Ron Mole has ask me to bring this up. please read Ron's comments and if you can help or have any ideas how we can get more support to stop this please ring Ron on the number below.
I have set up a E Petition. Please sign it if you can Thanks
http://www.gopetition.com/online/24197.html
Regards
Shane Boese
"Hi there, i hate having to write about this stuff but somebody has to do it. The Wellington point reserve master plan has floated to the surface again. Once again the Redlands shire council parks management team are up to their old tricks. Those of you that have been around for awhile will remember the garbage that they tried last time with the help of some well heeled close by residents and a councillor willing to do their bidding. This involved gating off the reserve and boat ramp at night and cutting trailer parking in half along with a heap of other moves to make it hard for people even without boats to use the park. Once people found out what they were up to the public outcry was huge and the plan was stopped. The management team came back with another plan while not as bad as the first was still bad. They tried to get it rushed through council before an upcoming local government election. But a small group of fishoes including myself had several “heated” meetings with the management team and the councillor involved to get the vote on the plan deferred to after the election. At these meetings the parks management team made it quite clear that they were anti fishing and anti boating and they said that eventually they would like the boat ramps and car parking removed from the reserve as it is an eyesore and spoils the ,weasel word warning, “amenity” of the area. They had conducted a survey of park users on two days with absolutely foul weather and asked them if they thought that the trailer parking was adequate, of course the parks were empty so the non boaters agreed that it was. No boaties were surveyed. They also put up two plans for public consultation one in side the council office where it would not be seen by any body working normal hours. The other one was hidden inside on the back wall of the restaurant at the point. They also conducted two meetings one an invite only affair for a few very close by residents and the other for Wellington point business owners. The plan was deferred to after the election and the councillor involved was booted out of office. The incoming councillor, who largely got there on this issue, vowed never to let this plan go through council. Sometime before the last local govt election the plan was put before the council with out warning and the councillor got the plan voted through. Once again this was done very quietly with no chance for us to object. One can only speculate on the reasons behind the councillor getting this plan through when he knew the majority of people didn’t want it but from where i sit it all looked pretty shonky. You may remember an article i did on this subject at the time. Not long after that we had another council election and this bloke was also bundled out no doubt with a fair push from disgruntled local boaties. Well now the council are going to start work on this plan early in the New Year. I contacted the current division 1 councillor Wendy Boglary and found that she new nothing about the history of this fiasco. When she went to the park management team they lied to her that they had consulted with the local boaties and the plan was all right by them. When she tried to get a look at the plan they gave her the run around and tried to avoid giving it to her. Most of you will not have seen this plan so i will try to explain some of the points that will adversely affect us. First up traffic flow is to be reversed and any cars entering the reserve will have to travel past the ramp to get out again. This, in their words, is to remove dead zones in the park to prevent hooning. We’ve been down this hooning road with these clowns before as this is the excuse that they trot out to try to justify this sort of work. The only thing that is ever going to work down there is an increase in police patrols. You can imagine the hassles that redirecting all the traffic past the ramp is going to cause particularly on busy weekends. Another genius idea is to remove the trailer parking bays to the right of the ramp and replacing them with ordinary car parks and picnic tables. This area will also have a foot path cycle path that will run straight across the top of the ramp. Now stop and have a think about this, people and there kids are going to park in these spots and sooner or later they are going to want to go out on the jetty or walk round the reserve. So now you have a busy foot path leading heaps of people many of them children straight across the path of people reversing boats on trailers with very limited visibility. To make it worse the boats have got to be reversed quicker than normal to dodge the artificially increased traffic flow. When the first kiddie is run over i hope that the people responsible for this plan names and addresses will be supplied to the grieving parents. The trouble is this situation will be twisted around and somehow it will become the boaties fault. But wait just like a demtel ad there’s more. The approaches either side of the ramp are to be narrowed down so that more garden beds can be created. This will also make it harder to manoeuvre trailers and space that is now used by boaties to untie when the tie down area is full up will no longer exist. The actual tie down area is to set at some sort of angle to the ramp although i haven’t seen what they are actually doing there as the engineering drawings are apparently different to the plan that was given to Wendy Boglary and they have been reluctant to give her a copy. The small southern ramp that is used by sail boarders, kyakers ect is to be closed off to the road. Up at the northern end the parks that are on the corner facing north will be removed to make way for more garden beds. What can we do to stop this from going ahead? I can’t see why this plan couldn’t be taken back to council and cancelled by a vote of the councillors. Who is supposed to be running the council? The elected councillors or the faceless team in park management. Two councillors have already been voted out, one in particular as a direct result of the public backlash over this issue. The same park management team are still there safe from voter anger and they are still pushing their anti boating agenda. The first thing you can do is to go and have a look at the plan, Graham Day at Wellington point marine has a copy that i left there. This copy doesn’t show the altered tie down area though. Next move is to tell all your friends that use the ramp and spread the word through the popular web sites. Contact Wendy Boglary 0408 543 583 or 38298619 wendy.boglary@redland.qld.gov.au and tell her what you think about the plan. I am going to try to organize a protest meeting but have been having trouble posting on the two local popular web sites. We can win this fight but we will need the numbers. Any body wanting more info or willing to help can contact me on 38229703."
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Originally Posted by Moonlighter
