Perth Voice Interactive

Not being negative

CONTRARY to mayor John Carey’s rude remarks at a previous council meeting, I am not about just being negative.

Asking questions or questioning the decisions of council is not just being negative.

I have been going to council meetings for six years and have read more background, more reports and more council documents than many current councillors, the mayor included. Many of the things I have previously questioned council about have resulted in policy reviews, if not changes to policy.

I am not pretending to know everything but there are many things I can stand up and confidently say I fully understand. I think this allows me to ask questions and expect answers.

The fact there are councillors who vote on items they do not understand scares the shit out of me. These decisions have a direct impact on my business: my livelihood.

I work seven days a week, 363 days a year and I work bloody hard. It is not for the money because most of my staff make more than I do. I do this because as a single parent I wanted to be able to take and pick my child up from school and have the ability to participate in her schooling. Being self-employed allows me this luxury and for me, I believe that hard work is a small price to pay.

I have invested a lot of time and money into my business and cannot, and will not stand silently by when decisions are being made that may have a negative impact on my business.

I will stand up and ask questions and voice my opinion. What hurts my business hurts my family and I will never stand idly by and let anyone do that.

Leederville is important to me. I have grown up in this area and watched it survive basically unscathed and relatively free from commercialisation. It is an area that, partly due to relative neglect in previous years, has thrived and retained the individual character that draws people to the area. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has never been truer than it is for Leederville.

I am not anti-development, but I believe it has to occur in an organic way dictated not by any council but naturally by the area and the people who live and work in it every day.

The council seems hell-bent on gentrifying the town centres and suffocating any originality out of them. Each area needs to be different—that is how each can survive. They can’t be competing against each other, but need to be complementary to one another, allowing people to appreciate each for the unique aspects it holds.

Case in point is the Oxford Street Reserve. I do not care how many times council tries to justify and claim community consultation was done, it simply was not.

People do not want this. People do not think losing 24 car bays is a good trade-off. In every survey done by council, people have stated parking is their main concern. How can the council then justify any project that results in the loss of parking, especially with no real benefit?

Oxford Street Reserve was indicative of Leederville. It was an old-school, unpretentious area of space in juxtaposition to the city in the background and the busy shops near by. It was an area of true public open space. It did not need anything done to it. There has never been anyone saying their main concern is the development of that park.

People loved that park for what it was.

Now, thanks to a council too easily lead, it has been destroyed forever.

Driving by the site on the weekend I was confronted with an unrecognisable space of ripped-up bitumen and grass, large trees that had been chopped down and artworks that had been there for years just thrown upside down in the corner. It brought me to tears and left me with the feeling that I should have done more to stop it.

There is no justification for what the council has done.

If the council wants to go along with the self-serving, ill-thought out plans of the mayor then all I ask is that it do it elsewhere and leave Leederville alone. It should feel free to go and stuff up Beaufort Street all it wants. For anyone to sit up there and claim to know what is best for a place, when they do not live or work there, is crap.

That is supposedly what community consultation is for, and why when the council knows the community won’t support certain things, consultation is not done properly, if at all.

I will not be silenced by a mayor who in my opinion is out of his depth and out of control. I will continue to speak up and fight so Leederville can survive and the people who make this area what it is can have their say about its future.

To the council I say this: Whether you agree with me or not, at least have the courtesy to hear me out rather than have me sit down and be quiet.

Debbie Saunders
Oxford St, Leederville