In the overall scheme of things, this is probably a very minor issue. However, we believe it illustrates much about both the continual bungling by this council and then the abuse of the ‘in camera’ component of the legislation in order to cover up and avoid real scrutiny of such bungled operations. We refer to Item 12.1 of the ‘in camera’ items: “12.1 under s89(2)(e) “proposed development” which relates to the gifting of land to Council (Hopkins St, McKinnon).”  It looks like we were again dead right!

Readers may recall that several weeks ago we highlighted the fact that owners along the Elster Creek trail were reclaiming their rightful land by moving their fences out into the trail proper. We also queried how council had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on a yellow brick road without doing the necessary homework first.  It is now obvious that the path was potentially under threat by the realignment of property fencing. We concluded that council should have known what was likely to happen given past history of this area, and that they were literally caught with their pants down. We now conclude that this in camera item relates to this bungled issue for the following reasons:

  • Hopkins St. backs onto the Trail
  • Why would anyone ‘gift’ valuable land to the council unless there was a special need to do so?
  • Why would council go through the expense of ‘accepting’ such land unless there was a special need to do so?
  • Why is this item in camera? Surely when someone is so very generous and magnanimous as to ‘gift’ thousands of dollars of private property away, they deserve to be applauded, lauded, thanked. It isn’t every day that someone ‘gifts’ land  – especially with the price of land these days?

We connect the dots and make the following observations. The reason that this item is secret is because it would draw attention to another bungled Council operation. Council did not take into account the fact that its new path was either directly encroaching upon, or too close to residents’ properties to make for a viable shared path. The only solution was to either buy, or have land ‘gifted’ to them to avoid embarrassment and disclosure. Further, the fact that there is a plaque stuck in the middle of the trail at present acknowledging previous title transfers (2008) is further evidence that council should have known that there were numerous private parcels of land within the trail. This only raises the question of why these earlier land transfers are publically applauded and this one very generous act by a resident is conducted in secret. Our answer? To cover up what is another example of poor planning, poor decision making and a waste of residents’ money. All of this of course begs the question of how many other properties are entitled to move out and thus endanger the viability of the path? Will someone else suddenly ‘gift’ land to council?  Or will they exercise their legal rights to claim what is their land?