By Tyler Wright
Yarra Ranges Council has put forward applications in the Country Football and Netball funding program to help provide lighting upgrades to Belgrave Recreation Reserve.
The state government’s Sport and Recreation funding program matches council funding dollar for dollar of up to $250,000 per local government area to achieve improvement works at sports facilities.
Belgrave Cricket Club secretary and Belgrave senior football and netball club secretary Melissa Davey said some lights are not in working order, with parts of the ground unable to be used.
“It can be quite unsafe,” Ms Davey said.
“It doesn’t meet standard… and we have our women’s team who play 4.45[pm] competition on a Saturday night and [the lights are] not up to standard at the moment, so that’s been a bit of an issue the last year or so.
“There’s been many times we’ve come to training to turn the lights on and they’ve blown or there’s weird noises coming from them.”
Ms Davey said having the lighting repaired would bring more opportunities for more teams and players to become part of the community and train at the same time.
“It would mean that we’re meeting the league requirements and can host more night games or twilight games without any worries and it’ll just mean an overall security and sense of safety when it comes to the light towers for training and games,” she said.
“We’re just not being able to cater for everyone properly at the moment because we’re just quite limited in the time or the amount of space on the oval that we can use at every given one time.”
At a council meeting on Tuesday 28 March, Lyster Ward councillor Johanna Skelton said lighting improvements would be a cost saver to the club’s who use the reserve and for the broader community.
“Belgrave Recreation Reserve, the sports lighting upgrade is so needed, it’s not up to par at the moment and the club is spending a lot of money on lighting,” Cr Skelton said.
“They are going to be very happy if we are successful in getting this money from the state government because it’s going to reduce the running costs for the club and enable them to do night games and some other uses of the space.”
Councillors voted to endorse netball court surface works, fencing and lighting upgrades at Morrison Reserve in Mount Evelyn.
Councillors also voted to endorse a contribution from the Capital Expenditure Program to fund the balance between estimated project cost and the Sport and Recreation Victoria funding should the projects be successful in submission to the Country Football Netball Program.
“I’ll have my fingers crossed to hope that both of these projects are successful at that level,” Cr Skelton said.
“They’re both enabling the council to make substantial savings.”
The motion was carried unanimously at the meeting.
