Liberal vows to improve parking measures

The Liberal Party have nominated new car parking measures and improved public transportation as critical election issues in the prelude to the Waverley Council ballot on September 8.

Widespread congestion in Waverley streets has led to parking becoming a prominent area of concern. Waverley Councillor and Liberal candidate, Tony Kay said he was focused on a “big carrot, small stick” approach to parking.

“Our philosophy is much more about incentives rather than penalties,” he said. “That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.”

Mr Kay said Liberal would review minimum and maximum allotments for multi-unit dwellings and introduce realistic rates.

“Those maximums are coming down and down. This means for multi-unit dwellings, developers cannot provide sufficient car space for the holders in those dwellings. When people move in and they have a car, they have to leave their car on the street because there’s no space allocated to their unit. That’s getting worse; it’s not getting better.”

Mr Kay pointed to car sharing in multi-unit dwellings and mini-buses suited to Waverley streets as part of the Liberal plan moving forward.
Currently led by former Mayor Sally Betts, Liberal have touted returning Waverley’s budget to surplus as crucial should they return to power.

“We couldn’t believe we hadn’t been told about the state of play for the books,” Mr Kay said. “In my view, they [Labor] have their philosophical projects they want to put money towards. Over and over again, I see at Council all of these projects come up. There’s no funding. No funding has been allocated and they endorse them. We need to have the funding first before we can move forward.”

Ms Betts, a candidate for Hunter Ward, said they plan to restore three tunnels underneath Bondi Beach, which have not been maintained and suffer from cement corroding.

Liberal’s aim is to have one tunnel restored within the next year. “We’re talking about quite a lot of money … about $80,000 or more per tunnel. We really want to make sure that they are upgraded. Obviously there is an ongoing risk that if they deteriorate [further], it will cost more in the long run to fix them up.”

Ms Betts said Liberal would work with their State counterparts to reach a solution as the electorate continues to push for the introduction of a light rail service in the district.