[May 2023] A deep dive into the draft Council budget and plan reveals how Council wants to quietly abandon a previously promised $11m St Kilda Library Redevelopment.
Council has quietly abandoned an $11m St Kilda Library Redevelopment with a sneaky renaming as part of the current draft budget and plan.
In only 2021, Council budgets and plans included an $11M line item of the St Kilda Library Redevelopment due in 2026. This was included after extensive community consultation about a ten-year library plan.
To quote from the plans, Council said this is what the community could expect in 2016:
“The redeveloped St Kilda Library is the City’s largest and most used library, with creative production capacity such as creative labs, an exhibition gallery and recording and rehearsal spaces. It is an iconic library destination seen as a benchmark for urban libraries in Australia”. p10
The very same plan said:
“The St Kilda Library has had no major investment to increase floorspace in recent years and at many times of the day is operating at high capacity. This is likely to have contributed to the declining rate of visits as the population increases.”
Keen readers of the Council CEO reports will know that visitor number to the St Kilda library have dived below expectations – but we don’t know by how much because the door counter has been broken for many, many months. Yes, sad but true.
Sneaky and disingenuous
Now in the latest draft budget, deep in the fine print is this Orwellian renaming of the library plans:
“Library Facilities Improvement Program (previously St Kilda Library Redevelopment) – the project has been broadened to cover all library facilities and spread out over the life of the 10-year plan. A library facilities improvement plan will guide the future expenditure. In the interim this will fund minor refurbishment and replacement of furniture.”
But guess what, we don’t have a library facilities improvement plan as yet, as we found out when we asked Council these questions:
What happened to the previously announced St Kilda Library Redevelopment (scheduled for 2026) $11,000,000 (Council Plan 21-31)?
Are there still plans to redevelop the St Kilda Library? If so when?
When and how where any changes to the $11m activity foreshadowed in the 10 year plan communicated to the community?
Where can we read the “library facilities improvement plan”?
Mayor’s response in full
Mayor Heather Cunsolo provided this response though her media team (reproduced in full)
“Our Library Action Plan 2021-2026 outlines Council’s plans to undertake a 10-year asset renewal and redevelopment program to meet the growing and changing needs of Port Phillip residents. This includes:
– Refurbishing St Kilda Library to increase flexibility of spaces, and to integrate a creative production focus.
– Refreshing other library branches to enhance their local character and service delivery, to accommodate where possible more programming, technology, gaming and spaces for creativity.
– Exploring options to extend community access to Library spaces utilising technology and infrastructure differently.
– Identify and new library builds required in developing communities.
– Developing engaging and interactive children’s areas at all branches that provide opportunities for programming, collaboration and parents/carers coming together.
The Library Facility Improvement Program includes improvements and upgrades required to all five libraries, including the St Kilda Library. Our Council will be able to provide an update on the program of works later this year.
In the meantime, we continue to undertake maintenance, repair, and programmed renewal of Council library facilities, updates to its collections and renewal of furniture to ensure these much loved community facilities continue to provide valuable services.”
Readers, are you feeling any more informed?
Even trickier back story
TWiSK editorial
On background, a councillor (and other sources) has told TWiSK that the $11m library redevelopment was not an expansion of library services but actually an expansion of council office space – with much of the new space to be occupied by bureaucrats rather than librarians.
Tricky, we were being asked to judge a book by its cover! Eventually the plans were buried, but on the QT.
But the fact remains, we were promised a better library in the order of $11M but what we got was another plan yet to be revealed.
Shabby but not so chic
Regular visitors to the St Kilda Library don’t need to be told how run down it looks and feels. The once fashionable ‘brutalist’ architecture now looks more like Soviet style office space. Its embarrassing, its crowded and it’s behind the times. And now three years later, the promise of creative production capacity such as podcast studios seems like a cruel broken promise.
Annually, the community is asked to sign off on council budgets and plans. This process and the community’s input seems futile if the outcomes can change without notice and on the sly.
Has Council fallen into the habit of being ‘good news’ only rather than open and frank?
As illustrated in this case, Council can not bring itself to say that the plans to redevelop the St Kilda Library have been scrapped, cancelled, abandoned or dropped.
Instead, redeveloped became refurbished. St Kilda Library became all libraries. And ominously, the carrot of new library builds elsewhere gets added to the mix.
Seems if we want something new, we may need to move to Fishermans Bend!
