By Mikayla van Loon
The Montrose Men’s Shed put forward a passionate plea in the form of a petition requesting Yarra Ranges Council reconsider its stance on recreation space uses as the group looks for a more appropriate sized home.
Lee Kirkby spoke on behalf of the Men’s Shed at the Tuesday 10 September meeting raising the issue of limited space and desire to expand which has been blocked by the council’s policies.
“The Montrose and District Men’s Shed have been operating from a council leased facility behind the Montrose Public Hall for the last 10 years,” Mr Kirkby said.
“We now find that we have limited space available for facilities, and they are restricting our growth and ability to attract new membership.”
Seeking an alternative to their current premises, Mr Kirkby said the Shed approached the Montrose Recreation Reserve Committee with a proposal to build a new shed at the site of the old cricket nets.
Mr Kirkby said “they wholeheartedly endorsed our proposal to join their community” but after meetings with the council’s officers, it became clear there was “a gap between where responsibility for Men’s Shed sit in council policy”.
“[This] has led to an inability to be able to progress our request,” he said.
“At this stage, it was suggested that we wait for the outcomes of both the open space and recreation strategy and the property strategy, but there is no definitive statement that either of these would actually address our request, meaning only further delay and uncertainty.”
Offering to fund the purchase and build of a new shed themselves, through both fundraising and grants, Mr Kirkby said in order to prepare for this, all the necessary planning needs to occur sooner rather than later.
“The agreement requested is to lease a site, obviously subject to council terms and conditions that would allow us to start some formal planning process, including developing a business case, site investigations, plans, drawings or relevant permits, costings, and developing a funding plan.
“We have set aside some saved funds for this preliminary work but we don’t want to start the process unless we actually know we could have tenure of a site. We don’t want to waste the funds or waste time in doing such on an unlikely adventure.”
Councillor Andrew Fullagar asked a number of questions of Mr Kirkby relating to the specifications of the new shed and the overall response from the community.
Mr Kirkby said the estimated shed size would be 200 to 250 square metres, a huge improvement on the current 88 square metre footprint of the Leith Road site.
He also said the petition was submitted with multiple letters of support from the scouts, the Montrose Township Group and Montrose Primary School, with “absolutely unanimous” support given.
Cr Fullagar, supported by Cr Len Cox, moved the motion to accept and acknowledge the petition but put forward a case for adapting the council’s recreation policy to accommodate the Montrose Men’s Shed within the larger recreation reserve.
“They’ve made a number of submissions over several years trying to move forward on this project, and some of the key issues are the use of public space to accommodate buildings and activities unrelated to open space, along with associated minimum spatial impacts,” he said.
Given the approximate 10 hectares of land at the Montrose Recreation Reserve, Cr Fullagar said for what the Men’s Shed was asking for, it would be roughly 0.25 per cent of the total area and would be strategically placed to ensure the new shed did not impede on green space.
Cr Fullagar said the Men’s Shed granted permission for the shed to be a council building, even if they raise the funds to build it, which had been noted as a concern.
“I don’t think that is necessarily an objection to it,” he said.
Most importantly, Cr Fullagar said the issue of location posed the question of ‘if not recreation, then what?’ particularly given the health and wellbeing benefits of the Men’s Shed philosophy.
“The role in the community and the municipality generally that men’s sheds do, that mental health space, that recreation, which it certainly is, I think that’s how you would class it, is obviously vital,” he said.
“The Men’s Sheds that are in existence are providing a very valuable resource and benefit to the men in our community.”
Using the council’s own values, Cr Fullagar said this was a project where the council could really put into action its mantra of ‘community first, can do’.
“Here’s an opportunity where the council can actually assist our community and there seems to be quite a lot of pushback over a number of years,” he said.
“Our new values say ‘we do what matters’ and I think this is one case where it does matter. We have an opportunity to help a section of our community and the community wants this to happen,
“‘We make it better’. Well, they’re struggling in the current facilities they have. It is an opportunity for us to assist them, to make it better for them and for the Montrose community.”
The two other values of ‘we do it together’ and ‘we make it happen’, Cr Fullagar said, were perhaps the easiest to enact with the offering of funds from the Men’s Shed and the council able to make a decision on the sheds construction.
The petition was accepted with a unanimous vote.
