A controversial switch

A controversial switch-back concrete path will diminish the character of a unique natural bushland area in Forest Lodge. Clover Moore resorted to using her emergency powers to secure the development on Monday.

The result of a vote on the motion to demolish the path was a draw, until Mayor Moore, on the back-foot after 5 of her Councillors sided with residents, opted to use her back-up vote to finalise the strongly contested path’s introduction.

[Community] representatives, as well as Councillors spoke elegantly of the need to “listen to community concerns,” “make the right decision,” and “fix the mistake of allowing the path to be considered.” A woman in a wheelchair said the path, despite complying to slope restrictions, would prove an impossible barrier to other wheelchair users. “It’s 130 meters long, and in that distance, I’d go up six metres. There’s no way I could do that with my arms.”

Detailed descriptions of the path eventually surfaced through the developer, Frasers, after residents became concerned that the developing site did not match the plans they had sighted. A petition containing 330 signatures, as well as a number of speeches were presented by community members to the Council on Tuesday, but were unable to sway the vote of the five Councillors, including Moore, who voted down the path’s removal.

During the meeting, Mayor Moore continued to defend the path as being a way to access the natural bush land site, despite the fact that there are other natural paths crossing the area, such as the dry creek bed. Moore referred to protesting residents who were “ready to die in a ditch over this native habitat,” while reiterating that Council was always in support of bushland in the City.

Local residents in City Quarter as well as those on Hereford and Wood Sts, have opposed plans for the path since its secret inclusion came to light well after the official consultation period for the redevelopment ceased.

The path’s inclusion was hidden in the original document in just two highly-jargonized sentences that would be, by one Councillors admission, “inaccessible to any member of the community, not trained in construction.”

In the face of such strong community opposition and a divided Council, the path only survived by Moore’s double-dip voting. Moore’s defence of her decision shed no new light on her obvious zeal for the path, and raised the question, what was so important about this path, that only Mayor Moore could understand, but wasn’t able to communicate or convince the hundreds of residents who opposed it?

Chris Stringfellow, Glebe