Dear Editor
It is good to see Division 3 Councillor, Virginia West, after some 3 ½ years in office, taking heed of Scenic Rim residents.
Representative Democracy is based on the principle of the people electing individuals to represent them and it is encouraging to see it surfacing again in the Scenic Rim Regional Council.
After community protest Council has repealed the previous motion to hand Crown land back to the Department of Natural Resources.
The motion to repeal was proposed by Councillor West at the October 2011 Council Meeting. The land, designated as parkland and recreation reserve, adjoins the Kerry/Christmas Creek quarry in her Division.
The original request to relinquish this parkland came to Council via the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) following an application from Mr Kiernan, quarry owner and operator, to purchase the property.
Council, whilst considering the request, deemed the future value to the community of the parcel of parkland to be minimal and adopted the “hand back” proposal by majority vote.
It turned out that neither the majority of Councillors nor council staff seemed to realise the dollar value or the worth of the land. 11.4 Hectares in that area could fetch in the region of $1 million and the worth of the land to the community and the current lease holder is immeasurable.
It took the Councillor for Division 1 with his knowledge and experience in Council’s property acquisitions, a private valuation, articles in the papers and a petition from locals to get the message across that relinquishing this prime asset was a poor decision.
Councillor Swanborough (Div 1) accepted the people’s petition and presented it to Council on their behalf. As a result Councillor West (Div 3) proposed the motion repealing the original “hand back” decision. The motion was carried by majority vote.
This demonstration of representative democracy in action has not always been in evidence.
A couple of years ago five hundred Boonah residents signed a petition asking Council not to close down a business – the Councillor for the Division refused to present the petition to Council on the people’s behalf.
The residents of Canungra fought hard to prevent a large supermarket being approved, followed closely by two major subdivisions to provide the population size to warrant the supermarket. Their existing planning scheme and submissions were ignored by Council’s town planners and the majority of Councillors alike.
All three projects were approved.
More than four thousand signatures were not enough to stop the “shovel ready’’ spending of half a million dollars on the new Beaudesert Library, or the Beaudesert Revitalisation Project as it became known. The project was eventually shelved through lack of funding.
So it is good to see Representative Democracy back in action albeit only a few months before the Council elections.
Astrid Kennedy
Candidate for Division 4