Hi everyone – apologies for not being in touch for a while; we have been busy making plans for the SCRRA AGM on 24th May (there will be notices out via the post on this shortly asking for nominations for the committee and providing an outline of some amendments that are proposed to our constitution to tidy a few things up) and we have also been getting our letter-boxing campaign up and running again in advance of the Council Elections in October (more about that later).

We have also had a few meetings with Council and government representatives over what is planned at St Clair. There is not much to report so far from these meetings other than that we have continued to raise questions that they do not apear to have fully thought through and a further meeting is planned on the 29th April with the Council and LMC CEOs at which we hope to get some answers. We will keep you posted and please come along to the SCRRA AGM so that we can give you a good update. (Please let me know if you don’t receive a notice in the next week or so).

You may have heard there was a “community day” at Cheltenham recently on the new “Actil Park”; those that were able to go can report that there were generally more Council “green shirts” in attendance than there were residents (at what cost we can only imagine!!). I have attached a copy of the feedback sheet (and my email below) that I have forwarded to Michelle Mader at the Council, to describe some of the things that we value about St Clair Park and our opposition to the loss of it as open space. I am sure that there were others who also handed in their thoughts on the day!

The Council will also be consulting next week on the “revitalisation” of Woodville Road – this includes the TOD on St Clair – so please feel free to go along to their “visioning workshop” on the 21st April and tell them exactly how you feel about the proposed TOD apartments on the park!! It will be held at 7pm at the Woodville West Torrens Football Clubooms off Oval Ave at Woodville South. We have made no commitment to contribute to this as an organisation as we do not agree with what they are doing at St Clair, however you may want to go along and have your say about it!!

Please let us know if you are interested in getting involved in the campaign to get better representation back onto the Charles Sturt Council – we would be happy to hear from you! We will also be cranking up our fundraising again and getting the cake stall etc back into action – stay tuned!!

Lastly – thanks very much again for your help and good wishes during the election campaign; I am pleased to report that we did give them a scare, and we were also successful in helping to get another independent candidate into the Upper House; Kelly Vincent of Dignity4Disability – we wish her all the best!! The Community Voice Coalition is alive and kicking and we intend to grow this as an avenue for grassroots community groups like ours to support one another and campaign for more accountability and honesty in local and state government.

All the best and hope to see you at the AGM, if not before!! Please don’t forget the Council meetings are on every 2nd and 4th Monday at 7pm; it is always good for them to know that they are under scrutiny!! Also stay tuned to the Save St Clair Recreation Park!!! Facebook page or CharlesSturtRatepayers.org for regular updates.

Thanks & Regards……..Kirsten

PS Email to Charles Sturt follows….

Michelle – you and Natalie received much of this feedback from us at the meeting, but I thought it would be useful for you to have a written copy of it too. I have not bothered to repeat all of the questions that we have raised previously (and I look forward to discussing these with the two CEOs), but in this feedback sheet I have concentrated on what I know the residents value about St Clair Park in the vain hope that someone, somewhere in the Charles Sturt Council administration actually does care about what we think.

The residents we represent are totally opposed to the use of St Clair Park as anything other than open space. You only have to look at the previous referendum held by Council in 1964 on St Clair Park to know what the result would be today if you had truly put this to the residents of Charles Sturt. There is no reason to suspect that the answer would be any different today and all the pretty pictures and propaganda in the world from you and the LMC are not going to change our minds about apartments going on our park; surely you can not blame us!!

Regards…….Kirsten Alexander

PS I realise that this is slightly after your cut-off date, but I trust you will accept a late submission from us, as you did from the LMC in relation to the land swap…

There is a visioning workshop next Wednesday night the 21st April from 7pm-9:30pm at the Woodville West Torrens Football Club.

You need to register to attend and you can do that by ringing 1300 116 747 or email village.woodville@lmc.sa.gov.au.  Apparently it is being run by a man called Gilbert Rochecouste and it says he has worked on some of the most challenging and complex communities and projects in Aus and overseas with great success! I am not sure what that is saying about us??????

After having a meeting with the council tonight they are saying we should attend just in case the TOD goes through and then at least we get a say! My view is we shoud probably attend just to keep letting them know we are OPPOSED to the TOD BEING BUILT ON OUR PARK. This is not over – far from it,  the reports will not go in until September and then it will need to go through many more processess. We have council elections in the meantime and we need to vote out the councillors who have voted for the landswap.

Kelly Thomas

Just a reminder everyone the feedback to the council needs to be done by Friday the 16th of April 2010 at 5pm. Things that you could write about are the increase of traffic on Woodville Rd if there was to be a road coming out onto there, the increased risk of flooding, the unfair exchange of land as it isn’t one for one (roads and already allocated space does not equal 4.7 hectares) the disadvantage to existing residents by moving the new park onto the Cheltenham racecourse making it really a backyard for the new residents and the TOD.
Also reading in last weeks messenger the 170 people that went through the community day want a pooch park and an outdoor adult gym! well those things also eat into the open space. Why can’t we have the open space that already exists in St Clair and add those things onto the Cheltenham site?

The feedback form can be downloaded from the following link, filled out electronically and emailed to council@charlessturt.sa.gov.au – Note: We do not recommend using the “email” link at the bottom of the form as it is set to access multiple links and may pose a computer security risk.
Download Link: http://www.charlessturt.sa.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Community_Open_Day_-_Feedback_Sheet.pdf
Kelly Thomas

The following letter sent to us has been forwarded to The Advertiser & other newspapers for publication, as well as TV channels (other than Channel Nine as Google gave a warning that it’s site may harm your computer, which may have been a temporary aberration attributable to hackers, detected malware or a virus):

Letter to The Editor
30 December 2009
I challenge you, Premier Rann, Treasurer Foley, Attorney General Atkinson, Minister Hill & Ministers Maywald & Gago to a debate on national television.  The only condition I seek is the full protection of Parliamentary Privilege; not that I intend to disclose anything but facts & my opinion of them.

I wish to debate you all on the following issues within South Australia:
* Water policy & the River Murray, including related taxation;
* Desalination vs Storm water recycling & purification & expansion of existing water storage facilities with reverse pumping back to the Murray in times of overflow;
* The impact of desalination on power use (see rail electrification below) & the coastal environment;
* The missed opportunity at the recent Premier’s conference to put water use of our river Murray water (being used by the eastern states to grow rice & cotton) on the table as a priority;
* TOD’s;
* The proposed light Rail system & public transport in general;
* The impact of rail electrification on CO2 emissions & potential blackouts to households during peak electric power use periods (see desalination above);
* Revocation of Community land at St Clair & the Barossa;
* Councils increasingly ignoring their constituents on issues like land revocation, Chelsea Cinema, Cheltenham Racecourse and other local issues;
* State Government & Councils refusal to ban “donations” from developers – we the taxpayers & ratepayers donate far more in the way of taxes, duties, GST & rates, allegedly resulting in South Australia being the highest taxed state in Australia;
* State Government’s position in declining a need for an Independent Commission Against Corruption in this State, which refusal allegedly has the strong support of Councils like the City of Charles Sturt;
* Freedom of speech, Internet censoring & media reporting in general, from a State perspective;
* The proposals for the former Mitsubishi site & the former Clipsal site;
* Mental Health facilities in this state and the impact of the Glenside redevelopment on our capacity to care for the mentally ill.  Included in this would be reference to existing government policy to relocate the mentally ill to within the community (mostly in substandard facilities like cheap pubs and community housing) without allegedly the provision of proper care and rehabilitation activities;
* The alleged singling out of “bikies” as an illegal group, noting the vast majority of crime in this state appears to emanate from other sources;
* The proposed “Marj” (Royal Adelaide Hospital) redevelopment;
* The proposed redevelopment of Adelaide Oval;
* Government’s previous push to close Country Hospitals in favour of 4 “Super Hospitals”;
* The state of our City & Country roads – e.g. Goodwood Road, South Road & roads to the mid-north, when fines, registrations & taxes are purportedly allocated for such purposes;
* The financial position of this State; recalling that Treasurer Foley previously advised at the height of the Global Financial Crisis that SA had suffered financial losses. I have witnessed nothing subsequent to this than ad nauseum grandiose announcements on how you, our State Government, will spend our money in the billions.  Is the money there or will we see increased taxes akin the water rate rises to pay for a desalination plant nobody wants (or needs)?;
* Treasurer Foley’s plan to import skilled labor from the Phillipines as opposed to increasing re-training & education facilities for the unemployed and those who have lost their jobs during the GFC;
* The ability for a labor dominated Council like the City of Charles Sturt to command the protection at their meetings numbering in the 10′s of Police Officers, at least 2 paddywagons & 6 police cars + 2 designated Police Negotiators & then lock out all but 30 or so selected ratepayers to public meetings;

I could go on but guess you all get the idea. Hell, I’ll even let you bring along the alleged 130+ taxpayer funded media staff contingent under your command to back you all up. Hey, why not bring along our City of Charles Sturt Mayor Harold Anderson & Councilor Sykes (who allegedly works for Mr Atkinson) for good measure?

I have never been a Politician, a lawyer or held community office.  I am a self funded retiree with some experience in the finance industry. I will stand totally alone in a debate with you all. Will you all stand accountable & debate only one?  If you do not, I can only accept that you all fear only one thing – the truth.

Mark Walker
West Lakes

This is hard to find on Council’s site – So if you’d like to know what they are wanting to do to St Clair & Cheltenham we’ve made it easier to view! Click on the following link:

City of Charles Sturt St Clair Reserve Concept Plans

Edit: We’ve had issues with hackers recently and the above page will probably fail to work properly in Microsoft Internet Explorer. We recommend that if you wish to view the information, download Firefox.  The page works fine in Firefox (a quality open source secure browser).  We will rectify the issue with Internet explorer ASAP.