Spring has sprung

Hello everyone and welcome to those of you who have signed this petition since my last update.

We are well over 1200 signatures now, which is fantastic!

Spring has sprung in Rankin Gardens and it’s lovely to see new growth on the roses and flowers adding colour and brightness to everyone’s day.

Sadly, if the City’s plans for redeveloping the Gardens go ahead, a lot of this will be dug up. 

There is still no news about which way things will go. The Civic Precinct project hasn’t appeared on a council meeting agenda since April.

At the July council meeting, a local ratepayer asked questions perhaps with the project in mind. (Meeting rules allow questions to be asked on any topic even if it is not on the agenda.) The second question essentially asked whether the structure of the existing council building at 241 Rokeby Road had ever been formally assessed. 

The staff reply referred to Council being involved in workshops to assess “a range of options” and included the following:

To inform Council decision-making on a refurbishment option, the City has engaged Human Urban to investigate whether the building is better suited to refurbishment and adaptive re-use or demolition and replacement.

The reply didn’t explain how this company was selected to do the work.

The whole question of whether it is necessary or prudent to demolish the existing building and replace it with the proposed (estimated) $64 million new civic building and gardens is still a vexed one. As the months slip by, staff may hope that we have all forgotten about it. 

Arguably, refurbishing the existing council building would  demonstrate the City’s commitment to sustainability. One of the comments to this petition put it succinctly (along the lines of): in ratepayer land, if your house has a leaky roof, you fix it; you don’t build a new house!

The existing council building at 241 Rokeby Road might need some work, but judging by the fact that the City has continued to allow members of the public to use parts of it from time to time, it can’t be derelict or unsafe. 

If we can persuade the Council that refurbishment for community use is the best option, then we might save Rankin Gardens from redevelopment.

We live in hope!

Thank you for your continuing support.