Warrnambool City councillors will decide on Monday whether to throw their support behind a move to change staffing requirements for the proposed drug and alcohol rehab centre.
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The 20-bed Lookout Residential Rehabilitation Centre in Dennington failed to get the backing of the council in April last year, but was given the go ahead by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Western Region Alcohol and Drug Centre is appealing one of the conditions VCAT imposed on the proposed facility which will ultimately be decided by VCAT after another hearing on February 25 and 26.
WRAD director Geoff Soma has said the staff numbers prescribed by the condition were "vastly different" to similar-sized residential rehabilitation centres operating safely and effectively across Victoria.
A letter to the mayor from the Rotary Club of Warrnambool Central, which is included in Monday night's council agenda, labeled the planning conditions imposed by VCAT as "totally unacceptable".
It says the requirement that the facility was required to have staffing levels at least 30 per cent higher than every other state-funded facility in Victoria was "manifestly unfair" to the people of Warrnambool.
"The facility will not and cannot operate if staffing costs are 30 per cent higher than other similar Victorian facilities," the letter says.
"WRAD will abandon its mission to create a facility in the south-west if this condition is not removed from the VCAT conditions. It will not seek another site."
Warrnambool's charitable foundations have also thrown their support behind WRAD's move to change the conditions which it labelled a "prohibitive financial condition".
The original application for the site at 43 Atkins Lane in Dennington drew 34 objections.
Objectors now say that while they were disappointed they lost the fight at VCAT not to have a rehab centre built near them, they had taken "some comfort" in the knowledge that it would be well supervised.
One objector said the proposed amendment to staffing conditions "completely undermined" that.
Under the proposal, the former Western District Employment Access Community Day Service building would be used as the administrative wing and two single-story accommodation wings constructed.
The council will vote on whether to support a call to:
- reduce by three-and-a-half hours the amount of time a minimum of two staff are required to be onsite on weekends,
- and reduce by three-and-a-half hours the amount of time a minimum of five staff are required to be onsite on weekdays.
The council's decision will be forwarded to VCAT ahead of the February hearing dates.
Mayor Tony Herbert and Cr Robert Anderson visited a drug and alcohol centre in Ballarat last week ahead of Monday's vote to look at the therapeutic community model.
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