What is council spending supposed to achieve?

Central Coast Council is going to spend $300,000 on works in the Woy Woy Town Centre (Peninsula News 501), without any indication of what the purpose of these works would be or what long-term goal they serve, if any.

We are still waiting for the long-promised Woy Woy Town Centre Plan which was scheduled for mid-2020 but which seems as far from reality as ever.

In the meantime, without any integrated program to set priorities, Council is embarking on a grab bag of bits and pieces whose point is hard to discern.

There will be tree surrounds at a cost of nearly $200,000 and a $30,000 art installation, but what is all this supposed to achieve?

To quote the classic phrase, it is putting lipstick on a pig.

The Woy Woy Town Centre is a mess, and a few tree surrounds aren't going to change that.

What is needed is a serious assessment of priority improvements and an implementation timetable for what has to be done.

To revamp Woy Woy into a competitive centre, if it is possible at all, will require fundamental changes dependent on Council initiative - a quality not generally demonstrated by this Council - not a paint and patch job designed, presumably, as a gesture to show the Peninsula has not been forgotten in the carving up of the budget for which we are going into deep debt.

SOURCE:

Email, 24 Aug 2020

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy