Sophie Conlon
City of Mount Gambier staff have assured they can still accommodate people with access needs, despite the Civic Centre’s internal lift becoming inoperable.
Council general manager city infrastructure Barbara Cernovskis said the upgrade process had began before the lift failed.
“The upgrade was actually already in process and then the lift has had another failure that we’re having investigated at the moment,” she said.
“We had already gone out to tender and had ordered the new lift for replacement.”
She said it was not an ideal situation, but it “could have been worse”.
“It is unfortunate that we couldn’t get a couple more months out of it,” she said.
Ms Cernovskis said it was expected the new lift would be installed around October.
“That would be an indication- the lift is on order, but it needs to come from overseas,” she said.
“I never like to get too exact with dates and times when we have to wait for something to come so far.”
Council was also investigating alternate access solutions, like a chair lift, to avoid further situations like this.
“We are also looking at bringing forward an alternate solution because we have been looking at that as part of this project in the event that the lift is out of order, this lift or a future lift, what are our other solutions going to be?” Ms Cernovskis said.
In the meantime, Ms Cernovskis said people with access needs could still use council services.
“When people are coming in with enquiries for council our staff are actually going down and we’re meeting with people in the foyer of the civic centre to be able to overcome those access issues in the short term,” she said.
She said the foyer was visible from council’s reception area and all services could be delivered from there.
It was suggested people with access needs could call council for questions or ahead of their visit so they did not need to wait.
City of Mount Gambier can be contacted at 8721 2555.
