During Weddin Shire Council's ordinary monthly meeting on October 17, Council voted to endorse the full implementation of the Taylor Park master plan.

Councillors were informed about the latest developments in the Taylor Park project and noted the successful application for funding for stage 2 of the project has been received in order to complete stage 1 and stage 2 of the Taylor Park Master Plan.

Director Corporate Services John Thompson said the purpose of the report was to inform Council and give an update on the successful application of the stage two of Taylor Park master plan.

The funding source is currently under embargo, Mr Thompson said, but they are hoping that will become publicly available soon.

The master plan has had a large amount of community consultation early in 2023, which included feedback from schools, and community members through community engagement sessions and online surveys.

Mr Thompson said once they appointed the project manager and the consultant it became clear that there was more required than just providing an inclusive playground and they needed to undertake an approach that looked at the park as a whole making sure every everyone had safe access, bathrooms from the street facilities.

Mr Thompson said features in the park such as the ramps and pathways were no longer meeting Australian standards, which then required the full park master plan and was quite a big process to make the whole space fully inclusive, compliant to regulations and usable.

He noted the Eastern end of the park will remain the formal end with minimal works to that end and works been undertaken in the eastern end have been mainly to the pathways to make sure they comply with Australian standards and offer more accessibility.

Along the western end of the park will have the new inclusive playground.

The rose garden in front of the toilets will have to be removed to allow for the proper grading of the accessible pathway.

Where possible, the roses will be replanted in the rose garden in the eastern end of the park.

A report went to the October 2023, Mr Thompsons said, with a resolution to endorse the master plan, noting that the accept stage one and proceed when the funding and consideration of stage two came through.

This was put out to public exhibition, with four submissions received by council. and taken into account.

Mr Thompson said this came back to the Council meeting in December 2023 and passed, with Conuncil then moving ahead with the application for funding.

Mr Thompson said they have now gotten the additional funding, almost the amount they wanted to get, and they are very pleased by that.

"We believe that it's sufficient now because we can do the the two stages together, there'll be some synergy there [and] some financial savings there," he said.

Mr Thompson said they are confident they now have the funding to complete it per the for the master plan that was put up and accepted by Council.

The first round of funding amounted to $629, 797 and was funded by the Department of Regional NSW through their Stronger Country Community Fund round 5. The second lot of funding amounted to $592,318.00, with the funding source currently under embargo. These fund both Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the Taylor Park Master Plan.

Stage one has commenced to some extent, but with the funding approved, work on both stages can fully commence.

Councillor Paul Best said he would like to pass on his congratulations to the staff for such a good job.

Councillor John Niven asked if the rotunda would be maintained as it is.

Acting General Manager Luke Sheehan said there is some allocation in the funding to look at the rotunda to see what they need to with maintenance around it, but they won't be altering it.

"There's a few parts of that building that need some love and attention," he said,

Mr Sheehan said there will be some allocation to the rotunda to do some repair work to it.

Councillor Chad White asked if the public are still able to access the toilet and other facilities, as the park is such a public place and the public toilet accessed quite a lot.

Mr Sheehan said the main construction for the inclusive Adventure Playground is up the Western end, so they should be able to keep the bottom end largely untouched particularly access to the toilet.

However there may be some times when access to the toilets may be impacted when they do the pathways to the toilets and the rose garden area.

Mr Sheehan said they will be trying to keep that to a minimum.