WHEN the 10,008 signed petition supporting an indoor sports centre was presented to City Council it was decided to proceed with the first stage to seek $40m funding.
The petition’s organising committee was singing the praises of securing 10,008 signatures in 20 days, which was a significant achievement even if the original plan was to get 20,000.
At the time councillors and MPs claimed the petition provided a social licence needed to set in motion plans to obtain federal, state and council funding.
The question is, how many councillors went through this petition carefully to check just how many were city ratepayers – that is the people who will pay running costs and pay back the $10m council loan?
The petition is a 664-page document and it is probably safe to assume that few, if any, went through line-by-line to ascertain just where the signatures/names came from.
In fact, it is not what is seems and distorts the actual level of local support some believed it portrayed.
I have gone through the document closely and yes, there are a significant number of Mount Gambier people who signed the petition, but they are not all ratepayers.
Many schoolchildren signed the document and family names were listed, some without signatures but also where they came from is quite revealing.
By my count, there are signatures/names from a minimum of 223 towns and cities outside the city rate paying area.
These include online names from overseas countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Vietnam, Scotland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Egypt and the Netherlands.
Other signatories came from 147 interstate areas – Perth, NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, regional and metropolitan Victoria, plus South Australia.
Unfortunately, few if any of these is likely to help pay the estimated $1.5m/year running costs of the centre over the next 40 years which amounts to a staggering $60m, making the total cost $100m.
But the most pertinent point was by my count 63 towns in the South East and Western District region provided hundreds, maybe thousands of signatures/names.
It might be that petition organisers and some councillors believe outlying residents might support the centre through patronage, offsetting some costs, but the reality is they will not contribute to paying loans or the majority of running costs.
It is well-known Grant District councillors do not support the centre, which was obvious given the cool response city council CEO Mark McShane received when presenting an overview.
While the exact number of signatories from Grant council townships is unknown, the number was significant, yet Grant will not contribute one cent.
Another high number of signatories came from the Millicent, Beachport region, again another council area which will not make a financial contribution towards funding.
So, while City Councillors went on a fact-finding mission, which, according to reports last week did not provide overwhelming evidence these sports centres are a raging success, it is worrying that City Councillors and MPs have marched ahead with this project on the back of a petition which distorts the real level of local support.
Meanwhile, Cr Josh Lynagh claims the 10,000-strong petition gives council a mandate to act on the indoor centre.
He is wrong.
Firstly, the petition asked the wrong question – its did not ask whether ratepayers were in favour of paying extra in their rates for the next 40 years – also a petition is not a poll and therefore there is no mandate.
What Cr Lynagh should investigate is how many signatories were actually ratepayers, how many were schoolchildren and how many who signed the petition have changed their mind?
Once the project ballooned to $40m people started to realise how society had its priorities wrong in spending so much on sport.
There are many other anomalies which should have been investigated before being accepted as a credible document.
These include numerous signatories which have no address, one gave KFC, and numerous times the same person signed for several people.
This often happens with petitions, but with a project costing $40m one would have thought a little more investigation would have taken place.
