The funding reallocation was included in the latest mayoral minute detailing the impacts of the pandemic on the council and the community to date.

Since the start of the pandemic, the impact on council alone has been in excess of $5.6 million.

Council allocated $10,000 in the March 2021 mayoral minute to engage Renew Australia to undertake a scoping study for the Bathurst CBD as to the opportunity to utilise vacant floor space to catalyse community renewal, economic development and creative industries.

Following discussions, council has learnt it would need to need to commit $30,000 to run the affiliate membership program with Renew Australia, and have a dedicated staff member three days a week.

Council does not have the resources available for this, and has learnt from other councils that the Renew Australia program "had limited impact on the vacancy rate of their CBDs".

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With this information in hand, council has now abandoned the Renew Australia idea and reallocated the $10,000 earmarked for it to council's business attraction program.

This program is targeted towards attracting creative industries to Bathurst, such as architects, place makers, advertising agencies, which are known to occupy spaces in CBDs.

"As such, it is hoped attracting a greater share of these industries will have a stronger long-term impact on the vacancy rate in the Bathurst CBD than the Renew Australia program," the mayoral minute said.

Director of Corporate Services and Finance, Aaron Jones, later told the Western Advocate that that the business attraction program was another, potentially better, way to achieve the desired effect of the Renew Australia program.

"The end result is still the same, it's just through a different avenue," he said.

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