Days numbered!

By Kath Gannaway
THE future of Warburton township group, Bridge 3799, rests firmly in the hands of the Warburton community.
After three failed annual general meetings, the group will meet again on Sunday, 23 April to elect a committee of management.
Bridge 3799 was set up to represent the various community groups in Warburton.
Committee member and local businessman, Michael Zaar, was optimistic last week that the community would not let the group fold.
He also called on the Shire of Yarra Ranges to take more of a role in supporting the committee to ensure its continued viability, a proposition which seems unlikely at this stage.
Even if the meeting manages to get over the first hurdle of attracting a quorum, Mr Zaar said two more hurdles would need to be cleared.
“We have to have an elected committee and we don’t have enough people to go on the committee in its current format,” he said.
“There is some interest from people willing to put their hands up if we were to reconfigure, but there are some problems which need to be addressed which get down to us looking at what our mission is and getting the community involved a bit more.”
Mr Zaar said one of the problems faced by the existing committee had been funding administrative costs and he called on the shire to help out.
“We are a creature of the shire so, in a sense, while the shire has done a fantastic job in terms of creating the opportunity for groups like us to exist, the resources it has allocated to these groups was a bit haphazard.”
Mr Zaar said a small contribution by the shire for administrative costs would help.
However, the shire’s community relations manager, James Martin, says it was not possible for the shire to provide funds to every township group.
“Bridge 3799 has done a good job and we hope it will remain as a viable group, but from the shire’s perspective we believe we have a role in terms of assisting communities to be self perpetuating, to provide them with the ability to establish themselves, but also to have control over their own destiny,” he said.
Mr Zaar makes a compelling argument for local community groups to support Bridge 3799 as an umbrella group with the recent announcement of the $100,000 Community Building Grant set to look at projects in the Warburton, Millgrove and Yarra Junction communities.
“In order to identify the gaps and plot an overall community plan we need Bridge to continue to be able to support that project as a whole rather than a number of disparate groups. That should be our focus over the next two years,” Mr Zaar said.
Mr Zaar said any new committee could look at how Bridge 3799 could be restructured under the Community Building auspices, but added that the immediate need was for people to attend the meeting, and for enough of them to put their hands up to join the committee.
The meeting is on Sunday, 23 April at 1pm at the Upper Yarra Arts Centre.