PLANS to build an aged care home on land at Collins St in Mentone have come under fire from some residents and Kingston councillors keen to see the area used as open public space instead.
Councillors at Monday evening’s meeting voted to push ahead with plans to sell the former depot in Collins St to an aged care provider amid heated debate about the timing of the sale process.
Cr Rosemary West said Kingston CEO John Nevins had previously said any sale would not take place until early next year, but there now seems to be some urgency selling the land.
“The CEO dropped a bombshell by bringing forward the motion to commence a process for the sale of Collins St,” Cr West said.
“Suddenly … councillors were told ‘Oh, by the way, we’re going to have a motion to sell the Collins St site next week’, so we only got a week’s notice.”
Cr West said the community was being denied the opportunity to debate the best use of the Collins St site. Several Mentone residents have contacted The News in recent weeks to express their preference for the site to become public open space.
“We shouldn’t be undertaking a process to sell the site until we know there is an aged care provider willing … to take over four sites and manage them until they get around to building a giant three-storey facility next to the railway line,” Cr West said.
Any aged care provider intending to build an aged care facility at Collins St must manage council’s existing care homes at Nixon House in Mordialloc, Northcliffe Lodge in Edithvale and Corben House in Mentone in the interim.
The provider would also have to take over the running of the community-managed Mordialloc Community Nursing Home which has approached council for help over financial difficulties.
Cr Ron Brownlees said “we have to open the books” now to give commercial and not-for-profit aged care providers a chance to assess the business case for putting in an expression of interest.
He said council had “clearly announced its intention for the Collins St site [to be used] for aged care” last year.
“It’s not new … this argument is not about open space, it’s about providing quality of life for a particular group of people at the end of their life,” he said.
“Sometimes we can’t debate with our community. Aged care is a very sensitive issue that you can’t go out and debate.”
Cr Brownlees said council’s hand had been forced due to a federal government requirement that all aged care homes must provide “continuity of care” throughout residents’ lives.
The council-run homes are unable to guarantee this due to ageing infrastructure and buildings.
He said residents and staff at council’s aged care homes had been advised of the process to move residents to a new aged care facility at Collins St and they are “supportive”.
It is likely to take at least three to four years before any new aged care home at Collins St is completed and residents will stay in their existing facilities until then. Cr Geoff Gledhill noted “aged care is providing governments at all levels with some of their more pressing challenges”.
He said the Mentone area near Collins St “could do with some more open space and that is an issue that council would address”. However, he said aged care had to be a priority although “people are quite rightly concerned about open space”.
Cr West said council was obliged to consider using council-owned land for open space in areas that had less than 2.4 hectares per thousand as open space.
“This area is one of the areas that falls severely short of this provision,” she said. “What has been lacking here is any kind of proper debate or any kind of proper community consultation.”
Cr West said an aged care home could be built at the Mordialloc Community Nursing Home’s Remo St site in Mentone instead, but Cr Brownlees said this would not be viable as the Remo St site was not large enough to accommodate a new aged care home.
Cr West said not-for-profit aged care providers had advised council that they were prepared to build a 70-bed facility in Remo St and retain Corben House as an aged care home which would provide 116 places in total for “continuity of care” services.
“This is the kind of debate we need to have,” she said.
Earlier this month, Mr Nevins told The News Corben House had a 97 per cent occupancy rate and “still presents very well” compared to other older buildings at Nixon House and Northcliffe Lodge (‘Council gets out of aged care business’, The News 15/10/14).
The proposed new aged care home in Collins St is expected to have 90-120 beds.
Cr West failed to have the expressions-of-interest process deferred but did manage to have a later notice of motion accepted for council to seek legal advice on the option of keeping the MCNH and Corben House open as an alternative to a new Collins St aged care facility.
Mayor Peulich used his mayoral casting vote to break a four-all deadlock among councillors and back Cr West’s move for council to seek legal advice.
Council will still proceed with the EOI process while legal advice is sought.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News
