New facility hours arrive next week

Council Locals are encouraged to familiarise themselves with new operating hours of several Council facilities before they come into effect next week.

The City Library, Regional Art Gallery, and Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum (GeoCentre) will all adopt new hours from August 13.

The new hours were voted in by Councillors at the June meeting, and will better align the facilities' operating hours with the city's tourism trends, and other similar facilities across the State.

Council's General Manager, James Roncon, said the move to the new hours was a logical one.

"We undertook in-depth analysis of visitation and staffing levels of our tourism facilities, and benchmarked the Library against others in the State, and it was very clear that changes needed to be made," he said.

"We know that tourism in the city effectively halves during our hot summers, yet we'd previously been operating all facilities as if it were peak season all year round.

"It made very little sense, and was just an inefficient use of staff time and resources."

Mr Roncon said the new hours would also allow staff to undertake important planning work that was currently not being completed.

"We need strategic plans on how we're going to manage our vast collections of minerals, artworks and books going forward, and our staff currently don't have the time to undertake that work," he said.

"Even simple maintenance isn't being completed at times because our staff are constantly on the front counter of facilities that are open inordinately long hours.

"If we want to manage these facilities and their inventory properly into the future we have to allow our staff the time to complete work behind the scenes that currently isn't being done.

"We realise we're not going to please everyone with the new hours, but the data shows we're badly over-servicing at these facilities, and it's an issue we cannot continue to ignore."

Council wishes to reiterate that no jobs will be lost as a result of the new hours.

The new hours for each facility are as follows:

Library

Monday, Tuesday, Friday: 9am-4pm

Wednesday, Thursday: 9am-6pm

Saturday: 10am-1pm

Sunday: Closed

GeoCentre

March-November

Monday-Saturday: 11am to 4pm

Sunday: Closed

December-February

Monday: 9am-2pm

Tuesday-Saturday: 9am-12pm

Sunday: Closed

March-November School Holidays

Monday-Saturday: 10am to 4pm

Sunday: Closed

Gallery

March-November

Monday: Closed

Tuesday-Sunday: 10am to 4pm

December-February

Monday: Closed

Tuesday-Sunday: 10am-3pm

March November School Holidays

Monday-Friday: 10am-5pm

Weekends: 10am-4pm