Ms Sheaves said the decision to award $300,000 to Peppercorn Inc smacked of pork-barrelling. “So we are looking for someone to pork barrel us, please.”
A spokesman for Resilience NSW declined to answer specific questions about how the dance classes met the funding guidelines or what community consultation had been held. He said the money had been allocated through an open, competitive, merit-based funding round.
“The assessment process determined that the project had merit and would help foster connection, support social recovery, improve access to mental health support, and build community resilience for people impacted by bushfires in the Hawkesbury region,” the spokesman said.
The lack of water storage along the Bells Line of Road had devastating consequences when an escaped backburn tore through Bilpin, Berambing and Mount Tomah on December 15, 2019.
Helen Foulis grabbed her chicken and cat and only just made it out alive before the fire destroyed her cottage and her next-door neighbour’s residence at the Tutti Frutti cafe.
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Two NSW Fire and Rescue trucks watched on. They were not carrying enough water to douse the flames and their vehicles were not designed to go off-road and fill up from local dams like the NSW Rural Fire Service [RFS] trucks.
“We had a false sense of security,” Ms Foulis said. “We had those town fire trucks at our place and we thought, ‘We’re safe’. But they couldn’t go off-road. They aren’t built for that.”
In the bush block behind, an RFS truck emptied its water onto the Bilpin district fire captain’s house to save it.
Ex-RFS senior deputy captain Kevin Tame said if the Fire and Rescue trucks had been able to refill, Ms Foulis and her neighbour’s homes could have been saved.
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A NSW upper house parliamentary committee is inquiring into bushfire relief grants, following allegations that $177 million was improperly allocated. It found in March that the Stronger Communities Fund, which was designed to assist councils after the amalgamations process, lacked transparency and that the vast array of grants in general were “wasteful and inefficient”.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has ordered a separate review of the government’s processes for awarding taxpayer-funded grants.
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Bushfire-affected community asks for water storage, gets dance lessons
Source: Philippines Alive
