Source : Perth Now news
A long-standing environmental centre’s request for a five-year funding extension has been rejected to reduce its reliance on ratepayer money.
The Bibra Lake Wetlands Centre has received funding from the City of Cockburn since it was built in 1993, which is uses to protect the wetlands and for community education.
The centre’s latest three-year funding agreement with the city is due to end in September, and it has asked for a new five-year deal that would see it funded until 2031. The term would align with the centre’s recent lease extension.
The non-profit organisation received $114,731 in operational sponsorship funding from the city last year, and requested $120,008 for the 2026-27 financial year due to CPI increases. It also plans to expand its services.
City officers instead recommended a reduced three-year funding renewal that did not consider CPI-based increases. Officers suggested funding be $110,000 next year, $105,000 in 2028 and $100,000 in 2029, with no additional city grant applications allowed outside of this agreement.
Instead, councillor Philip Eva proposed an alternate motion that allows the Wetlands Centre to apply for extra city grants and funding programs, and maintains its $114,731 funding allocation. This passed 7-2, including an amendment to cap the funding agreement at two years instead of three.
“The Wetlands Centre Cockburn is a valued environmental, educational, and community asset that delivers significant benefits to the city and its residents,” Cr Eva said.
“Maintaining the current level of funding with the annual CPI indexation will provide the centre with greater financial certainty while preserving the value of the city’s investment over time.
“Also allowing the centre to seek separate grants and sponsorship for projects beyond the funding agreement will encourage innovation, diversity, income streams, and strengthen its long-term financial sustainability.”
Deputy mayor Phoebe Corke suggested the two-year amendment because it was an “adequate” amount of time for the centre to prepare for funding reductions.
“We cannot continue to increase the funding we give them year after year after year without any end in sight. And there has also to be a bit of an incentive to find alternative revenue streams that will not be put into place if we continue to fund them at this level,” she said.
Cr Chontelle Stone argued the Wetlands Centre was supposed to reduce its reliance on city funds, and it was unfair to allocate so much money to it over other local organisations.
“It’s not that I disagree with what the Wetland Centre is doing. They are doing a fantastic job. But we rebuilt them a brand new facility, a new nursery, to help increase their additional income and reduce their reliance on council funding. That was back in 2022,” she said.
“They’ve got significant funding sitting in term deposits that’s earning them $12,000 a year in interest. The fact that they’re still so heavily reliant when they’ve got such a large amount of money in a term deposit that is actually generating additional income, plus wanting to also have additional grant funding from the city on top of this $114,000 base funding, it’s a bit much.”
Wetlands Centre board member Peter Rattigan acknowledged the need to to limit reliance on city money, but said plans to reduce the funding had come as a surprise and left the centre unable to budget accordingly.
“The recommendation from the officers is that the funding for this coming year simply be capped, there not be any CPI increase, and that the funding only be provided for the next three years, and reducing over that period of time,” he said.
“The difficulty with that is that there’s no forward planning. There’s no forward notice to the centre, so they can’t budget for that.
“The way to do it would be to keep the council funding going, look for other sources of funding, and do a sensible and planned handover. This sort of out-of-the-blue reduction in funding will throw a spanner in the works, particularly as the centre has never been better run than it is now.”
The centre’s 2025-26 annual report shows it achieved all nine key performance indicator targets, and met or exceeded eight of its nine long-term objectives.
This included 400 extra hours of community use of the centre, more than double the expected community engagement time through environmental education programs, an 88 per cent increase of volunteer hours since 2022 and generating $2.91 in community value for every $1 invested by the city.
Centre manager Ana Terrazas said the increased funding request aligned with CPI increases and the centre’s success as a “community asset” preserving the wetlands.
“We do education, we do community engagement, we do propagation. So, we do a lot of things and they are all interrelated,” she said.
“We do have some other funding, but we don’t know with the NRM and the Bendigo Bank (funding), how much is going to last, and what we will have to reallocate – they will all have to diminish in that proportion.”
She said the Wetlands Centre was limited in revenue streams as an environmental organisation, and needed the city’s money as a baseline in case other grant applications were unsuccessful.
The funding agreement will now cease in 2028, when it will be reassessed by the city.
