Lyndoch bulldozes its way through public reserve illegally
Lyndoch bulldozed illegally through Scoborio Reserve to allow truck access to its construction site. Image supplied.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Lyndoch Living bulldozed – illegally – a dirty great track through the back of Scoborio Reserve.
The road was cut through several weeks ago so trucks could drive in and out of the construction site for the $22m medical clinic.
No permit.
No authority.
No shame.
I recently asked the Warrnambool City Council if this road sliced through a public reserve had been approved by council officers.
No, it was not:
“The short roadway cut into Scoborio Reserve was done without Council consent. Council expects the affected area to be reinstated,” a WCC spokesman said.
There you have it.
The illegal roadway has now been shut off.
For those keeping count, this is the fourth time Lyndoch Living has failed to meet planning and permit laws in the past eight months.
That’s all for now, but rest assured the terriers are still digging.
Lyndoch and WCC fail pub test while ruining public reserve
The scars of multiple Lyndoch Living staff cars parking illegally on Scoborio Reserve. The WCC is “working” with Lyndoch to find a solution.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Look closely, this is the slow ruination of a public reserve by Lyndoch Living through ongoing, illegal parking with impunity.
They are photos of Scoborio Reserve, a public reserve on the north side of Lyndoch and the original site of the Warrnambool botanic gardens.
It is named in honour of a head gardener, Charles Scoborio.
It’s a place where a few remnant scraps of native vegetation cling to what used to be a rich habitat along the banks of the Hopkins River as part of the Peek Whurrong lands.
Yellow-crested black cockatoos, pink-chested galahs and nesting magpies still like to hang out there.
And now, bit by bit, it’s being lost to the expansion of Lyndoch.
Lyndoch is turning the eastern end into an unofficial staff car park because it has failed to ever provide enough staff and visitor parking on its own land.
The reserve is becoming a mud bath.
What was once a handful of cars has grown to 30 or more a day.
2019: the eastern side of Scoborio Reserve as it used to look, before it became an unofficial and illegal Lyndoch carpark.
That’s because the opening of a mini medical clinic at Lyndoch and demolition work for the $22 million medical clinic has pushed scarce parking on site to breaking point.
Lyndoch has even had the gall to direct staff – in writing – to park on land that it doesn’t own because it couldn’t be bothered to find its own solution.
And what have the WCC officers done about it?
They haven’t, as you might expect, told Lyndoch to stop.
In fact they haven’t moved one inch to protect the reserve from this illegal activity.
No, what they have done is actually far worse than doing nothing: they are looking at ways to let it go on.
The council officers – NOT the elected councillors* – are busily working to solve a problem that is not their problem and are offering up a piece of public land in the process.
In other words, if Lyndoch breaks the law, the council doesn’t fine them, but bends to them.
Seven months on, the permit application (lodged after The Terrier story) is still being processed.
The illegal sign is still there.
Lyndoch is also, as we speak, committing an offence under the State Planning and Environment Act by ignoring the permit conditions for its mini medical clinic.
Part of the permit issued by council staff (NOT councillors*) included a clear traffic and parking plan.
This plan has been completely ignored by Lyndoch ever since the clinic opened on 4 April.
Has anything happened as a consequence? Was the clinic forced to close immediately?
No, of course not.
And here comes the pub test.
All of these breaches are happening while the WCC chief of planning, Andrew Paton, sits on the Lyndoch board.
He is also a director of the Warrnambool Medical Clinic, a commercial, private company owned by Lyndoch that is driving the $22m project.
Former WCC Acting CEO and community services manager Vikki King is also deputy chair of a board chaired by the Lyndoch CEO and managed by Lyndoch.
How is it okay for senior council managers – a chief planner and a former Acting CEO no less – to be anywhere near an organisation that requires multiple council approvals* as part of its expansion?
The WCC says Mr Paton has declared a conflict of interest in all planning and applications from Lyndoch* and has not been involved in any decisions.
And Mr Paton, for his part, told me both positions he holds with Lyndoch are, “to date”, voluntary.
I have no doubt Mr Paton has acted with integrity, but that is not the point.
The question is, why would he put himself in that position in the first place and why would the WCC allow it?
If Mr Paton was a board member of a building company that was rolling out $100m worth of housing on Hopkins Rd hill, eyebrows would be up.
Why is it not the case here as Lyndoch rolls out a $100m masterplan*?
This is precisely the “wheels within wheels”, “who-you-know” rubbish that the people of Warrnambool are sick of.
We are all tired of doing the right thing – applying for permits, parking within the lines, paying our fines – while others sail past in the express lane of exemption and ruin public property in the process.
Insiders and outsiders.
As I wrote after the Schneider court victory, those days are done and it’s time for the WCC to end it, regardless of who is in charge.
* Not one part of Lyndoch’s $100m masterplan so far has gone to full council for approval by the elected councillors. Each part has been signed off by delegation.
Is Lyndoch Living stitching up a deal for Scoborio Reserve?
Part of the Scoborio Reserve public land that fronts the Hopkins River and sits next to Lyndoch.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
My team of trusty terriers tell me Lyndoch Living is stitching up a deal with the Warrnambool City Council to take over a piece of prime public land: the Scoborio Reserve on the Hopkins River.
Scoborio Reserve sits off Hopkins-Otway Road between Lyndoch and Proudfoot’s Boathouse, part of the Peek Whurrong lands, and covers almost 3 ha of prime waterfront real estate.
The elected councillors have also not had any recent briefings about the proposal.
Despite this, I have now had three good sources tell me that, behind the scenes, discussions between Lyndoch Living, the WCC officers and Mayor Herbert are well advanced and that a formal proposal is being put together.
Cr Sue Cassidy is on the Lyndoch board, so I can only assume that she would also be well across any Lyndoch plans to expand into public space.
The council’s City Growth Manager Andrew Paton is also on the Lyndoch board.
The official line from the council today is that “council has not received any formal request from Lyndoch Living in relation to acquiring any part of Scoborio Reserve”.
Read that sentence very carefully.
“Any formal request” does not rule it out. It just means that it is not in writing, yet.
In fact what happens these days with so many council decisions is that deals are all stitched up behind closed doors and we, the public, are left to play catch up.
Instead of being included in the process from the start, we are left to fight it at the end.
There are six things that make me think this Lyndoch deal is real:
the sudden desire by the WCC to formally name the unnamed road that services the Scoborio Reserve. This could be a coincidence, of course;
the council also saying it received a suggestion (from who?) that the road be named after George Rolfe, who once owned the Lyndoch land;
suggestions that Lyndoch has been interested in building a childcare centre next door to the aged care home;
that this centre would be run by a private operator;
Cr Herbert’s belief that the council should not be in the business of running childcare centres and they should be privatised;
that the council is now in the business of trying to sell off public spaces: just ask the good people of Swan St, who this year had to put up a fight to save their patch of green space.
The word “public” is fast losing its meaning in Warrnambool.
This is public land. It is a reserve. It should not be for sale, “gifted”, or given away for virtually nothing.
We are watching.
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