THE council building on Frankston’s foreshore partly leased by the Frankston Yacht Club may be on the verge of gaining two new occupants alongside the club. After the latest 2 July public council meeting councillors gave council officers the go-ahead to try to finalise commercial tenancy leases with a restaurant company and burger joint to move into the premises. The councillors’ decision was made behind closed doors for commercial-in-confidence reasons. It may be third summer lucky for council finding tenants for the mostly empty building built in 2016 at great expense to ratepayers. The $11 million building has sat mostly…
Author: Neil Walker
AN audit of the troubled revamp of Wells Street will not be made available to ratepayers after councillors voted behind closed doors after the 2 June public council meeting to keep its contents “confidential indefinitely”. The forensic audit by accountancy firm HLB Mann Judd is the second audit of the Wells Street refurbishment project. A 5-3 majority of councillors in October last year approved an allocation of $25,000 to dig deeper into the project, originally budgeted at $3.5 million, running about $1.7 million over budget (“Second audit for Wells Street spending”, The Times 9/10/17). An initial audit, costing ratepayers $29,000,…
BREAKFAST for the homeless and disadvantaged will be served up at Frankston’s Chisholm TAFE campus after the education institute stepped up to the plate to host a meals service from October. City Life, now known as Frankston Life, will partner with the Frankston Churches Breakfast Club and other providers to dish up meals at Building N of the Frankston campus. City Life and the breakfast club stopped providing meals to the needy in July 2016 before the charity’s leased Clyde Street Mall premises, were demolished to make way for a new apartment building. Frankston Council provided an interim meals service…
A PLEA to stop any more pokies machines coming to the Frankston area is being made by council to state politicians. Councillors at this month’s public council meeting unanimously decided to write to Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy and local Labor state MPs Paul Edbrooke (Frankston) and Sonya Kilkenny (Carrum). North-West Ward councillor Glenn Aitken raised a notice of motion at the meeting “requesting a moratorium and/or ban on any further gaming machines in the Frankston municipality”. Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) statistics show pokies losses have averaged about $62 million each year…
A MOVE from premises in Mentone to new digs in early 2016 was the impetus for an art group to paint a picture of its own history in book form. Mentone Mordialloc Art Group member Pamela Cooper compiled and edited the Art In Mentone book after deciding to dig through files stored in a cabinet at the group’s former Old Granary Lane base when it was scheduled for demolition ahead of a move to the Mentone Activity Hub in Venice Street. The Mordialloc resident uncovered a treasure trove of documentation dating back to the art group’s formation in 1956 that…