Monday 11 January 2016
THE MIRROR
Folio 4/ Issue 2/ Page One
You are not facing the reality Statement to the extraordinary meeting of Palerang Council held on Tuesday 5 January 2016 by former mayor Walter Raynolds. To be honest councillors, I think we are going to get what we deserve. The following is not a complete list, but it is some of the worst wastes [of money] of this Council and previous councils.. My memory is that the Trucking Yard Lane [subdivision] legal fees were $250,000. The Council decided they did not want the development and it cost that amount of money to lose in court. Personal friends of mine, the Harrisons, had to go to court to win a development. It cost them $90,000. What it cost this Council I don’t know, but I have no doubt it was an awful lot more. For reasons unknown to me this Council commissioned a Rural [Lands] Study, at a cost of around $90,000. Where has that gone? It is impossible for me to guess how much it is going to cost this community for the debacle of this Council [in handling] 12 and 14 Malbon Street, Bungendore. You’d only have to go to Mittagong or Gloucester or any number of other towns to see what might happen to Bungendore if a mall is built somewhere other than in the CBD. Apart from the cost to Council, the disruption to the existing business community would be devastating. I wonder if any of that entered your heads when you did not ratify the decisions of the previous Council [on that matter], but I am not privy to all of the information. But the one that always upsets me is the greatest waste I have ever seen or been associated with. It’s the Macs Reef Road Transfer Station, built at a cost of $1.5 million of public money, barely 15 minutes from the $4 million [waste] facility at Bungendore. It’s
not only the waste of the capital, but the ongoing cost, year by year. I’m guessing but it is certainly in the hundreds of thousands dollars. I wonder if any of you have ever travelled the State, at all. For example, where my daughter lives at Wallangra, an hour this side of Goondiwindi, on a decent sized property, with at least two miles from the homestead to the front gate. They have a bi-weekly waste pick up. Yet Wamboin and Bywong people can’t be bothered to take their bins a few hundred metres [to pick up points] and so we have that waste. In my opinion, and I believe also in the State’s opinion, more money should have been spent on rural roads. This Council has a penchant, second to none, for refusing transport on state funded roads. Do you think the state is not aware that you do not allow transport through all these roads? That, at will, you close roads to transport and that you refuse grants for transport? And you wonder why the state is going to take you out. The other thing that I am disappointed about, is that, as a councillor, I don’t think that you are facing the reality that you’re going to go and, in so doing, it is incumbent upon you to do the very best that you can for your constsituents. For example, in a matter of two hours this morning, I was able to find out the entire details of the rating system of GoulburnMulwaree– which I have no use for– but I know that if Braidwood or [the old] Tallaganda were to go to Goulburn, the upheaval felt here back in 2004 would be a mere kindergarten fight [compared] to what’s coming if Braidwood, or any part of Palerang goes to Goulburn because, in my opinion Palerang has the best rating system available. That is, it is valuation based whereas
Goulburn has– I don’t know how to describe it– it’s political and there are huge cross subsidies in the Goulburn system and, as I’ve written in the papers, in my opinion it is lazy and lacks intellectual rigour.. Anyway those are my opinions. I would like to take the opportunity to thank senior staff and the Council in general for the bridges, and particularly those in the east [of the shire]. There’s been millions spent and bridges are necessary for everyone.. I know I have complained about some roads [in the past] but the roadwork this Council does is [also] a credit to them, wherever they are.. There are going to be upheavals for [works] wage earners and contractors. Divalls [Earthmoving] are going to be hard to beat and, in that vein I’d rather [that Palerang] be going with Queanbeyan.. But, in the vein of the Mayor [being unpopularly elected] I’d rather see us go with Goulburn. But that’s only my opinion. As a Council you could have done a lot more research to guide your constsituents as to where the best choice was or is. Editor’s Note. The resolution of the first Palerang Council not to seek the assistance of properly experienced planning consultants in making their new LEP, and instead write the plan themselves, is right up there with the Macs Reef Road Transfer Station as the Council’s most bone headed decision and greatest waste. It has already cost in excess of $1.5 million, with rural land use and lot sizes and strategies for the development of Bungendore and Braidwood yet to be considered and the heritage inventory far from completed. John Mitchell