Development moratorium still needed

I still believe that there should be a moratorium on medium-density development on the Peninsula until the the enormous drainage backlog has been addressed.

Council has spent a great deal of the drainage levy on the Peninsula in recent years, but it has been estimated that we need at least $50m to drain the Peninsula properly and this is never going to be available from the levy.

Some seven months ago, I put a Notice of Motion to Council requesting an over-development committee be set up immediately to investigate matters such as the extent of medium-density building on the Peninsula.

The lack of infrastructure could be researched and a report presented to the State Government and The Department of Urban Planning (DUAP) seeking changes or a moratorium.

Unfortunately, Council did not support my motion and instead elected to discuss the current planning policies at a Councillors' meeting.

Several months later, we are still waiting for this meeting to take place.

I have enquired of the Council officers as to when this might happen but so far have not been given a date.

In the last 12 months, I have had two meetings with senior officers of the DUAP, including a tour of the Peninsula to point out the problems we continue to experience.

These meetings followed the release of DUAP's latest document "Shaping the Central Coast" which contains plenty of motherhood statements about the need for infrastructure provision but does not present strategies to bring this about.

There needs to be effective strategies put in place and most of all there needs to be appropriate funding forthcoming from Government to ensure it happens.

I believe that DUAP have instructions from the State Government that many thousands more people should be accommodated on the Central Coast.

In Gosford Local Government Area, this is mainly in the medium-density areas.

I also believe DUAP might be persuaded that the current emphasis on medium-density in the suburbs is not the right way to go about it.

At my meeting with them, there was some discussion about a reorganisation of the zoning system which would see land along major transport routes be subject to more intensive development, while other areas would revert to a single house on each block.

I must stress that these were very preliminary discussions and would need a great deal more work before any decisions could be made.

When Council resolved to support a review of the Gosford CBD to enable more residential development, I was successful in getting Council to approve an amendment that DUAP and the State Government be approached to amend the planning laws, such that if Council agreed to an extra 2000-3000 people living in Gosford CBD the medium-density areas be reduced accordingly.

If this doesn't happen, we'll have so many people living on the Peninsula it will be changed forever.

I do not subscribe to the current notion doing the rounds that medium-density is not the problem, it's just the design that's bad.

Whilst I agree that some residential flat buildings look as though they have been drawn on the back of an envelope, the real problem is the extra people being brought into the area without the facilities to cope.

The freeways are at logjam, the trains are overcrowded, Woy Woy Rd is a disgrace as are most roads, we have no kerb and guttering to speak about and the drainage is almost non-existent in some areas.

I think bringing extra people into this area in these circumstances is not merely bad planning. It is an absolute disgrace on the part of DUAP and the State Government mandarins who really run this state.

Lynne Bockholt, September 18