A LENGTHY discussion on the future of the small brick toilet block next to the highway at Glenthompson took up a considerable part of Wednesday’s Southern Grampians Shire Council (SGSC) meeting, with councillors wading through a solid mire of subjects to eventually arrive at the decision to demolish the old dunny in the new year.

The journey to get there made for entertaining theatre, with all seven councillors speaking passionately to the issue as disagreements and near-acrimonious exchanges unfolded on different levels, working out points of order and highlighting different community and Council priorities.

Although the overall topic was scheduled as the first official management item on the agenda, it had already been discussed when Glenthompson local, Jenny Rankin, earlier gave a three-minute public deputation to the meeting, expressing strong disappointment with the town having been given just three days to respond to a newly-released Shire report, calling the “treatment of a small community to be shabby in the extreme”.

“That’s 10 months after the toilets were closed, and 13 months after the decision was made to close them,” she said.

“In no sense can this be regarded as timely or as any form of consultation or community engagement.”

Reminding the council of 340 signatures on a petition to keep the toilets, she accused the council of being “secretive at the expense of its constituents” and slammed “the ridiculously inadequate time the community has been given to respond”.

“We therefore call on councillors to postpone the decision about the fate of the roadside toilets in Glenthompson, to commit to full disclosure to the community and to clear up misconceptions about them and to allow the community adequate time to make its responses,” Ms Rankin said.

“Anything less would seem as contempt for the people whose interest you should be preserving.”

But her vehement deputation was just a warm-up for when the actual agenda item was opened a few minutes later with SGSC Infrastructure and Sustainability director, Marg Scanlon, reading through the Executive Summary.

“One of the key issues - a fundamental issue that brought us to this point is its compliance with public health,” she said.

Ms Scanlon then detailed three recommendations for Council to vote on: to acknowledge the petition, note the building will be demolished, and inform the lead petitioner of the decision, committing to engage with the Glenthompson community on the design and construction of a new facility within this financial year, all budgeted to $250,000.

Councillor Katrina Rainsford immediately moved to defer the matter until the recently-released-for-public-feedback draft Small Towns Strategy (STS) was adopted with the goal of giving the community in Glenthompson time to consider the report.

“It’s about adhering to our actual policies of community engagement, actually respecting the community and empowering the community,” she said.

“What we’ve served to do out at Glenthompson in particular, is cause some stress, and almost disempower the community - but they have become empowered.

“Approving a demolition order for this toilet block doesn’t solve and decide what’s actually going to be done in its place … don’t do another George Hotel, make sure you know exactly what’s going to be done.

“We always say it’s a really good image and promotion of the community if you do have good toilets, and I think improving these toilets is the way to go.”

However, councillors Mary-Anne Brown and Albert Calvano said they didn’t understand the connection with the STS.

“I just want to clarify exactly what you think the connection is between the small adoption of the Small Towns Strategy and the demolition of the public toilets in Glenthompson, because that’s not clear to me,” Cr Brown said.

“What’s the Small Towns planning got to do with the toilets?” Cr Calvano echoed.

Councillor Fran Malone said she too had reservations about the speed of the decision - “I’ve had a lot of thoughts from the community saying that they haven’t had enough time to read it” but questioned why the STS was relevant.

“I would like to see the motion changed and not be tied up with the Small Towns Strategy,” she said.

“But I would like to see it pushed out to the February meeting.”

Mayor David Robertson spoke to the economics of Shire infrastructure, pointing out “$13.7 million must be spent every year to keep our assets and facilities in a current state - we have to do that every year”.

“Every time we build a new asset, it means greater depreciation at a later date down the track. The relevance here is that this toilet block on the highway and the one at the Lions Park are both inadequate - one’s been condemned and the other one is not really up to standard.

“What we cannot (do is) build a new toilet block and do up another one in the Lions Park 200 metres down the road. The responsible decision that the council have to come to is that there’s going to be one new toilet block built for Glenthompson, not one new one and one updated one.”

Cr Rainsford countered and said despite the money already being allocated to the project, the economics weren’t clear.

“There’s not been any analysis of … what it’s going to cost to actually build this new toilet,” she said.

She claimed “the costings that we’ve had on improving the brick toilets are exorbitant” and added the community would rather see the money allocated to the project “be better (spent) supporting the investment in the (Glenthompson) school, which we started looking at 10 years ago”.

After the motion to defer failed, Cr Brown said she acknowledged the communication with the community had been inadequate, but “the reality is that even communicating that information would not have changed the issues around the noncompliance of the toilets”.

“Whether we like it or not, there have been complaints,” she said.

“We are seeing a facility that is well past its use-by date.”

“Those toilets are not going to be reopened in their current state. Even if we postpone the decision to February, that is not going to change it.”

But Cr Calvano spoke in support of keeping the building, being “ideally located for traffic from Willaura”, and wanted to listen to community sentiment.

“We talk about empowering the community in our decision making - is 340 signatures enough to make us councillors take notice of the users of the Glenthompson toilets?” he asked.

Councillor Helen Henry said she had taken an interest in how representative the petition was.

“I actually went through the petition quite thoroughly,” she said.

“I was really interested in who would be compelled to sign a petition to save a toilet that could only be described as one of the dankest, darkest toilets I’ve ever been in.”

She claimed, “many of them were not even from our area” and began to raise her voice as she defended the economic rationale of the recommendation.

“We don’t have $13.9 million (sic) every year which will increase by the way to maintain all of our assets, plus the services that we have to maintain including and on top of roads and renewals,” she said.

“We just don’t have that money.

“I actually can’t believe that we’re standing here debating a toilet. I find it absurd.”

She then turned to Ms Rankin - “I’m really sorry that you have to lose your toilet, but you have another one” - then back to Council, speaking increasingly more loudly.

“And I would much prefer that Glenthompson not be known as the town that has three toilets!”

Cr Rainsford responded, pointing out she was “speaking calmly” and “not getting too excited” and again mentioned the Small Towns Strategy and the current town campaign to save the pool as “it’s about the facilities, about the expenditure that we do allocate to different communities”.

“What on earth has the Small Towns Strategy got to do with the toilets?” Cr Henry said.

“Why do we keep referencing that? Those are two separate issues.”

“(It’s) about rationalising cost,” Cr Rainsford explained.

“Which (are) the same arguments that I’ve just heard as to why we can’t maintain three toilets.”

Councillor, Bruach Colliton said “I want good outcomes for Glenthompson” and regretted the lack of good community engagement, adding, “I respect the deputations and hearing from residents”.

“It is an emotive issue,” he said.

“But I support the evidence, and I look forward to us building something good and new and fresh for Glenthompson so we can all stop there and enjoy ourselves.”

Cr Brown said she felt upgrading the old building would be “basically pouring good money after bad” and wanted a better experience for visitors to the region that would last “10 to 15 years”.

“I think we need to think about if you are going into those toilets, as a tourist, what sort of experience is that?” she said.

“What does it tell you about a town when you’ve got a very old, noncompliant, dirty, dark facility?”

The vote was five-two in favour of the recommendations, with Cr Rainsford and Cr Calvano voting against.