Bid to net candidates

By Ed Merrison
KNOX Basketball Incorporated (KBI) has appealed to Knox councillors and election candidates to address what it sees as inequities in council funding.
KBI held a slide show presentation on Tuesday, 8 November in which it detailed its membership, expenditure and facility requirements.
The presentation also contained an in-depth comparison of its expenditure and council subsidies with those of other sports and community groups in Knox and with basketball clubs in other municipalities.
Although all sitting councillors were invited, only Dinsdale Ward councillor Adam Gill and Scott Ward councillor David Cooper attended.
The presentation evening also attracted candidates for the upcoming Knox City Council elections.
KBI CEO Laurie Joyce said the organisation had also sent out a questionnaire to all candidates asking what commitment they would give to KBI should they be elected.
The organisation intends to provide all members with copies of the questionnaire responses and to ask that they be distributed amongst friends, family and neighbours.
According to the presentation, KBI is one of the three largest basketball associations in the country, with 990 teams and 8000 players.
The organisation says basketball is the most popular sport in Knox, with roughly double the participants of football.
Mr Joyce said that 60 junior teams had been added in the past two years but the municipality lacks the courts to accommodate such growth.
“The limiting factor in terms of growth is a lack of facilities.
“We could go out and recruit more kids, but we don’t have the facilities,” he said.
Mr Joyce said the KBI had been forced to look at alternative training arrangements.
At present, KBI uses six courts at Boronia Stadium at the weekend in addition to a further 15 outdoor courts across the municipality.
Since 1991, KBI has spent $3 million using the Boronia Stadium, which it leases exclusively from the council. KBI reports that the council recorded a profit of $82,447 on Boronia Stadium in 2004-05, spending $39,143 and reaping an income of $121,590. Conversely, the KBI figures point to a $105,981 loss on the Knox Regional Netball Centre.
The losses reported on outdoor venues are even higher.
KBI claims that, of the total annual income from sporting facilities of $190,000 ($115,000 of which came from basketball), the council made a loss of $259,995 on maintaining the municipality’s ovals.
“We’re not asking them to stop funding other sports but we want the profits (the council) makes from basketball to be put back into maintaining and increasing our basketball facilities rather than having basketball revenues subsidise other sports,” Mr Joyce said.
KBI’s lease on Boronia Stadium comes up for renewal at the end of June 2006, although Mr Joyce had hoped to renegotiate the lease at an earlier date.
Mr Joyce said negotiating a better rental deal on Boronia Stadium and asking the council to fully fund the non-playing areas of the stadium would allow KBI to manage its long term financial future.
Money saved on rent to the council that Mr Joyce claims currently subsidises other sports would also be available to fund more facilities for Knox basketball teams.
“We need to resolve the lease situation here at Boronia. Once we secure a long term lease, we can plan for the future. Until we can do that all our future plans are on hold,” Mr Joyce said.
Under current caretaker provisions, the council was unable to respond to comment on the KBI statistics or respond to the Mail’s questions as this was deemed to be an election issue.