A YOUNG drivers program that aims to keep high school students safe on local roads has won just a single year of guaranteed funding from Bathurst Regional Council.
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The Rotary Youth Driver Awareness (RYDA) program gives hundreds of Year 11 students access to a series of workshops during a five-day course that has run each year at the Mount Panorama pit complex.
Speakers this year included representatives from headspace and Bathurst police, driver training staff from Panorama Road Safety and crash survivor David Paton.
Students pay just $10 to attend the course and a letter to council from RYDA co-ordinator, Brian Burke of the Bathurst East Rotary Club, said that fee barely covered the costs associated with running RYDA – even without having to pay around $6500 to hire the pits facilities.
Council has traditionally waived those hire fees and when a request from Rotary to continue that arrangement was first tabled in March, it was expected councillors would readily back the proposal.
Instead, the item was deferred for two months and a second report from corporate services and finance director Bob Roach again recommended council agree to a three-year waiver.
Mr Roach’s report included financial detail from Rotary outlining the costs associated with running RYDA, along with the club’s fear that council’s failure to waive the fees might spell the end of RYDA in Bathurst.
“Council is advised that the Rotary Club of Bathurst East Inc is a not-for-profit organisation and can only survive with the help of the Bathurst community,” Mr Roach stated in his report.
“Councillors are requested to consider the request from the Rotary Club of Bathurst East Inc for a further extension of three years to conduct the Bathurst Rotary Youth Driver Awareness – Road Safety Education Program.”
Again, though, councillors baulked at the proposal put before them.
Deputy mayor Ian North offered a compromise that would see council waive the hire fees for 2017 only before arranging a meeting with RYDA executives to further discuss the program and its future.
Councillors agreed, and voted to waive the fees for 2017 only at this stage.
A meeting with RYDA officials will be arranged in coming months.
