Council pulls funding application for Chiltern Destination Playground

Indigo Shire Council has put the project on hold by withdrawing its application for government funding on the basis that it clashed with funding for another project in the same area, the Silo Arts project.

At this week's Indigo Shire Council meeting, an urgent business item was tendered for the application under the federal government's Growing Regions Program.

Councillor Peter Croucher who seconded the motion said the move came as "an emergency thing" after a council report on the project came to light.

"The report tells us quite a lot, it says that multiple projects in close proximity to each other would not be considered favourably and the administration team strongly advises that projects' proponents should focus on one application rather than applying for more than one project," Cr Croucher said.

"The other part of the report says that the Rutherglen Silo Arts project is the stronger application, it is distinctly more shovel ready at this time.

"It's very important that we continue to work on the children destination play space concept, including further revision of the project scoping costings with a view to progressing this project through future funding applications.

"But at the moment, we are recommending that we just we go strongly for the Silo Arts Project and continue to work with the children destination project in the coming weeks.

Councillor Emmerick Teissl, who in December in recommending the project go out for public exbition described the project as "visionary", said it was an unfortunate outcome.

The playground was to feature a climate theme with rainbow structures for children to climb.

"It's slightly unfortunate unfortunate for the Chiltern community and broader communities that the project wasn't quite ready to to be accessible for this particular funding stream," Cr Teissl said.

"Unfortunately council didn't have you information that they have now and what was approved and were unaware that they couldn't put two potentially similar projects within the one municipality."

The motion was carried unamimously.

To read more stories, download The Border Mail news app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: