People power at work: as has been reported in the paper, the two Moreton Bay figs planted around 1903 in the middle of Banyan St have been saved.
You did this.
Scarlett Patrick, who started a petition that attracted more than 2000 signatures in four days, did this.
Everyone who signed and wrote letters and buttonholed a councillor, did this.
These glorious trees, planted just fifty years after Warrnambool was founded, were due to be chopped down last year to make way for a better footpath.
They had already been mangled through “pruning” by people with chainsaws who didn’t care less about what they looked like in the finish.
This makes them easier to cut down, of course.
As one wise woman said to me this week, trees can be whatever shape they bloody like.
Yes, they bloody can.
Terrier titbits: 30kph zones, old trees and an election
Life in the slow lane: 30kph zones are being introduced around the CBD.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Three interesting things and a question:
Titibit #1: If you were wondering why a series of red bars have suddenly started popping up on intersections around the CBD, here’s the answer: the introduction of a 30kph speed limit.
The new, slower speed limit was one of the many things bundled into the now $18 million upgrade of Liebig St but, as far as I can see, it hasn’t been mentioned or discussed widely since it was first raised as an idea for Liebig St in 2014.
From what I have found, Warrnambool is the only place in Victoria outside certain parts of Melbourne to introduce a 30kph zone and the idea, of course, is to slow the traffic down to make life safer for pedestrians.
There is nothing wrong with that concept, but given the amount of traffic controls now in place in Liebig St – with more zebra crossings, roundabouts and speed humps than you can count – is it really necessary?
And is it necessary to extend it from Liebig St to other parts of the CBD where the limit is 50kph?
I haven’t seen any statistics on the number of pedestrian injuries around Kepler St/Raglan Pde, for example, or Banyan/Timor St, which are just two of the intersections now getting the red stripe treatment.
Driving at 30kph really is snail’s pace – it’s 10kph slower than for school zones – and I can’t see people sticking to it outside of the main street where the speed is already restricted by design.
The annual losses on Flagstaff Hill are now reaching an eye-watering range of more than $750,000.
Titbit #2: The draft Warrnambool City Council budget/s and its submission to the Essential Services Commission to ask for a 4.5% rate rise contains so many gems, I am not sure where to start, but I will list a few during this week, starting from today.
First, according to the ESC submission, Flagstaff Hill – my old hobby horse – and the Visitor Centre ran at a loss of $1.79 million in 2016-17 and $859,061 last financial year.
It is expected to run at a loss of around $750,000 each year for the next three years, which is $100k more than anticipated and getting close to double the losses of around 10 years ago.
This is eye watering.
By the way, it is worth mentioning that Colac Shire Council is raising its rates by a mere .5% this year. They were thinking of going for 2%, the same as last year, but that was knocked back by a majority of councillors. It is also worth mentioning, again, that out of 79 councils in Victoria, only two are applying to break the rate cap and we are one of them.
Despite a recommendation they be saved, two 115-year old Moreton Bay figs on Raglan Pde are still not safe from the axe.
Titbit #3: Enormous public pressure and several thousand signatures on a petition saw council staff recommend recently that the two 115-year-old Moreton Bay figs at the corner of Banyan St and Raglan Parade be saved.
Yay! Sanity prevails.
But wait…
No, they are not saved, yet, because the councillors deferred making a decision so they could – once again with feeling – look at the whole Banyan St streetscape and – once again – try to find out how much it would cost to plant coastal banksias down the southern end because Infrastructure head Scott Cavanagh had no real idea.
Good grief, the people of southern Banyan St have been waiting for five years to get this sorted. Five years.
Worryingly, as part of the debate Cr David Owen – he who loves trees – described the two Moreton Bay figs as “freaks” because of their bad pruning and said should be removed.
Why, as has been said elsewhere, do councillors ignore most petitions unless they give them the answer they wanted in the first place?
And a question….
Speaking of petitions, how ironic that the WCC is part of a petition for better roads in our area.
Judging by the years of neglect in road funding so far, the council might find its own petition efforts are also ignored.
Unless…unless…we will actually make Wannon a marginal seat at the federal election on May 18.
Are we brave enough?
Over to you….
If you would like to see The Terrier keep digging up, sniffing out and chewing on local issues, please consider throwing something in the tip jar.
Phew, that was close. Two of Warrnambool’s oldest street trees have been temporarily spared from being chopped down by the Warrnambool City Council this weekend, but the fight is far from over.
The two, 115-year-old Australian banyan trees on the corner of, yes, Banyan St and Raglan Parade are not yet saved, but thanks to people power, the pause button has been pressed.
Let’s look at what just happened and what happens next.
What happened was the council falsely and arrogantly believed that it could destroy these two magnificent trees that have been alive longer than any person on the planet and nobody would really care.
It also believed that consulting the public meant putting a media release on its website, sending this to the local paper, and contacting a few nearby property owners – all just 10 days before the chainsaws moved in.
Lastly, it hoped that we would blindly accept that these trees had to be chopped down because they were causing car accidents, that they were bubbling up the footpath and that the whole avenue of trees would actually look better if these two trees were gone.
To say the council was wrong on every single count is an understatement.
More than 2000 people signed an online petition within four days to stop this massacre. The petition, started by local Scarlett Patrick, is still going strong.
People were furious. They were furious because their heritage was about to be ripped out (again), that our precious old trees were being treated with contempt, that nobody had a chance to offer an opinion or an alternative, that not one single elected councillor was jumping up and down in outrage, and that the justifications being rolled out just didn’t make sense.
The trees, as we all know, are not causing car accidents at a big intersection that has traffic lights. They are not causing drivers to rear-end each other, or to turn too soon, or too late.
VicRoads knows this and I asked them, just to be sure, if they had expressed concerns to the council about the old trees.
They hadn’t.
What VicRoads did do, however, was offer to pay for a new footpath if the council decided to pull out the trees:
“VicRoads (Regional Roads Victoria) is responsible for the maintenance of the footpath in the Princes Highway median, and has, as a result of the Council’s plans to remove the trees, agreed to fix any damage to the footpath,” a spokeswoman said via email.
The footpath under the big trees is getting rough, just like those at the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens, but there are many ways to improve this and, just to be on the safe side, there is another, perfectly flat footpath just 2o metres away on the other side of the road.
Locals know this, they can see it for themselves.
(They can also see the broken stump of a traffic and pedestrian light that has been sitting there for weeks, wrapped in orange safety tape, waiting to be replaced.)
Picking up on the angry mood, the council has now switched tack.
You’ve got it all wrong folks! The priority was not about traffic accidents and footpaths, but actually improving the full avenue of Australian banyans/Moreton Bay figs along Raglan Parade.
The original media release has been taken down from the council website (see above), but this is the opening line of a statement sent to me this week:
“Council’s intention in proposing to remove these trees was to address issues associated with aesthetics of the boulevard which had been impacted by heavy pruning of the two trees as part of power line and signal clearance works, other considerations included pedestrian access and visibility at the intersection.”
So you prune the trees so harshly that they look ugly, then you get rid of them because, hey, they look ugly.
Oh boy, we are back in George Orwell territory again.
Self-confessed tree hugger with the 115-year-old banyan tree.
The good news is that the council says it will now consult more broadly. When and how, we still don’t know, but it has decided to bundle the issue into its response to another petition, received in April this year.
That petition, signed by 19 residents, asked to have some native trees planted on the median strip in the southern end of Banyan St, between Timor and Merri streets.
Thanks to Scarlett Patrick, you, and more than 2000 other people, these 19 residents now have a whole lot more clout and the two Australian Banyan trees have a second chance.
More broadly, the council has been given a wake up notice that people are watching, that they do care, and that we need a better policy on how we manage our precious urban forest.
