Draft Play Space Strategy
The Draft Play Space Strategy had, as did the Draft POM, an incomplete description of Christison Park focusing only on sporting activities.
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SCPAG wrote thrice to Council about this inadequate description suggesting that to show readers the true value of Christison Park some further description be included. At last on 24.3.23 Council included a more complete description.
Council had been misrepresenting Christison Park with its incomplete sports focused description and diagram.
Re Community Consultation – Failure to properly weight Residents interests
Council is misinforming the public by its statements in the Draft Play Space Strategy indicating there had been appropriate Community Consultation.
At the beginning of both the Draft Recreation Strategy and the Draft Play Space Strategy there are statements that the community was surveyed, yet SCPAG knows of no resident who was so surveyed for these two Drafts. The community surveyed seems to be mainly the sporting interested bodies and not the residents.
Further to misinformation , SCPAG has written to Council about misinformation in regard to advertising of the Draft Crown Land Reserves POM. We asked Council to remove the incorrect statement “Your feed back in the 2020 local parks open survey shaped the recommendations outlined in the plans/ strategies” because the feedback from the Crown Land Reserves Survey for Christison Park did NOT shape the Draft POM for Christison Park and was actually to the contrary.
The result of the feedback for the Survey about Christison Park showed that residents want no more built environment in the park, including Lights. This is contrary to what is embedded in the Draft POM in Tables 19 and 20.
The Analysis was sought by SCPAG, because Council’s Survey Response Report, amongst 1,318 pages of the Agenda Annexure 21.6.2021, has no analysis of responses to open-ended questions and no summary of Christison Park data.
The misinformation that the Survey responses “shaped” the Draft POM remains on Council’s website.
There is no point further asking people to make comments, as on the “Your Say Woollahra” or take further Surveys, when Council is not using previous Survey responses correctly and listening carefully to its residents.
In addition, without proper Survey analysis and by inviting short comments on its website, Council plays to and invites the type of two word support comment “great idea” popular with sports clubs and sports teams, rather than well thought out submissions from residents. In the past Council has afforded equal weight to the two word comment from a sports team member, without address, as to the submission from a long term local resident.
The lack of any attention to the responses to the open ended questions in Crown Land Reserves Survey re Christison Park does not bode well for any further resident input being taken seriously and does nothing to inspire confidence that other parks / Crown Land Reserves have had a proper analysis of the feedback about them or that the result of any Survey which might have been conducted regarding the Recreation and/ or Play Space Strategies have been correctly weighted and interpreted.
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ACTION
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1. Email with Subject: “Drafts Play Space Strategy” to
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and
Vaucluse Ward Councillors:
mary-lou.jarvis@woollahra.nsw.gov.au;
merrill.witt@woollahra.nsw.gov.au;
susan.wynne@woollahra.nsw.gov.au;
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Ask them to:
1. Stand up for residents being better surveyed and listened to and given deserved weight in Council’s Community Consultation process.
2. For Crown Land Reserves, owned by all residents of NSW, take into account the wider community’s desire to protect Crown Land and
3. Ask Council and the Ward Councillors to protect and preserve the open, natural space of Crown Land Christison Park for all and for posterity
Also SIGN the PETITION on our website and talk to others about the threat to our local natural open space environment.