THERE are bold visions for the future of Katherine’s showground and sporting precinct, but they will not be put on paper until at least 2017.
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As the push to develop a second-to-none sporting precinct gathers momentum, Katherine Town Council has advised that it has no intention of budgeting for the creation of a master plan in the upcoming financial year.
A basic master plan has existed since 2010 and while it does not include conceptual drawings, it outlines a $5.2 million “wish list” of infrastructure investments sporting precinct, showground, speedway and motocross track user groups want.
However, operations manager David Moore said the eventual master plan would only include council-operated facilities.
“My instructions from the people that were here at the time were, ‘if you had a million dollars, how would you spend it for your sport?’”
With the master plan set to cost $50,000, Mr Moore explained that the council had been advised to hold off until its asset management plan had been completed.
“We’ve been advised by master plan consultants not to proceed until our asset management planning and the consultants have finished their report into that,” he said.
“What that does is saves the sports master planners from doing the same thing, so we’re getting value for money.”
My instructions from the people that were here at the time were, 'if you had a million dollars, how would you spend it for your sport?'
- Katherine Town Council operations manager David Moore
Chief executive officer Robert Jennings said that although the development of the showground and sporting precinct was a priority, no money had been allocated in the 2016 budget to do so.
It means Katherinites will not be able to see a formal strategy for the evolution of both facilities for at least another 13 months.
“There’s two parts,” he said.
“We have to do the asset management plan.
“The second part is we have to actually budget.
“After we’ve done the revaluation, there’s probably six months’ work to get that done, maybe more, maybe less, we then actually need to budget money to put the master plan in.”