Perth Voice Interactive

MAIL thieves are targeting credit cards in West Perth.

On Monday, Perth MP John Carey hosted a packed-out community safety forum in the suburb and locals said mail theft was a major issue. 

“Crime has declined in West Perth in comparison to previous years,” Mr Carey says. “The key issue that was raised – and police have been running operations on this in the past and dealing with it – is theft from apartment letterboxes…that was the overwhelming complaint.”

“It seems this particular crime has escalated with the rise of tap and go credit cards—you don’t need a pin.

“Some are automatically approved and so people are breaking in, getting either cash if it’s sent, or going for the card and using that for up to $100.”

He said “police have been doing a good job—they had success in East Perth, they busted people doing this.”

Some residents have resorted to installing locks on their letterboxes, but the Voice witnessed a dodgy gent banging on a mailbox lock with a big rock across from Hyde Park.

“Some apartments are changing their security, either installing CCTV or moving the letterboxes to a more secure location,” says Mr Carey.

Grouped mailboxes inside a gated-apartment complex are a goldmine for thieves, and they wait for a resident to go in and tailgate them.

WA police minister Michelle Roberts and local police attended the safety forum.

Officers encouraged residents to report every crime so they can build-up accurate statistics and focus resources.

Mail theft is also an issue in East Perth, and Maylands had a serial mail thief operating during Christmas last year.

Earlier this year police caught a prolific offender nicking letters in Claremont and Crawley.

by DAVID BELL

AFTER receiving a petition from locals, Stirling council is removing parking meters on the Mount Lawley stretch of Beaufort Street – less than three months after they were installed.

The council voted to bring in paid parking in March this year in line with a recommendation from their staff, with only councillor Elizabeth Re voting against it.

The machines were installed at 680 Beaufort Street and Field Street parks at the start of July, charging $2 an hour, and letters to the editor complaining about them came not long after.

In August nearby real estate agent Stuart Irving described the rollout as “incompetent to the highest degree”. He said the empty spaces would “indicate that the meters and lack of signage are doing their job of…driving people away from the area”.

The first hour is free, but it wasn’t well advertised in the first six or so weeks, so people would drive past (down the road at Vincent council’s carparks they have huge signs promoting the first free hour).

More than 300 people signed a petition calling for the council to remove the meters on Beaufort and Field Streets.

“Since the introduction of paid parking, many residents and businesses have been impacted with less business patronage and night parking in front of residential homes.”

They delivered the petition to councillor Joe Ferrante, who moved that the city scrap the meters at the September 18 council meeting. It’ll cost between $3000 and $5000 to remove them. His motion read: “Businesses and consumers are facing an incredible amount of economic hardship and paid parking is adding to the burden.

“In review, the time is not right…”

by DAVID BELL

FOLLOWING the Voice front-page story “School Crisis Meeting” (September 15, 2018), about parents threatening to pull their kids out North Perth Primary School over bad grades, we received this emotional letter from parent and former school board member Alex Apostolou:

I READ about the plight facing North Perth Primary School and am writing to apologise to all staff, students and parents, past, current and future. 

I am responsible for your miserable primary education experience. 

Through my lazy and inattentive ways I have caused the present malaise. 

I could have acted but didn’t, could have spoken out but didn’t; all in the name of going along to get along. 

Now, with the writing well and truly on the wall and the knowledge that for so many kids, the bright light of education never got above a mozzie zapper’s sizzle, my confession is overdue. 

Back in 2011, North Perth Primary School was an amazing place. 

Our kids loved going to school, they loved their teachers, they were involved in tonnes of after-school activities.

All the school families and staff were constantly initiating projects to build things, improve the school’s facilities, hold events and the kids were the centre of this universe – just as it should be. 

Cassandra

I was on the board then, joining in with others parents, teachers and the then-Principal to help coordinate that amazing array of activities. 

They were heady times. The kids were thriving and excelling. Only a fool would have missed the signs of the impending catastrophe. 

I remember the first time I learnt that a departmental law was forcing our beloved principal from her fast growing school.

One might have thought that maybe once, perhaps not during the longish period of disbelief, but maybe during one of the farewell get-togethers, the what-if sessions over coffee, dinner, port; just once, it might have occurred to me…but no. 

You see, there is/was a law that said that a school board (this was pre-independent public school), with the support of the then-current principal, could apply to the regional head to be involved in the selection of the next principal. 

But did I bother to familiarise myself with those very laws that I as a board member was elected to uphold? 

No, your honour, I did not. 

To say that my rear-guard actions, after the decision was sealed, were ineffectual and embarrassing to the parent community would be an understatement. 

No amount of evidence to the contrary would raise an eyebrow, let alone lift a public servant from his northern regional seat to effect proper scrutiny. What I learnt then was that no one likes a Noah or a Cassandra, especially not with the long arc of a child’s education at stake. Who amongst you would deny their child the school’s highest academic award – morning tea with biscuit and principal. 

I am gladdened to read that the school has plans for an exciting future. I’m only sorry that due to my inaction that future will be arriving seven years too late altogether for a whole generation of our kids.

STIRLING council has sold off public land without testing if it’s contaminated, despite the site’s historic use as a petrol station.

Stirling flogged the strip of land at 80 Walcott Street to a neighbouring owner in August (“Call for developer contact to be listed,” Voice, September 22, 2018).

The council has owned the site for decades but never reported it to the Department of Environmental Regulation as a potential contaminated site, which could’ve put a hitch in plans to sell.

The Contaminated Sites Act 2003 requires “suspected contaminated sites [to] be reported to the DER, investigated, and if necessary, cleaned up”.

Buried tanks

One resident long-termer, who owned petrol bowsers himself,  believes there are still buried tanks that are likely to have leaked because of their age.

“They’ll have to excavate the tanks and take all the soil away.”

Concerns about the site’s history as a servo were raised with councillors ahead of the vote.

Deputy mayor David Lagan later confirmed to the Voice: “I voted against the sale as in my opinion there remained some unanswered questions around the history of the block and its previous use”.

The city’s acting CEO Michael Littleton said they’d looked into land title documents from the 80s “and no disclosures were noted” (although, that was two decades before the Contaminated Sites Act 2003 existed).

He said an additional search of the DER’s contaminated sites database “showed no contamination listing” for the lot.

Many contaminated sites aren’t on the list because no one ever declared them.

by DAVID BELL