This is your opportunity to comment on the Wyong Shire Strategic Vision.
The vision team is keen to hear what you think about the document. Lets start talking.
This is your opportunity to comment on the Wyong Shire Strategic Vision.
The vision team is keen to hear what you think about the document. Lets start talking.
June 3, 2009 at 11:21 am |
1. I have 3 young kids, and only lived here 6 months. I can’t get near a local doctor! due to the endless line up of oldies that book them of months in advance. Great place to live, just don’t get sick. I know they are old etc., but seriously – having to drive to Erina and wait hours is terrible when you’re kids throwing up.
2. Fix Gosford Rail parking. Lets face it if you’re not there by 6.30am you have no chance of parking, and 5-6pm is total gridlock past East Gosford.
3. Gostford Rail Security; I’m sick of paying for the train when quite clealy the army of bogans that jump the barrier or barge past the staff for free is annoying (that’s after they’ve finished spitting and smoking on the platform).
June 18, 2009 at 9:34 am |
dskmag Says:
June 3, 2009 at 11:21 am
The wrong council dskmag ;
but with the State government putting “retirement” homes with two dozen oldies in a house block that used to house two people expect the medical shortage to get worse. This wonderful piece of planning is called “Urban Consolidation”. I call it “dumping your problems on the under-resourced outer-Sydney councils.”
i am not sure how Wyong Council could help the doctor sitaution. Maybe they could give a scholarship to some poverty stricken Newcastle or local medical student, pay for their fees on the condition they work here for a while. this is waht the Fedral government is doing in Regional Australia, except the Central Coast is not seen as “regional” just a dumping ground for Sydney’s poor planing and social problems.
To ?
A pity to criticise Councils attempts at social networking. At least it is a ‘reaching out’ to the ratepayers and an attempt to involve locals in building a better community. It is early days yet;– few would know about it. Let’s give it a chance.
Does Gosford council reach out? Inviting more work for their staff?
Are you going to any Community Consultation meetings?
June 4, 2009 at 1:39 am |
This is a very impressive document, filled with lots of laudable ideas and plans. It would be wonderful if much of the vision is realised but I fear that, like many of these types of documents, nothing much will change. How will Council demonstrate that it is really committed to doing this? When is the council planning to start implementing this vision? I would like to think that the underlying principles might be applied soon. Does the inclusion of the underlying principle that states that “government is conducted with openness and transparency involving the community in decisions that affect it” mean that the council will no longer avoid discussion of specific contentious issues at meetings and stop approving developments before the community members who are affected have an opportunity for full consultation? Under this vision, how can community members get to have a fair hearing about their views of the future, rather than having to accept what council officers impose on them? What if the vision suggests one kind of action or strategy that the local community does not support? Would/should the council just go ahead with the action/strategy because it fits in with its vision?
June 14, 2009 at 12:11 am |
I too am not holding my breath to see the strategic vision come to fruition. A prime example of the council’s lack of action and vision is the Warnervale/Wadalba development. Absolutely nothing has been done on the town centre, Minnestota Road gets busier and busier yet is worse than many rural back roads, and Wadalba’s “vibrant village centre” still consists of a supermarket (with disabled group housing under construction).
Quite frankly I feel duped and I have many friends who feel the same. We bought here because this was supposed to be a planned community, with brochures promising we’d be able to walk to our village centre for a coffee blah blah blah. Well I guess we can walk down to Coles and buy a jar of rather expensive coffee and then walk it home again. There’s not even a public phone or post box.
I hope I’m proven wrong and I’ll be the first to applaud Wyong council’s vision, but I think my hands are safe in their pockets.
June 16, 2009 at 10:26 pm |
Your social media strategy is laudable. I am wondering how long the various components have been operating, and how many people are using (have used) the different tools (blog, twitter). Will someone reply, I wonder? Thanks.
June 23, 2009 at 1:20 am |
I am one of the Council staff working on the Shire Strategic Vision, but there are also many members of the Liaison Groups (community, Council and state government) who also might want to get on the blog and have their say.
A number of the comments received so far raise the question of how can anyone guarantee that this is going to happen?…..
There is no guarantee. The Shire Strategic vision is aspirational, but ultimately achievable. It will require the community, Council, state and federal governments working together to achieve the Vision. Because the Vision has arisen from across the community, it should be the best reflection we have of where the Shire should be going for the future.
We have consistently heard that if we do not focus on the priority objectives for the future there will continue to be an ad hoc approach to issues as they arise in a non-coordinated and efficient way. There is therefore a strong incentive for partners to work together to make the Vision happen.
The document on display explains very briefly that once adopted, Council intends to make it very clear what it is doing to deliver the Vision through a 4 Year Delivery Program and its yearly Operational Plan. In the future, these will have to explain how they are working to achieve the Vision.
Meree: If the community does not support a principle, objective or strategy… now is certainly the best time to raise it. The challenge; however, is not saying “I believe this objective/strategy should also be given priority.”, but rather, “I believe these objectives/ strategies should should be given priority and replace these that are in the document on display.”
Please feel free to attend one of the many public presentations that are occurring during June and July. These are advertised in the local paper or on Council’s Internet site.
If you want to have a bit of fun and challenge the brain, come along to the Great Debate (Our Future) that is to take place on 1 July in the Council Chambers, Wyong starting at 4:00 pm. The youth and Councillors will debate the future.
Please keep the blogs coming in. We are listening very carefully to what is being said through the blog, and in the public presentations that are being held.
June 23, 2009 at 10:57 pm |
wscstrategicvision, I hope you guys in Council understand why many residents look at these plans and don’t get excited, and I realise much is above your heads. I start sounding like a broken record when I harp on about planning and development but I’ll go at it again.
To use our example, we built in Wadalba 7 years ago. With a glossy brochure promising a vibrant community with many of the services/shops we’d need within easy walking distance (whatever happened to the “Wadalba Planning Commission” anyway…) we decided to build a home and start a family in what we though would be the perfect environment. We were only the third house in our street under construction with much of Wadalba still vacant, so we saw that ‘dream’ in the brochure coming to reality. As time went on, we saw the proposal for a unit complex of a style knocked down by many Western Sydney councils (thankfully rejected…just), the fight between Woolworths and Coles with plans that looked nothing like what the brochure said, the streets that still lack footpaths and street trees and the bus stop that took years to gain a shelter. Minnesota Rd continues to struggle with increased traffic (including buses). Wadalba still doesn’t have a playground (please don’t tell me the swing at the sport facilities is it). The planning requirements for houses (such things as the garage cannot be the focus of the house) has been thrown out. The supposed village centre consists of a supermarket, lots of vacant land, a stalled construction site that no-one seems to know anything about, and a new handicapped group housing development (while I agree this is a necessity, what does this bring to a village main street?). This is just in Wadalba. I wish I still had the brochure here so i can continue the dream, but I passed it on to others who I hope can use it to push for what I think we deserve.
Many of our roads are at or are close to capacity. The Pacific Hwy is like a car park through Wyong, and since the Coles opened at San Remo, the northbound trip often has you crawling all the way from Lakehaven. I’ve already mentioned Minnesota Rd. As has been mentioned, trying to see a doctor can be a nightmare. Wyong Hospital appears all too often in the paper as being under strain. And still developers are allowed to cram people in.
Oddly enough I do consider ourselves fortunate. Friends in both Hamlyn Terrace and Woongarrah don’t have the “luxury” of being able to walk to the shop to buy simple things like milk and bread. I am amazed that in such “green” times people are still forced to use the car for practically every aspect of their lives.
I harped on about this on the previous blog (that has disappeared…). Communities need identity. Identity isn’t a heap of houses thrown into an area like Hamlyn Terrace or Woongarrah. Communities need a focal point – something as simple as a corner shop and a park – look at how well Warnies seems to focus people in the Warnervale area. A planned community has a defined boundary, and a “village green” (park) and at least basic shops at its focus.
About seven years ago Wyong Council released a document on planning for the Wadalba/Warnervale area that pretty much had all this. This document I still have and I sometimes pull it out for a quick read and a laugh. There were many great concepts in that document…
If in seven years Wyong has continued to use a sporatic method of “planning”, why should we believe anything will change now?
October 5, 2009 at 12:16 am |
Without going into great length I think you have articulated a fairly standard caviet for the justification of failure with this wonderful ‘glossy’ vision.Your statement “it will rely on community, council, state and federal government working together” is a natural out and one that is befitting the era of irresponsible politics.
Here is a thought, why is the planning team aiming so high with their “vision” – it has been consistently demonstrated in this country over time that we CANNONT rely on our many tiers of Government to either work together or to act in the best interests of the community.
STOP selling out to developers, START building the community, ACT locally without the need to heavy reliance on state and federal Government (particularly that awesomely expensive and useless level of state government).
Once the council proactively demonstrates a desire to build for ALL levels of the community and not just business – that might inspire some confidence. I say might, there is an aweful lot of history to overcome.
I think there are plenty of comments that bare out the lack of trust and faith. Now it is the Councils opportunity to demonstrate THEIR commitment to the community they perportedly reprisent.
August 4, 2009 at 9:05 am |
Tell you about the future and the vision, vision what vision and what future?. What a farce of a statement that is if I have ever heard one. How much is you salary per year compared to my $12.000 per annum as a disabled resident. Lets begin with the garden competition with relation to the handling of coucils retrospective policies in relation to building and passing planning permission for a few extra nudges from their good old boys above in order to have a pristine block of land with ancient growth, native calitris red and ghost gums on the provision that the owners replace the destruction with old growth. Please get the word out that minature morayas are not in the league. I understand that one of the conditions stipulated by council for building on this block was that a provision for removing the natural landscape was the owners responsibilty was to address this with the replacement tress native to the area. Please understand that minature morayasdo not meet this criteruia stipulated by council. The land 3 doors down from me, did I say number 30? is the premises The property in CVB that was completely dozed for a Pink MacMansion on the provision that trees will be replaced to compensate for the native calitris and aged old growth timbers that has never even raised its head! Council need to pull their heads out of there shell and act on these things are they are obliged by their code of ethics as council employees.
August 5, 2009 at 3:47 am |
TRAVEL: I’m really excited that the Shire is taking cycling facilities seriously, as evident with the new bike path between Wyong and Tuggerah. More paths and better facilities at Wyong Station are great initiatives and in line with being environmentally sustainable and health conscious.
I would like to see better facilities for bike ON trains and buses. I catch the train with my bike to get to work in Umina from Wyong and it is shocking how hard it is. It makes me mad when I’m doing a good thing and the system makes it hard. I have to lift my bicycle 2 meters of the floor to hang it on a hook. That’s after I run up and down the platform to find hook (not that the platform staff would wait till I do) at which point it might already be in use by another cyclist. What’s worse is the new trains don’t even HAVE a hook. I’ve also been stranded late at night at Woy Woy station as the replacement bus couldn’t take bikes when there was trackwork. These facilities need to be RELIABLE and USABLE for people to actually use them.
One more thing is people’s attitudes towards cyclists. Some people believe they have no business being on the road, or the train, or that it’s just plain stupid to ride a bike when you could drive a car. This should be talked about at school, and kids who live close by should be encouraged to ride to school. Start early!
DIVERSE FACILITIES: Great that cultural and sports facilities are being looked at. They are certainly in shortage on the Coast. I would suggest finding a balance between ‘old charm’ and ’state of the art’. We do have facilities on the Coast but they are often run badly or underutilised. Alison Homestead is a great example of local history and a museum pretty much right in town. But it is never visited. It is full of uninteresting artifacts that were never in the house to begin with and the tours which cost $5 are completely uninformative. I actually learned more form looking at the old photos on the walls. I do realise that is is run by volunteers who I’m sure are both short on time and resources. But it’s a crying shame and a waste. The lighthouse at the Entrance is another example. It could be more more interesting, there could be more information outside, more facilities such as a cafe or restaurant to really make the most of that beautiful spot. Value adding to what we already have. Adding facilities that will make us locals go more often and visitors stay for a whole weekend rather than an hour.
COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP OF ENVIRONMENT: I would like to see better facilities to enjoy Tuggerah Lake and Wyong River. They are spectacularly beautiful and a path all along the lake and river fronts would be a good start. Add some things to do and places to chill out on the way and many more people would get to see them.
EDUCATION: I don’t know if the priorities are listed in order but I would like to see education higher up on the list. Especially when it comes to changing attitudes to education. I feel that the Coast fosters a sense of pride in being ignorant. It’s way too acceptable to be narrow-minded and ambition and the will to learn are discouraged. A university on the coast, and the student culture and business that it would bring with it, could be a great opportunity for the Coast.
I’m just glad that there is a vision for the future, bring on the change!!
October 29, 2009 at 1:55 am |
i think it is a good idear