ehm_skat

BEAUMARIS
SKATE
BOARD CONCRETE RAMP

RESPONSE
TO SKATEBOARD REPORT TO BAYSIDE COUNCIL MEETING 15 AUGUST 2005

• the petition of 1,140 signatures against it, and
• its miserable 12% support in the survey.

SURVEY
OF RESIDENTS:

The
clear message
that the Concourse Green was inappropriate was the only
clear finding of the survey.
 

Neither
of the
more strongly backed sites had majority support. Of the residents
surveyed an
absolute majority of 53% preferred a site other than Balcombe Park. The survey should have used
preferential voting,
used for the last 85 years throughout Australia for making our public
decisions, and not
just crude first-past-the-post voting.
In two
Bayside wards the present councillors were elected despite each
gaining neither
a majority of the first preference votes nor even the highest number of
first
preference votes.
 

The
two strongest
contenders would have had equal support if just 2.9 per cent of
residents had
switched their vote from Balcombe Park to Beaumaris Reserve, yet the
Report gives
the margin of error in the survey as 3 per cent. The weaknesses in the
survey,
and the closeness of support for the two most popular sites should
prompt Council
to make the merits of those two sites the main factor in its choice.

 

Balcombe Park Site that Bayside
Council report seeks for a Concrete Skateboard Ramp

IMPORTANCE OF
AVOIDING A BALCOMBE PARK
SITE:

Beaumaris
Conservation Society Inc. draws Council’s attention to its own
published Management
Plan for Balcombe Park. The existence of this significant document
was not
mentioned in the Survey material sent to residents. The Plan
concentrates on
the bushland areas of the Park – the very area where the skateboard
report
would remove 850
square metres of bushland (1 typical
house lot) to place 240 square metres of concrete ramp there.
The large numbers
driving by at
60 kilometres per hour would notice that concrete scar, but the busy
traffic
would discourage them noticing much else, or reporting trouble if they
noticed
it. The less pressured Victor Street drivers, driving at only 50
kilometres per
hour and with more local interest in the area, would be far more likely
to
notice trouble and to report it. The ramp report should not be acted
upon until
Council has received a Conservation Report on the site.

 

The
opening Vision
and Abstract of the Management Plan is prominently headed by the
telling statement, “Balcombe Park
is a stable indigenous ecosystem characterized by a unique range of
diverse
species.”
 

Beaumaris
Reserve
is not primarily a bushland area like Balcombe Park. It is primarily a recreational
and
cultural area that includes the Library and the Memorial Hall, Art
Group
building, football ground and its pavilion, tennis courts and its
clubhouse,
and some 85 car spaces. The small area of Coastal Tea Trees at the
Beaumaris
Reserve site left by default, and bounded by the football ground, the
tennis
courts, the Art Group building and Victor Street, is in no way as large
or
significant as, or as viable as, the valuable cohesive bushland at
Balcombe
Park.