Community Activated To Save Its Foreshore

Everywhere people are becoming increasingly outraged at the way in which councils are making decisions in spite of the clearly demonstrated wishes of their communities.

The people of Toronto and indeed Western Lake Macquarie have every right to feel deeply offended by the way in which Council are treating their efforts to save waterfront land at Bath Street opposite the Royal Motor Yacht Club for improvement as open public space.

At the 29/10/18 Council meeting, a packed gallery of local people were insulted by the treatment that Councillor Wendy Harrison received when she moved a motion to bring the tabling of their petition to the front of the agenda, the usual practice when the public attend to support a petition. When the motion was put, the Mayor declared in favour of a NO vote, with no count taken. The Toronto community were not afforded the courtesy that is the usual practice in these circumstances. It suited Council that night to follow the rule book

The contempt for our case against Council’s proposed development was on full display:

• in the treatment Councillor Harrison received especially when she attempted to speak briefly to the contents of the petition, 
• in people from our community having to sit through a full agenda of Council business for over 90 minutes in what appeared to be, at times, a “work to regulations” pattern, 
• in the deliberately ironic question being put to Suzanne Pritchard, in response to her presentation, around whether there have been any threatened or endangered species found on the Bath St site. 

Over 5,200 people signed a petition of protest; over 450 turned out to a public meeting. People from our community packed the gallery at the Council meeting on October 29th.

The people of Toronto will not be treated as a few vocal seniors who don’t like change, or as being anti- development. The people pushing back against this development are informed, loyal to their lake and progressive in their concern for the environment. Far from being regressive and resistant to change, they are thinking ahead of the Council who is meant to represent them and protect their environment.

The people of Toronto are thinking of protecting open spaces for posterity. They accept that towns grow, that multi-story living is environmentally sound and importantly that the protection of public open spaces in relation to the placement of those buildings is a very high priority.

Council have a couple of favourite buzz words: Activate and bookend. Apparently, the multi-story proposal is a “bookend” to the foreshore. We say to Council, activate the Bath Street site into open green public recreational space. It will bring the people and events. We see this model working on the Eastern side of the lake. Put your bookend somewhere else where it won’t deny our community and its visitors yet another 10% of its already limited public foreshore space. There are some decisions that trump the pragmatism of profit.

At that unpleasant Council meeting referred to earlier in this article, each Councillor was given a lengthy and very well researched submission detailing the Toronto Foreshore Protection Group’s opposition to the proposal, prepared on behalf of the Group by Nico Marcar.

We have yet to have any response from any Councillor indicating that the submission has been read. This submission now appears on the TFPG.org.au website, along with the petition which can still be signed.

The Council is hoping that this will all just go away. This is not what many of you want. Keep up those emails to the councillors. Keep those letters appearing in the Newcastle Herald and Lakes Mail.

We are not the poor cousins of Lake Macquarie and we will not be treated as such.

Oh, and yes, to the Councillor who posed that deliberately ironic question, there is a threatened species on that foreshore land in Bath St: it’s called the community.