By Corey Everitt
Hill’s residents are calling on Cardinia Shire Council to reconsider their management of Emerald’s Hills Hub as community complaints address the lack of access and facilities used.
The $8.1m building has been open for 36 months and has drawn criticism from residents regarding supposed short opening hours, lack of public-facing staff and neglect of facilities.
This has prompted the ‘Hills Photographic Society’, a volunteer group of photographers, to start a community petition which was tabled before the council at the general meeting on Monday 19 June.
Current President Allan Pan and Co-Founder, Paul Bianco are familiar with the Hills Hub as the photography society uses the space for their regular meetings.
Having migrated to the brand new building when it was first opened, they are frustrated with how it is being used.
“It’s not being used enough, it’s open from 10 to 1 and there are a whole lot of facilities not being used,” Allan said.
“It’s just sitting empty.”
Currently the Hills Hub is open to the public for 15 hours a week from 10am to 1pm Monday to Friday.
Residents and groups can use the facility outside of these hours, but they must be booked in advance with the council.
Allan and Paul say this is a frustrating process in reality and wastes the capability of this facility for the community.
“It’s a fantastic venue,” Allan said.
“But the whole thing is just underutilised, massively underutilised, if you are open from 10 to 1, most of our club people work, so you never get access to the joint,” Allan said.
“If you try and get in after-hours you need their permission, so I can’t even take people for a tour.”
The Hills Photographic Society was formed in 2016 from avid local photographers wanting to contribute their passion to the community.
The society was excited for the new Hills Hub in 2020 as a place for locals such as them to showcase their artistic pursuits.
The society currently has an exhibition running at the Hills Hub yet Alan and Paul feel it may have wasted their members time.
“We have an exhibition and there’s no real signage,” Alan said.
“No one knew it was there, did you know there is an exhibition on now?
“We’ve got nearly 40 members, it’s really hard to organise an exhibition and hardly anyone sees it, you go well why are we doing this.
Paul added, “It won’t have many people come in because people don’t know about it and it’s closed at 1 o’clock, it doesn’t make sense.”
It’s this overall lack of service and the proper utilising of the facility which seems such a waste.
Allan and Paul claim that reception is manned rarely, while an industrial kitchen space has barely been used and meetings for the public are left open as the facility is only open for 3 hours a day.
The Hills Hub has regular user groups such as Men’s Shed and Hills She Shed, University of the Third Age, Puffing Billy Toy Library and Emerald Village Association, but is not designed to be exclusive to them.
While for the regular groups it has become more frustrating recents to operate.
“This year especially it’s been such hard work just coming here,” Allan said.
“You should be able to just walk in and have a meeting and walk out.”
The society made a petition this year addressing the issues garnering hundreds of signatures in person and online.
The petitions call for the opening hours to be ‘greatly increased’, for staff to take on more public-facing responsibility and for the appointment of a placemaker.
The latter is crucial as the Hills Hub did have one, but not anymore as of this year.
“If we had a placemaker, which we had before, that worked pretty well, except for it still being closed all the time,” Allan said.
“When you build a building like this you need to staff it.”
While more efficient staffing would help.
“Monbulk has a hub like this, it’s not quite like this, it’s not as big, we could wonder in their now and their would be two people at their desk doing their office work for the Yarra Ranges Council, but you can walk up to the desk and say ‘look Allan and I can we have a space for a few minutes we wanna talk about something,” Paul said.
“It’s accessible.”
Monbulk Community Link is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
“Our main beef is that one, someone should be in there servicing the people using it and two, it should be open a lot more than it is,” Allan said.
Paul added, “it’s open for 15 hours a week and it could possibly be open for 40 hours a week.”
They were inspired to take this action for not just themselves but from frustrations from the wider community.
“We had a community group expo day here, run by the Eastern Dandenong Ranges group, there were 30 odd groups,” Paul said.
Allan continued, “not one group in the whole expo was happy with the hub.”
“Some didn’t even know it was available,” Paul said.
A spokesperson for the Cardinia Shire Council said the running of Hills Hub was determined through community contributions.
“After lengthy public consultation, it was determined that public opening hours of the Hills Hub building are between 10am – 1pm weekdays. This equates to 15 hours per week,” they said.
“During these hours, the reception desk is attended by volunteers from one of the community groups that call the Hills Hub home (our Hills Hub Licensees).
“Council staff are also available onsite for any enquiries during these hours.
“The number of staff may vary each week depending on other tasks across the halls and hubs Council manages, but there will always be someone available to the public during these hours.
The spokesperson explained the petition will be reviewed.
“The Hills Hub art space uses a curated model which is the most common model of programming public art spaces.
“There are regular call outs for the community to pitch ideas and express interest in all of our arts offerings, and we seek to find a balance between diverse projects that fairly and equitably represent the wide diversity of artists in Cardinia Shire, as well as providing regular opportunities for community arts organisations to showcase their work, such as Emerald Arts Society and Hills Photographic Society.
The spokesperson explained feedback will be reviewed.
“Council appreciates the feedback provided by Hills Hub users and the broader community. We will review any concerns raised by the community and assist in resolving them wherever possible.
The Hill’s Photographic Society’s petition was tabled Councillor Jeff Springfield and a report by the Council will be considered in the agenda of the next General Council Meeting on Monday 17 July.
