Moyne Shire councillors to vote on Port Fairy's Belfast Aquatics pool

The question of what to do with the troubled centre has come before council again following a six-month external investigation, paid for by the council, to chart the best way forward.

Based on the four options produced by the investigation, council officers have suggested the council chief executive officer Brett Davis undertake a further six-month investigation into one of the options, costing up to $25,000.

Mr Davis would have to report back by September 30, and in the interim the council would keep paying $10,000 per month to Belfast Aquatics to maintain its insurance cover, on top of the $200,000 the council pays the centre each year to keep its doors open.

In July 2022 councillors voted to give Belfast Aquatics an extra $91,000 to help the centre pay its inflated insurance premiums for the 2022-23 financial year.

But the extra funding was conditional on the organisation submitting to a full investigation by an outside expert, which would help the council decide what to do with the struggling centre.

The project brief for the investigation said "the overarching objective is for the appointed consultant to develop, in conjunction with stakeholders including council, a plan for future use for the Belfast Aquatic Centre that includes the recommendation of a preferred sustainable, business operating model".

The investigation had to be completed by December 2022 and the council had to analyse the results by March 2022.

The council has declined to release the report publicly, citing "commercial confidentiality", but the April council meeting agenda outlined four options identified by the consultant.

Option one was to "do nothing", which council officers immediately dismissed since the Belfast Aquatics committee's "current situation continues to deteriorate (financial, governance, operational risk)", costing the council more and more each year.

Option two was to "contract out" management and operation of the centre to a professional outside organisation. The consultant said this would be the best move, but it would make the council entirely responsible for funding a pool and leisure centre it has always insisted was the community's responsibility.

The financial burden on the council would be even higher than it already was. The transitional costs to prepare the centre for professional management would be from $50,000-$75,000; then the annual cost over the next 15 years would be around $274,000.

The third option was to create a community asset committee to manage and operate the centre. Under this option the council would effectively be running Belfast Aquatics, which the consultant noted council didn't have the expertise, or motive, to undertake. Council officers rejected option three.

Option four would involve the creation of a community-based organisation to run the centre, not unlike the current committee, but guided by a "skills-based board". Council officers said this was preferable to option three, but could be unsustainable in the longer term and would very likely involve significant capital costs to the council.

Council officers said they considered options two and four as the only realistic choices, and suggested exploring option four first to see whether it was feasible, given the huge costs involved in option two.