Overview : Side Street, Fourteen? Storey building – although thenumber of  storeys has changes a couple of times…

Status: Passed Council,  VCAT submissions cintinuing

Contact: Adele Mighton     AdeleM@coherence.com.au

Concerns : Traffic, Car Stackers, Failure of council process: to advise public of changes to plans, propertly review car stacker suitability.

 

2012-07-11

Hi everyone

So we had our two dates at VCAT 2 weeks ago and we’ve been enjoying a bit of break since then. THANK YOU to everyone who managed along for an hour, a day or the entire 2 days. Believe me, we felt and appreciated your support and your presence.

We couldn’t be happier at how we presented our submissions. We raised very good arguments. We really challenged the Council’s decision and revealed some big problems with the proposed development. So much so that a third day is required at the end of the month to finish the case. In the meantime, the developer has put up yet another set of plans to address some of the problems and we’re busy now critiquing those new plans in preparation for day 3.

So we’re back again to VCAT on Thursday 26 July at 10am. We expect this will be the final day and again, we would very much appreciate anyone who could come in on the day. It may not even take the whole day as it should only be the traffic expert to be heard and the right of reply to all parties. We’ll be given an opportunity to sum up our case and it would be great if the Member could feel the presence of the residents and know how much it means to us all.

Please consider coming in on the 26th July and helping us end it with a great turnout!

Thanks!!

Adele Khoo

on behalf of the team: Warren Welsh, Paul McCallum, Frank Falconer and Kelvin Khoo

 

2011-11-01

Status: Passed Council, Going to VCAT – June 22nd 2012

Contact: Adele Mighton     AdeleM@coherence.com.au

Concerns : Traffic, Car Stackers, Failure of council process: to advise public of changes to plans, propertly review car stacker suitability.

 

Dear All

Firstly, can I extend my good wishes for the season to you and your families. I hope that 2012 is a fantastic year and let’s hope it holds good things as we press ahead with our fight against the development at 20-24 Hepburn Road.

Some time has passed since a group of us met at the Doncaster Church of Christ, and I wanted to just give you a quick update on where things stand.

FINANCES

At the November meeting, and then later that next week as we caught up with those who couldn’t be at the meeting, we received (thank you!!!) a total of $874.00.

Costs so far…

VCAT application fee $314.10 + $61.50 for photocopying = $375.60

Available funds $498.40 as at 16/12/11.

 

VCAT APPLICATION

The VCAT application was lodged on 22 November. Our VCAT application is challenging the council’s decision to give a notice of decision to the Hepburn Road development.

The developer has sought a ‘directions hearing’ later this month (date to be confirmed by VCAT) with the main hearing date to be confirmed but anticipated to be August or later.

TEAM

It’s time to get a team of people together who are willing to be involved in the ongoing effort. We need to formulate some plan on how we proceed with the case and where we put our efforts. The more people we have on board, the stronger and more robust will be our case. And naturally, the more people we have, the lighter the individual load.

Can you help?

We will have all sorts of jobs to go around, some ongoing jobs, others one-off jobs. It might be to read through some VCAT decisions to see if we can glean anything, or to do some digging online to find out information about car stackers, or to do a letter box drop to fellow objectors who don’t have email addresses, or to take some photographs of the local streets on busy days.

I sat in my car in the church carpark for an hour one morning with my video camera just before Christmas so that I could get footage of the junction of Doncaster Road and Short Street. It would be great to get similar footage at different times of the day or in different months (in case they dispute the December footage as being biased) so if anyone wants to embrace their inner detective and help with that job, that would be fantastic. You don’t even need to stay in your car while you video, but I quite enjoyed watching it all unfold. At one stage a 10 car queue built up, and another time one poor car waited for well over a minute and then gave up and reversed all the way down Short Street! In almost all cases where a car exited with no delay, it was because they pulled into the bus lane. Another job, might be to watch the 1 hour footage and simply keep a count of the number of cars coming and going down Short Street.

If you feel you can help in ANY way, big or small, please drop me an email.

If you have know of someone with particular skills that could help us, please let us know (but please ask them first).

I’ll finish off by giving you the contact details of myself (AdeleM@coherence.com.au) and Warren Welsh (redolent@bigpond.com). If anything comes to mind, just email.

Kind regards