Pakenham’s beloved Christmas Carols have been given a lifeline, but the future of the event remains uncertain after Cardinia Shire Council voted to run it one final time this year.
Mayor Jack Kowarzik moved a motion for the council to lead and deliver the 2025 Pakenham Carols event, working alongside community groups and using the same $40,000 budget as the 2024 event, plus officers’ time.
The motion also called for the council to support community groups to take over future Pakenham Carols, with budgets adjusted annually for inflation.
The motion was prompted by a recent Expression of Interest (EOI) process that failed to attract any community groups willing to take over the event.
The only submission came from a commercial operator, raising concerns the event might lose its community character.
“If this notice of motion is lost, then it will go to the commercial group to run, and it will have potentially a very different nature in how it runs,” Cr Kowarzik said.
“When you combine that with the inevitable loss of community group revenue on the day and potentially change the nature of how the event runs and who’s involved, it becomes too big a risk.”
At the 21 July meeting, Cr Kowarzik urged the council to step in and manage the festivities to ensure the tradition continues.
“Considering that no community group applied to run the Pakenham Carols during the recent EOI, my view is that council should run the 2025 Christmas Carols event,” Cr Kowarzik said.
“The lack of applications from community groups for this event speaks to the increasingly difficult nature of running large community events.”
Deputy Mayor Alanna Pomeroy, while supporting the motion, warned the council may have to play the “Grinch” if community groups don’t step up to run future Pakenham Carols.
“I am going to support it for this year, but I don’t actually want to see it come back next year to support this again,” she said.
“If the community groups don’t want them, there is going to become a point in time when, yes, hit me on the front page of the paper as council is being a grinch. If the community doesn’t want to help run it, we don’t have an events team at council.”
Cr Pomeroy praised smaller towns for doing more with less, urging Pakenham to follow its direction and take greater ownership of its festive events.
“If you look at what Garfield is spending and what we are supporting Garfield with, it is very small,” she said.
“I get Pakenham is a growth community, so we do need to rally the troops in Pakenham and try get these events established.”
Cr David Nickell fully embraced the “Grinch” role in opposing the motion, saying that organising and funding Christmas carols is not the council’s core responsibility.
“I’m happy to be the grinch…This is not our core business to do this stuff and to use officers to do this stuff,“ he said.
“If you want to go to carols and you want to sing some Christmas carols with your kids, maybe find out what church your grandparents or your parents went to, and go to church and chip in and do carols with your church. That’s what it’s actually about. Not for council, to put it on for you for free. Go and chip in, just like the other churches all around the shire.”
Cr Trudi Paton, also opposing the motion, expressed concern about the true cost of running the Carols this year.
“We have to stop talking about the $40,000 that we’re spending and rephrase that as the $77,000 that we’re spending or $80,000 that we’re spending, whether or not it’s a budget line item, it’s still Council money.”
Despite the debate, the motion passed with Mayor Jack, Cr Pomeroy, Cr Ross, Cr Roberts, Cr Owen, Cr Potter voting in favour. Cr Nickell and Cr Paton voted against, while Cr Thomsen did not participate in this item after declaring a conflict of interest.
