SWAN Hill Rural City Council has big visions for Swan Hill’s
primary tourist attraction with Pioneer Settlement’s new laser light show a hot
ticket item in this year’s draft budget.
Council is set to invest $1.9
million towards the redevelopment of Pioneer Settlement, subject to external
funding, at a time when the facility is struggling financially.
Figures in
this year’s draft budget reveal user fees for council facilities, which includes
revenue from the Pioneer Settlement, fell well below projected forecasts in the
2012/13 budget.
While these fees were projected to generate $4.8 million in
council revenue, the projected income was almost half a million dollars
($485,000) short of meeting this projection, with user fees instead generating
$4.3 million for the 2012/13 financial year.
“The majority of this variance
($400,000) is due to the lower than forecast result from the Pioneer
Settlement,” the 2013/14 draft budget states.
Despite Pioneer Settlement
running at a loss and relying on a council subsidy, recent works have seen local
visitation almost double in the past five years.
For more on this story, see Friday’s edition of The Guardian (28/6/13).
