Sunday, May 8, 2011

Time to review Willow Court position

I HAVE asked that a special council meeting be held this week to review the council's position on the handback of the Willow Court site. The mayor has agreed and the meeting will be on Thursday at 6.30pm in the courthouse at New Norfolk. My reasons are as follows:
  • The council has spent a year unsuccessfully negotiating to return the remainder of Willow Court to the State Government
  • The State Government clearly has no intention of fulfilling its election promise to resume ownership of the site
  • The council has done nothing with the Willow Court development strategy (the MacDonald report) it received two months ago
  • The mayor's failure to convene a promised meeting with its Willow Court Committee to discuss implementation of the MacDonald report 
  • Continuing vandalism of heritage buildings on the site as reported in last week's Derwent Valley Gazette.
UPDATE - May 10: Having received a copy of the agenda documents in today's mail, I was disappointed to learn that it had been decided to hold this week's Willow Court debate in closed session. Willow Court has been mired in secrecy for too long and the council seems to have learned little about the public's desire for information and action.

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    4 comments:

    1. SimonMay 9, 2011 at 3:54 PM

      Will it be an open meeting?

      ReplyDelete
    2. Damian BesterMay 9, 2011 at 4:26 PM

      Good question Simon. I can't see any reason why the public should be excluded from this meeting - but I haven't seen the agenda document yet.

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    3. AnonymousMay 10, 2011 at 9:43 PM

      good on you Damian - Council really need to move on the McDonald report. We simply can't allow for this report to join the pile of the other never-to-be-seen-again documents. This report is full of good ideas, and has finally brought a bit of hope to this sorry site. Council needs to take the next step, and I am sure the community will follow. Inger

      ReplyDelete
    4. smartie_69May 15, 2011 at 7:58 PM

      Very much looking forward to hearing the outcomes. Thank you for taking the initiative to try to keep some momentum on this one

      ReplyDelete

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