It's been three years since we first created this petition to Free Montfort Park. As you may remember, this public park was sold by Moreland Council back in 2003 to a local community group (Dar Al Awada) that was, wait for it, headed up by a member of the council. A condition of the sale was that there continue to be 'reasonable public access'. 

Anyway, that was nearly twenty years ago, and since then our local park has become a concrete wasteland behind a high fence. No one gets access. It's been empty, while the local children played on the street, dodging traffic. We have been pushing to get access to that Park for a while. 

It's been a long, slow process since we started this petition. We have met with the CEO of Moreland Council, lobbied candidates before the last Council elections,and even engaged in council-facilitated mediation with the community group, Dar Al Awada, to try and improve access for the community. We were willing to support Dar Al Awada to apply for a council grant to improve the look of the park... until it turned out Dar Al Awada hadn't filled out its paperwork with CAV so wasn't eligible for grants.

Moreland Council facilitated one morning of access to the park, on 24 August 2019. For the first time in my child's life, the gates were opened and the children played!

But the promised ongoing access didn't happen. Nine of my neighbours, who all live in the streets at the end of the park, applied to become members of Dar Al Awada. This is a requirement of access. The rules require our membership applications to be processed within 30 days. It's been more than 60 days and we haven't heard back yet.

The good news is, Moreland Council is doing the right thing to try and restore access to the park. At the Moreland Council meeting last week a Council report about Montfort Park was tabled. This said: 'On 19 November 2019, 9 applications for Associate (Open Space) Membership of Dar-Al Awda Community Centre were lodged with the Secretary (Also President at the time). At the time of preparing this report, no response to the applications had been received. Council officers are awaiting the outcome of these applications before providing recommendations on the next steps to improve community access to Council for consideration.'

This is a clear demonstration of the fact that the membership process required for public access is... wait for it... flawed  completely ineffective!

Come on Moreland Council... there's been no public access for nearly twenty years. It's time to do the right thing and fix up the dodgy deals the Council did back in the day.

Buy back our park!