we have is the council does not appear to have presented any costings regarding remediating the former depot site safe for residential construction,” said Mr Geddes.
“We understand the depot is built on a former gas works site that will need significant remediation work before the site can be sold.
“The council hasn’t presented the cost of doing any of this and there is no way of even telling if this decision will make commercial sense let alone leave enough money to fund a new facility at Minnamurra.
“In another worrying development today we have had this council crying poor for the last two to three years and selling off assets at a whim, so it is concerning that they have also announced today they are spending $6.3 million to purchase land adjacent to the old depot to develop.
“These two decisions have raised concerns for our members as there has been no consultation whatsoever with staff involved before the Mayor and CEO announced this decision this morning.
“The current depot contains services such as an on site carpentry workshop, a mechanical workshop and a panel beating workshop, but there has been no clarity as to whether all these services will be maintained in the move.”
“The lack of detail and transparency around this decision and the fact we believe full costings have not been presented to councillors is concerning, particularly when we have seen this council propose significant privatisation of services and service reviews of commercial assets in the past.”
“For us it appears that the council should be providing further detail and if the costings and consultation haven’t taken place the decision may have jumped the gun.”
