Hello USofA, France, Russia, and India, and welcome to the blog...and an old favourite that I would rather have nothing to do with...(sorry, what?-Ed)...well the old Rail Lands Retail Agenda is a frequent visitor to these shores, yeah, but that's only because it's a shipwreck looking for somewhere to run aground...I'd rather not be having to write about what a deceitful and costly farce this whole process has been because I'd rather it wasn't happening at all...(fair enough-Ed).
But First: caught some cricket yesterday after a nice little heart starter...was just turning into my street when a police car came speeding around the bend behind me, and in the same moment I spotted kids playing on the road so I jammed on my brakes...I half expected the police car to plough into me, but by the time I'd negotiated the corner and glanced back, it was gone, off down the road and around the next corner...that sort of excitement I can do without.
Then in the cricket, Australia was already 5 for 100ish, and I joked to myself that, given their history this Ashes series against England of being 5 for not much and then getting decent scores from their middle order batsmen, they would be 6 for 300 by the end of the day...close...later that day they were all out for 320ish...and I've just got back in and England are 5 for 25...(sorry, that's now 5 for 58-Ed)...ta.
Oh yeah, and I ran into my favourite City Councillor Ian Von Stanke at the supermarket...walked past a foot behind him and I don't know if he even knew I was there...(oh, he knew, I saw him glance at you over his shoulder and quickly look away-Ed)...really? not so mouthy now 'ey Ian?...particularly for someone who has abused me at volume in public meetings, come out to my home with a threatening letter, etc...and a lovely segue given that he has featured regularly in The Border Watch trotting out Council's latest deceit re the Old Rail Lands...(and it was the Rail lands stuff that had him half out of his chair half yelling at you at that Budget Consultation meeting-Ed)...so it was, hilarious...
Anyhoos, I have thoroughly, repeatedly covered Mt Gambier City Council's Rail Lands Retail Agenda, but just for the record...various vested interests are completely obsessed with building a massive expansion of the Lakes (Centro) Plaza across that site, and this obsession has completely compromised Planning and Development in Mt Gambier for a decade now, starting with the Bunnings/Penola Rd fiasco (previous posts).
Then the Library and Main Corner Projects, both fundamentally unnecessary and irretrievably over-budget, were jammed into the Cave Gardens area so as not to compromise the RLRA...and the same with the Lady Nelson Bus Shelter fiasco, an outrageously expensive and atrociously pointless piece of infrastructure set a kilometre out of town rather than centrally in a renovated Old Rail Station.
According to The Border Watch Friday 3rd January 2014, the Old Rail Lands site was "Gifted to the council and community in 2004..."...(I thought it was early 2005-Ed)...whatevs, it's basically a decade ago...and the moment that 'gifting' happened a small group of self-important, self-righteous, self-entitled vested interests viewed that site as their own personal property for them to do with as they please for their own personal profit...and so it has progressed.
If Council are supposedly so super-dooper keen to be 'more transparent with ratepayers', then perhaps they could release the gazetted Labor state government's 2009 re-zoning of the Rail Lands site to Retail/Commercial...(a reality which Council has tried to hide by calling it 'City Centre' or whatevs-Ed)...exactly, and an admission that I politely bullied out of Daryl Sexton at Council's Budget sessions...the site has been re-zoned and that cannot happen without state government approval.
And while they're 'disclosing and exposing', perhaps Council can also publish the official approvals from federal and/or state Rail Authorities to move the Easement...I cannot believe that they have official approval to cram 2 tight kinks in the line, let alone 2 so close together...come on Council, show the people of Mt Gambier the approvals, etc, that Daryl Sexton stated (at the February 2006 meetings) Council were already in possession of.
Whoever has officially approved this ludicrous re-routing of the Easement should be sacked and publicly vilified for allowing not 1 but 2 major 'De-railing Points' to be built, let alone for allowing this right in the middle of town...it is a ridiculous, highly dangerous and completely unnecessary action that defies basic logic, let alone reality, let alone fundamental principles of planning for safe, efficient egress.
Any train traveling on that line would have to move through those kinks at an absolute crawl so as to not de-rail, and there would be endless screeching, shunting and rattling of rail cars, etc, because of the tight angle...can you imagine a perpetual freight train screeching and clunking and clinking it's way through there, because it would have to be a freight line...(a very lucrative freight line-Ed)...indeed, to justify the expense of replacing it in the first place, and their would need to be multiple trains daily, and they would have to crawl through town.
Furthermore, Council have openly admitted that they don't know whether or not they, and therefore ratepayers, would have to pay for the replacement of all the rail and other infrastructure they have just spent a fortune on ripping up needlessly...why would you proceed with a potentially massively costly works without definitively establishing who is liable to pay for what?...it's gold-plated lunacy, and in that context, classic Mt Gambier City Council.
Everybody has an opinion about whether or not Rail will ever return to Mt Gambier, but given that Council's justification for maintaining/moving the easement is that they are required to in case it does, let's take that return as a given and review Council's plans in that context...(oh, strewth, it just gets worse and worse...is there any up-side to this debacle?-Ed)...no, absolutely not, it's a rancidly corrupt disaster from start to finish...let me explain.
Please refer to the various maps and plans, etc, that I have provided in previous posts, all of which have the Easement moved to the Southern boundary and represented as a 'Bikeway/Walking Track', with, according to TBW, a large drainage pond in the South West corner...now fence off the Rail Easement as indeed would be required, and suddenly you have not a parkland, but a series of unconnected small spaces fenced off from one another with a train line through the guts and all of the back of the Margaret St Precinct completely cut off...
If the Easement weren't moved, an operating rail line could be safely fenced off and there would still be a long, albeit narrower parkland running unimpeded from Bay Rd right through to Wehl St Sth, and the 'amphitheatre' type structure that Council allegedly has planned for the centre of the site could back immediately onto the Margaret St businesses, etc...
Sorry, because this is blowing out, I'll stop here and do Part II,
Tomorrow: RAGOTR Part II
Because I like to offer solutions not just criticism...but there's still plenty of that to come too...the RLRA is a definitive study in the greed and incompetence of City Council.
I am Nick Fletcher and the best part of this post comes tomorrow on this here my blog...just wait 'til you read Council's feeble scramblings in TBW as they try to address my criticisms re the Rail Lands...hilarious...cheers and laters.
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