Perth Voice Interactive

CHARLES STREET will become a busy six-lane highway in what locals are calling “an urban design disaster”.

The WA government’s plans for the street include a bus bridge and busway.

Geraldine Box and Andrew Main are getting the word out to locals by dropping hundreds of flyers around the area, much of it still residential with houses just a couple of metres from the thoroughfare.

“This is going to be a roaring corridor for people living on either side,” Ms Box says.

She and Mr Main insist that locals get a say on how their street is handled.

Reduce congestion

Announced by WA transport minister Dean Nalder in October, the plan for a $31 million bus bridge (to go from Charles Street, over the freeway into the city) and bus lanes down Charles Street is intended to improve travel times and reduce congestion.

It’s estimated the plan will save 16,000 bus passengers an average of six minutes each by providing a better “exit strategy” from the CBD.

“This is a great congestion-beater for our city,” Mr Nalder said in October.

“It’s better for motorists and bus users.”

The key concerns for Ms Box and Mr Main is the six-lane plan — two of them dedicated bus lanes — doesn’t include trees or a median strip (it’s already a nightmare for pedestrians) and includes only narrow footpaths.

“We’d like consultation,” Mr Main says, “to develop a decent plan for Charles Street and not in a peacemeal fashion.”

Ms Box, who runs the Facebook page Bike Friendly Vincent, says freeing up lanes for cars will inevitably bring more.

Construction is planned to start in May and Ms Box and Mr Main are urging any interested locals to get in touch with them at boxgeraldine1@gmail.com or andrew.main@optusnet.com.au to find out more.

by DAVID BELL

STIRLING council looks set to join neighboring Vincent in calling for development assessment panels to be abolished.

A motion put up by Stirling councillor Elizabeth Re to “advocate for the abolition of DAPs” will soon go to a vote by colleagues, expected late May following a workshop, mirroring a motion unanimously passed at Vincent the week before.

Echoing the words of Bayswater councillor Dan Bull, both Vincent and Stirling’s motions said the DAPs were undemocratic, given they have three state government-appointend members but only two councillors, meaning elected members are easily overruled.

Meanwhile in South Perth, residents living opposite a proposed tower have won a court appeal to stop the development, based on the DAP wrongly applying planning guidelines.

And federal Labor MP for Perth Alannah MacTiernan has used the messy situation of the multi-storey project on King William Street in Bayswater in her weekly newsletter, to highlight widespread problems with DAPs.

“It’s a problem we’re seeing across the metropolitan area—DAPs going against the clear language of the town planning schemes to give developers everything they want, ignoring height limits, plot ratios and amenity in the process.”

WA premier Colin Barnett established DAPs, which replace locally elected councils as decision-making bodies for major development applications.

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA  and DAVID BELL

INSTEAD of answering questions about more allegedly undeclared travel, Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi has mocked a veteran journalist for “bad breath and botox”.

For the past couple weeks Ms Scaffidi has been repeatedly doorstopped by TV journo Liam Bartlett, who’s been asking her about more undeclared trips, saying he knows of four she’s failed to properly register, as required by the WA local government act.

Ms Scaffidi told him there were probably nine, but refused to elaborate.

Mr Bartlett has hit the same wall the Voice has been ramming its head against, with the council’s highly paid media unit simply refusing to respond to questions.

Ms Scaffidi reckons she can’t say anything while the WA local government department is still looking into the issue, but Mr Bartlett says there’s no such legal restraint.

After his report aired on Channel 9 on Monday night, Ms Scaffidi took to Facebook: “I was so taken aback my [sic] his bad breath given how close he was and the botox I was lost for words.”

Vincent mayor John Carey told the Voice it was a mayor’s responsibility to answer journalists’ questions.

Well, Ms Scaffidi hasn’t answered anything the Voice has put to her since September, when we published articles outlining her co-ownership of the Grand Central backpackers building and the city’s lack of action in demanding repairs and basic hygiene.

Bayswater councillor Brent Fleeton also took to social media, but to slap down Ms Scaffidi’s silence.

“This is well beyond pathetic,” he posted on Facebook, referring to Ms Scaffidi’s statement about undeclared trips.

“For all the great work that our various local governments do around Perth, this … further erodes public trust in our local representatives.”

Having recently proposed that Bayswater councillors be required to report on trips (with lists of expenses, food, cocktails and transport), he says “every local council in WA should adopt Baysie’s approach to transparency and public reporting for staff and councillor travel ASAP so we can move towards restoring faith in our system.”

by DAVID BELL

THE verge poo bandit has been fined $200 after Vincent city council staff met with him to hand over the infringement.

The Swan Taxis driver, who’d pooed on a Leederville verge mid-morning (having come prepared with his own toilet roll) has 28 days to pay the fine.

Vincent CEO Len Kosova says his staff formally advised Swan Taxis to hand over the driver’s personal details so he could be fined under the health act and the litter act. If it had refused to comply, the company could have been fined, and corporate penalties are much stiffer.

Meanwhile, Suresh Rajan from the WA ethnic communities council has backed calls from Taxi Industry Forum WA chief Howard Lance for more training to explain the unacceptability of this kind of thing in Australia.

He says training’s most effective when it comes from a figure within the driver’s own community.

“Imagine there’s 15 Indian boys sitting there and a cop comes in telling them about acceptable culture,” he says, adding that in India many distrust police due to a culture of bribery.

“You need to get community elders to do the training, because these boys will listen to community elders, they won’t listen to white cops.”

Originally from India, he points out that pooing in public isn’t really a part of sub-continental ”culture”, more a grudgingly accepted necessity as so few have ready access to toilets.

“It would be a very simple process to train the person to say this is unacceptable in this society,” he says.

Mr Rajan says cultural misunderstandings are more common with workers who are here temporarily, than with long-termers who’ve put down roots.

“The old Sikh drivers who’ve been driving for 30 or 40 years, they treat their car with immense respect, they treat the job as something they’re proud to be involved with. Then there’s the new ones who treat it as a means to an end.”

With 93 per cent of cab drivers in Perth hailing from non-English speaking backgrounds, training needs to be on both sides, he suggests: for drivers to understand norms here, and for the department and companies to understand where drivers are coming from and why they’d be more open to intra-community training rather than lectures.

by DAVID BELL

HOBBY historian Dallas Robertson’s grand Minecraft reimagining of Perth’s historical cityscape has inspired at least one youngster to follow in his foosteps, with 7-year-old Alex Giovenco reconstructing Viking House in the 3D Lego-like game.

Mr Robertson spent countless hours recreating what Perth was like in 1870, going to great pains to craft as accurately as possible buildings like Government House from hundreds of old photographs. A founder of the Museum of Perth, he hoped using Minecraft would inspire kids to get more interested in history.

Young Alex from Huntingdale loves buildings and architecture (“his favourite show in the world would be Grand Designs,” mum Cheryl says) and the Museum of Perth provided him with a slew of pics to use for inspiration.

He settled on Viking House, loving the medieval spikey look to it, and it only took him a couple of hours to put together his rendition. Built as a replica to the early Gothic style by the Fremantle architects Allen and Nicholas, Viking House was demolished to make way for the AMP building and now exists only in pictures (and Alex’s saved game).

by DAVID BELL

IT’S happened again: yet another historic balls-up has been uncovered by Vincent council, with money illegally withdrawn from the Leederville Gardens reserve.

The mess looks set to cost ratepayers at least $63,000, while the Leederville Gardens retirement village could end up $212,000 out of pocket.

Leederville Gardens is a retirement village set up as a not-for-profit, and Vincent council manages the place.

Council CEO Len Kosova has discovered the city’s agreement with the Gardens to be a tangled mess of unspoken handshake agreements and breaches of the WA local government act, and it’s caused a paperwork nightmare.

The council’s been sitting on a bunch of cash built up from the centre’s yearly surplus, which is deposited in a Leederville Gardens reserve account.

Under the Gardens’ constitution, money from the reserve is not to be spent on either council infrastructure or on Leederville Gardens.

Instead, it is supposed to go towards other local projects which benefit the city’s elderly residents.

Mr Kosova’s team has uncovered two instances where the council breached that rule and accessed the reserve for its own infrastructure, and three where reserve cash was spent on Leederville Gardens itself, all under his predecessor’s reign.

“The biggest disappointment is this could have been so easily avoided if the administration of the day exercised their proper due diligence and took advice from experts rather than assuming they knew best,” Mr Kosova says.

Mayor John Carey says, “I’m pretty furious. I am angry.

“This is extraordinary that in March 2016, our new CEO and finance director have to pick this apart, this is really appalling. Wrong advice was given and it looks like it was consistently given.”

Mr Kosova says the council has an obligation to pay back the cash, and will have to ask the Leederville Gardens board if it can also pay back to the reserve $212,000 spent — on bad advice from the council — on the retirement home.

by DAVID BELL