COMMUNITY unrest appears to be growing about the length of time taken and the direction of Southern Grampians Shire projects in and around Hamilton.

Local business owner, Paul Battista, posted on a Hamilton community Facebook group last week with a short message that described his dissatisfaction with what he called “very poor fiscal responsibility with my rates”.

“Very concerned about Council buying properties with no plan,” he wrote.

A significant number of community members responded with many expressing concern about the time taken with the Cox Street works, citing January 16 as an original planned starting date, but wondering why there appeared to be little happening.

“Cox Street is going to be closed forever if they are gonna take as much time … to get started,” one commenter said.

Others thought Council took too long with preliminary activity when proposing projects.

“They’ll have to do multi thousand-dollar feasibility studies before they can make plans,” another wrote.

But another commenter put the responsibility back on the community: “Why don’t you rate payers of Hamilton address this at Council meetings?”

When asked about the community response, Mr Battista, who served on the Council between 2008 and 2016, said he felt the Council wasn’t doing well with public consultation on projects and recent split decisions between councillors were troubling.

“I think the problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any firm plan,” he said.

“(They) seem to be spending money without thinking about what the future looks like for the CBD.”

When asked if there were any projects he would like to see undertaken, he was quick to speak of the condition of the main shopping area footpaths.

“My priority is definitely the Gray Street development landscape where it’s safe for all the people that visit Hamilton,” Mr Battista said.

“Just to make it all flat – we’ve got an ageing population that needs to be looked after; you need to make it safe for them.”

Mr Battista also said the Southern Grampians signage at the entries of the town was “in desperate need of improvement” and would also like to see Mt Baimbridge lookout be more attractive for tourism.

“I think it needs some TLC on it – it needs to be made a reserve that you would take (and) tourists would visit and enjoy … maybe have a picnic or a barbecue,” he said.

Another idea at the location has come from local amateur astronomer, Sarah Longcor - she would love to see a community space for stargazing at night, something the elevated location would be well suited for.

“You’ve got lots of land there … you could have people bring their own telescopes (and) put concrete pads down (for them),” she said.

“I really want to get (the project) going. It would be really good for schools and educational purposes. Astronomy is just not taught (compared to) when I was in school - that was a long time ago.

“We’ve got some really dark skies here, which is amazing.”

Southern Grampians Shire Council chief executive, Tony Doyle, told The Spectator they were “committed to the development and implementation of infrastructure projects that have the ability to grow” and pointed to the Council and Community Investment plans along with their budget and Long-Term Financial Plan as guiding their objectives.

“As released over the last couple of weeks, we have three major projects that are in the development stage which is the CBD revitalisation, the Government Hub and Gallery which will provide endless opportunities for our community and is a really exciting vision for the Southern Grampians,” he said.

“We are working with the contractors to continue to progress Cox Street as printed in last Saturday’s paper. Council are equally frustrated as residents at the delays faced but we are working on solutions to address a lack of available contractors and materials.”

Mr Doyle said other local government authorities were also experiencing challenges with their projects including getting responses to tenders and hoped the community would contact Council with their concerns.

“Transparency in relation to all of our major projects and works is incredibly important to us which is why involving community input via community engagement opportunities is a high priority for our Council and staff,” he said.

“While we acknowledge we are facing delays on these larger scale projects for reasons often outside of our control, they are incredibly important for the growth and liveability of our region and we will continue to progress these to completion.”