CLARENCE COUNCIL COMMUNITY FORUM QUESTIONNAIRE

Answers by Andrew Mackay

Parking:

We need multistorey carparks in town centres: Rosny Park, Lindisfarne, Howrah, Rokeby and Bellerive.  The requirement for businesses to supply their own carparks or pay a fee wastes valuable development land and investment capital. It also encourages businesses to move to greenfield sites so that our town centres decay. By building multistory carparks, council will encourage continued private sector investment in our town centres so that they become dense, vibrant precincts that provide employment and rate revenue.

Parking should remain free because it gives our businesses a competitive advantage over Hobart.

 

Yearly Hard Waste:

We need a better solution. The old days of leaving rubbish on the footpath should not return because it was a hazard for pedestrians and made our suburbs look like slums for weeks on end. At the same time, the elderly and less physically able have difficulty taking things to the tip. Could council employ people with a ute or van to do on-call home waste removal? Residents can ring up and get their junk taken away when needed instead of having it clog up their house for months on end?  

 

Green Spaces:

 Once a park, always a park. I completely oppose the recent council proposals to redevelop Rosny Hill, Rosny Golf Course and Charles Hand Park into a hotel, AFL centre and apartments respectively.

 I am advocating for a rate reform which will make rates reflect neighbourhood amenity instead of property values. This will make parks an asset instead of a financial liability for council and incentivise park upgrades and new park creation. Every suburb should have good parks and sportsfields.

 

Road Repairs:

The neoliberal model of subcontracting road maintenance is clearly not working if council cannot afford to maintain our network. We are wasting too much money in bidding wars.  Council needs to employ a road maintenance crew directly in order to bring costs down. The same also applies for footpaths.

 

Dog Parks:

Some people like dogs. Some People don’t. Every suburb should have an off-leash dog park and a dog free park. If a suburb does not currently have two parks, council should open a second one. Dog ownership is growing and dog exercise parks are essential infrastructure.

 

 

DAP:

The DAP proposal is flawed because it stems from the government’s erroneous belief that development is being prevented by “red tape”. This is not true because the Statewide Planning Scheme is a developer-friendly document with very flexible zone laws.

The planning bottleneck is actually caused by the council’s rate policy which, by charging based on total property value, makes it uneconomical for average investors to build dense developments like apartments and mixed use buildings in town centres. Since average investors therefore do not invest in Tasmania, the only investors who bother are super-investors with mega projects who seek to capitalise on the desperation of the government for growth.

The DAP proposal is designed to make it easier to build these mega projects by bypassing democracy.

I want to reform the rate policy to be based on land value so that it is economical for average investors to build dense developments in scale with our existing urban fabric and create stable, organic economic growth.

We do not need to destroy democracy in order to unlock prosperity.

 

Housing And Development:

 The current rate policy of charging based on total property value is a tax on density. The result is urban sprawl as our town centres are hollowed out in favour of greenfield sites. I shall advocate for a land-value based rate policy to encourage the development of vibrant town centres with affordable apartments and a plethora of independent shops and restaurants.

This is not to say that I am opposed to suburbia. I love suburbia. But not everyone does and if we can provide those who want to live in apartments with good apartments, existing suburban homes will be released to the market and there will be less need to subdivide our farmland and bushland. The Meehan Range should be the green wall  between urban and rural Clarence.

 

Homelessness is a concern and embarrassment. We need a secure location to create a tent city with flat grassland for comfort. It should have frequent public transport and be walking distance to shops. Council should provide portaloos and showers. The best location for this is the vacant industrial land in Cambridge Park. Council should rent or buy it. The homeless will be able to use the Hobart-Sorell bus and have a grocer and camping shop on hand to make their lives easier. My aforementioned rate reform will make it economical for developers to build cheap apartments so they will not remain homeless for long.

 

Public Transport:

An obsession of mine.

It isn’t 1950 anymore and the Hobart CBD is not the epicentre of employment. The bus network needs to provide connections to all major employment clusters so we need direct buses to Glenorchy, New Town, Moonah, Derwent Park and the airport precinct. A bus from Rosny Park along Cambridge Road, Kennedy Drive, Holyman Avenue, Grueber Avenue and then to Lauderdale via Seven Mile Beach before looping through Glebe Hill and Shoreline to Rosny Park would give most of Clarence easy access to the Cambridge-Airport employment precinct.

The 694 to Glenorchy needs to have its route straightened in Risdon Vale to eliminate time wastage. travelling straight via Sugarloaf Road would save time whilst providing service to new subdivisions in Risdon Heights and Olive Grove.

Pass Road needs a bus service.

We need more bus shelters.

Traffic lights should be installed at the Clarence St/Scott St intersection in Bellerive so that buses from Howrah can be diverted via the ferry terminal. Buses from Warrane and Mornington terminating at Rosny should be extended to the Ferry terminal.

Park and Rides should be built to service areas of low housing density where it is not viable to run frequent buses. Cambridge is a good site because it services Dulcot, Acton Park and the Cambridge farm area. Lauderdale is a good site because it services Sandford and Gellibrand Estate.

There should be a bus interchange constructed at the Bowen Bridge for connections between Hobart-Bridgewater and Rosny-Glenorchy Routes. It should have a park and ride and a bike rack. A cycleway should be constructed to connect it to Risdon and Otago.

 

Coastline:

Our best asset. I support the continued creation of a coastal reserve with walking/cycling track along the entire coast from Richmond to Otago Bay. Council should support Coastcare in restoring dunes and eliminating weeds. Dog access to beaches should be restricted to protect birdlife, particularly Hooded Plovers and Red necked Stints.

Building things on the dunes should obviously remain illegal.

 

Accountability and transparency:

I support a transparent and accountable council. The best way to achieve that would be for the media to apply the same scrutiny to Clarence as they do to Hobart. It is absurd that there are so many more articles published about Hobart Council than Clarence Council even though we have a larger population. Our aldermen should not be allowed to fly under the radar.

 

Kangaroo Bay:

I fully support the council’s proposed apartment towers on the old mini golf site. The hotel on the old green shed site will be a boon for local restaurants but I wish that the design was not so ugly. Encouraging tourists to stay in Clarence instead of Hobart is a good initiative since it will reduce traffic on the bridge. Council desperately needs to build multistorey carparks in Bellerive village and Kangaroo Bay since the current parking is inadequate. It also needs to provide better bus connectivity to the ferry so that ferry passengers do not clog up the carparks (see my public transport section for details).

 

Party Alignment:

Completely independent, unaligned and self-funded.