Cinema master planning continues despite council division

Stewart Architecture has been engaged to develop a master plan for the site and to prepare a car parking strategy for the CBD.

It is expected these reports will be complete in the coming weeks and will be presented to Council soon after.

The Cinema Advisory Committee continues to explore options to facilitate a cinema in the CBD.

The council issued the statement confirming its interest to pursue the long awaited cinema after last week's heated meeting which saw a majority of councillors vote to halt further spending on the CBD upgrades and divert the money to the cinema project.

Since then a rescission motion has been received in relation to the original motion. It will be revisited at Council's September meeting.

However, the council's dysfunction is being played out in the media and even spilled onto social media with several comments on the Queanbeyan Age Facebook page.

Mayor Overall, Deputy Mayor Peter Bray, Cr Cregan and Cr Kenrick Winchester have all spoken to radio station 2CC in the last week.

Mayor Tim Overall said he was "dumbfounded" with the decision.

"The Upgrade project has already gone to the community for consultation with almost 90 per cent support ... councillors then voted unanimously to proceed with the project," he wrote.

"This is not a matter of either/or but this is the project committed to by Council and to reneg on the basis of erroneous suggestions of revisiting finances and other dubious assertions is a slap in the face to the community."

While there have been whispers of party politics with a little more than 12 months until local government elections, Cr Cregan said it was a matter of "pausing and considering Council finances".

"What [Cr Overall's] done, he's tried to turn this into 'we don't want the park, we don't want this," he said on 2CC.

"What we want to do is we want to know what the finances are. We know there are going to be over $300 million of works required in the next 10 - 12 years."