Perth Voice Interactive

A FREE parking trial in East Perth to help ailing businesses has been kyboshed by Perth councillors.

Chief concern was the the loss of $45,000 revenue.

Cr Reece Harley asked colleagues to support a half-hour free period on Royal Street when the city installs new parking machines early next year.

He got support from councillors Jemma Green and James Limnios, who’d previously tried to get a more widespread free parking plan, but the rest of the council baulked.

Around 1100 people had signed a petition asking Perth councillors for a free parking trial, a petition which lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi described as “unverified”.

Jane Calligaro has run La Bella Boutique on Royal Street for 14 years, and believes the high parking cost is keeping customers away.

“It definitely deters people from coming to Royal Street … the businesses in our location have all said parking’s a huge issue, and it’s actually ridiculous that the City of Perth councillors don’t agree.”

She’s about to change her shop over to a dog grooming business and says her trade would definitely benefit from free short-term parking so people could drop off and pick up their pooches.

Cr Harley said: “I don’t think we should be disincentivising locals to shop locally” with the current high parking prices.

Opportunistic

“It is actually easier for someone to drive three or four blocks out of the city … than for them to shop locally.”

Cr Judy McEvoy reckoned Cr Harley’s attempt to get this motion through now, with the election looming in October, as “opportunistic” and Ms Scaffidi agreed with her assessment saying it was way too early to be looking at this.

Cr McEvoy said the city has to pay the steep price of the Perth Parking Levy to the state government (a $1150 tax for each parking bay in the city, meant to go into a kitty to be used on a public transport project) and it wasn’t responsible to introduce a free parking period that’d cost them about $45,000.

The final vote was Crs Harley, Limnios and Green in favour of a free parking trial, and Ms Scaffidi and Crs Yong, Mcevoy, Lily Chen and Janet Davidson against.

“The reality is everyone around this table would love to give free parking…it takes quite a lot of courage to be a councillor that can say no in the face of an election,” Ms Scaffidi said.

“I’m not up for election, just to remind those who might be wondering, but it does take courage to be able to say no to something that, to the outside person, might seem like a nice idea.”

Perth Labor MP John Carey was ropeable when he found out Perth councillors were using the Perth parking levy as a reason not to allow a free parking period.

Free parking was one of the most popular ideas at the Perth City Summit held by him on August 19.

by DAVID BELL

TEN DOGS, one pheasant and a goat were impounded by Vincent council in the first half of this year, according to the latest ranger report.

Non-canine impounding is so rare that the bird and goat were lumped under the “Dog Impounding” section of the report.

“The goat was returned to its owner but it could no longer be kept at that residence due to health regulations so it has been rehomed to a farm,” said a Vincent council spokesperson.

The bird’s owner couldn’t be found so it’s gone to live at Joondalup Resort where there are several other pheasants roaming freely. Nine of the ten dogs impounded were claimed by their owners with the other rehomed through the dogs refuge home.

by DAVID BELL

LONG-time Bayswater council watcher Tony Green says mayor Barry McKenna should resign over his role in the unsuccessful fight against a concrete batching plant that cost the city at least $282,000.

Mr Green is president of the Bayswater City Residents and Ratepayers Association but stressed he wasn’t calling for the resignation in his official capacity, just as a resident who’d been shocked by a big rates increase.

Bayswater council was stuck between a rock and a hard place when a lot of unhappy locals living near the proposed batching plant on Collier Road voiced concerns over dust, noise and traffic.

But the State Administrative Tribunal said the council acted “unreasonably” in refusing to approve it, despite professional advice, and ordered Bayswater to pay $112,000 in costs to the owners of the plant, along with the hundreds of thousands of legal fees of their own.

Mr Green called for Cr McKenna’s resignation during public question time at last Tuesday’s council meeting.

The audio recording of the controversial question, and the mayor’s fiery response, were reported as lost, due to “technical difficulties”, on the city’s website.

Although Cr McKenna has only been mayor for two years and the batching plant battle stretches back to 2011, Mr Green says the SAT found that Cr McKenna, “appeared to have little substance underpinning his own reasons for refusing the proposed development beyond stating a number of times in different ways what the tribunal finds to be implausible statements to the effect that the decision ‘… was for valid planning reasons’.”

Cr McKenna told the Voice “my job as mayor and the job of council is to represent the community on matters that are important and that impact the lives of our ratepayers and residents.

“I will not resign for representing my community and I will not resign for trying to make a difference for those residents impacted by the batching plant.

“The easy thing would have been to walk away from this issue, but it would have been the wrong thing to do.

“Council believed and continues to believe that it considered the concrete batching plant on its merits and that it was right to reject the application. Representing the community is something I am passionate about…”

by DAVID BELL

BAYSWATER Deserves Better says a town centre structure plan proposed by the council needs beefing up to preserve heritage buildings and ensure future developments are sympathetic to the area.

The draft plan is out for comment until September 27 and will set the stage for future developments, proposing up to five-storey buildings in the King William Street area.

The plan also “envisions an increase in local cafes, shops and other retail” but it says that’ll only work if more people live there, meaning new apartments are key to making new businesses financially viable.

Tessa Hopkins from community group BDB says she has “serious doubts” that the current plan will protect those early buildings.

Of the 18 or so heritage and character buildings in King William Street and Whatley Crescent, 13 are on the second run of classification on the heritage inventory, meaning they only have to be “considered” in any new planning application.

It doesn’t prevent them being demolished when the block’s redeveloped.

With most of these planning decisions now in the hands of the Development Assessment Panel, BDB’s worried these old buildings will be knocked down one by one as landowners take advantage of the new height limits in the structure plan.

BDB formed in response to the Yolk Property Group development at 9/11 King William Street, which they considered to be an oversize boxy project that looked out of place and would dwarf the surrounding buildings.

The DAP allowed Yolk to build seven storeys high, despite Bayswater’s town planning scheme having a five-storey limit.

But the building did win some fans from another group Future Bayswater, who are pushing for a six-storey limit in the King William Street area to get more people living in that part of town. Some building owners don’t want more heritage protection: they’re eager to sell up or develop their properties and don’t want heritage restrictions getting in their way.

When the Voice dropped by to take a photo on Tuesday, one of the property owners came out and verbally abused the BDB group for interfering.

The draft scheme’s available for viewing at engage.bayswater.wa.gov.au.

by DAVID BELL