The Scenic Rim Regional Council has confirmed that the current Gallery Walk public consultation is little more than window dressing designed to keep Tamborine Mountain quiet about public safety on Gallery Walk. The Council Media department has confirmed that no funds are currently set aside to action any parking, road safety or public amenity recommendation from the ongoing SMEC study.
While the Council is currently spending millions of dollars on upgrading bridges and country roads in the Shire, Tamborine Mountain's 7,000 residents and the 1.3 million tourists must make do with tourist destination facilities that are ridiculously indadequate because they have been overlooked by successive councils.
The Daily Star was concerned that the current community consultation was there only to shape and suppress residents growing anger over the council's refusal to take Tamborine Mountain's needs seriously. It seemed the current SMEC study was steering a course of making it seem as if Council is doing something without actually committing the Council to actually do anything about the massive problems we all know exist.
We have found out the following facts and present them so you can be better informed on what is going on:
- SMEC was paid $133,765.50 for its consultation services. Given the time period and work completed by SMEC, this appears to be reasonable.
- The Department of Transport & Main Roads will contribute 70% with 30% from Scenic Rim Regional Council. Again reasonable.
- SMEC has identified several areas that need further study and has requested an extension of its brief to allow for realistic and significant recommendations to be made. However, Council says this request was not approved.
- There is nothing in any existing or proposed budget set aside for Gallery Walk works at the moment.
- There are no plans or budgets to put in pedestrian crossings on Gallery Walk. While Gallery Walk is a main road and therefore not strictly Councils financial responsibility, council needs to ensure residents and visitors are provided with a safe public environment.
The Daily Star personally urges the Mayor to look at the pedestrian safety issues on Gallery Walk. We respectfully warn him that someone will be killed here because there are no designated street crossing for the thousands of pedestrians who come to Gallery Walk each week.
We know the Mayor to be a reasonable man who has the strength of character to implement needed changes and to bulldoze reluctant bureaucrats into doing the right thing. That is the John Brent Tamborine Mountain needs now.
Please Mr Brent. Come up to Tamborine Mountain on the weekend. Watch tourist behaviour on Gallery Walk for even a few minutes you will see that the tourists dance with death every time they try to cross Gallery Walk. 
There are shops on both sides of the main road and people take their lives into their own hands when they attempt to cross. Children are particularly at risk.
You will surely see that the current situation simply not good enough and that it needs your personal attention to get it sorted out.
We locals wait in horrified anticipation of the first pedestrian to be killed on Gallery Walk. One long term retailer told of a 3 year old who was nearly killed recently by a local resident driving through Gallery Walk at just 10km per hour. The little child ran out on the road as if it were running in a shopping mall or play ground.
Please come and personally see the traffic flow being impeded by people circling the Walk five and ten times looking for a car park. Slowing to a crawl on Gallery Walk to make sure the next precious car park is theirs. Dodge family groups getting out their cars or as they suddenly pull into park on un-safe verges because that is all the parking that is available.
Mr Mayor, we invite you to lever your Council CEO from behind his bureaucratic ramparts and bring him to see the needs of Tamborine Mountain first hand. We need all at the Scenic Rim Regional Council on our side before some little child does become the first to die on Gallery Walk because of inadquate pedestrian crossing and poor parking facilities.
This is serious. No one wants blood on their hands.