No infrastructure for PUDS decision

Save Our Suburbs holds great fears for the future of the Woy Woy Peninsula after Gosford Council voted to adopt the high-density version of the Peninsula Urban Directions Strategy (PUDS).

This is a vote for developers, with Mayor Maher using his casting vote.

Cr Doyle, while admitting a non-pecuniary interest in developers, has ruled himself ineligible to vote on certain developments because his employer sells building materials to developers.

Yet he voted on a strategy that will surely benefit directly every developer and those that supply them.

Strange that. Cr Doyle was set to vote against the Maher motion until he belatedly realised that his vote was needed to avert another stalemate.

Cr Hale also declared a non-pecuniary interest but voted anyway.

The outcome for residents is a concerted effort to increase the population by another 16,000 people, half again the number here now.

At 7500, the PUDS study shows that the existing infrastructure will be severely stressed with roads (local and regional) and the rail network gridlocked at peak times.

Is this the sort of strategy that sound planning would advocate for this area?

The ideology-based planning known as urban consolidation has failed everywhere it has been tried.

There is no infrastructure under-utilisation on the Central Coast and hasn't been for years.

The times have bypassed urban consolidation.

Everybody subjected to it, hates it.

State Government policy focuses on population expansion in greenfields sites in Wyong, the Lower Hunter and Western Sydney, places screaming out for developers to come and use the under utilised infrastructure.

Premier Iemma has promised the residents of the Lower Hunter that their lifestyle will not be ruined and that infrastructure will be in place before the influx, leaving the Peninsula as the traditional (under Labor) dumping ground for the mess that is Sydney.

When Council considered PUDS on October 11, it deferred any decision pending discussion of amongst other things "The need for other government entities being required/committed to funding and identifying solutions (roads, environmental, social)".

The latest decision to adopt PUDS is particularly reprehensible without any identified resolution to these funding issues.

There has been no commitment from the State Government to pick up the shortfall that these policies have created and Gosford Council clearly can't afford to.

Gosford Council is reduced to hoping that Section 94 - Developers Contributions will bail out the Peninsula Recreation Centre.

Yet State Government legislation demands that developer contributions only be levied in relation to the demand that each development creates.

Many people who buy property here will never use the Recreation Centre, but they will all turn on their taps in the morning or need a doctor or a policeman sometime.

We cannot expect developers to pay for Council's past mistakes.

This PUDS is presented with great seriousness as the strategy that will ensure our sustainable future and the liveability of our suburbs.

If this Council is to retain any credibility it should repeal this decision until rocksolid funding for essential infrastructure is guaranteed by State and Federal governments and conduct an investigation of the probity of Crs Doyle and Hale declaring an interest in the matter but still voting on it.

Bryan Ellis, Umina