Tuesday 22 December 2009

Watch the sneaky Council and what they're up to behind your Christmas turkey

Cairns Regional Council have done it again, and everyone should be as skeptical as hell.

In last Saturday’s weekend paper, there was an advertisement for the "lease and upgrade" of Council’s Palm Cove Caravan Park (read: ours) .
For the nerdy readers out there, like Sue, Warren and Jude, that's lot 242 on SP202695. It also including the optional sublease on and development of Council’s adjacent tourist facility site, which is lot 253 on NR7824.
The advertisement stated that tender applications close on the 2nd February 2010. So the ad goes in just six days before Christmas and closes a few days after the Christmas holiday period ends.
I recall this type of "consultation" happening last year when Council held a series of meetings to get the public input at around the same time, over the proposed Smithfield Town Centre development. So, if you really want to exclude the community, tell them about it when they distracted with more important things like their family.
"The skeptic in me says, that they already have someone or some organisation lined up to take on the management and 're-development'," says Fiona Tulip, president of the Combined Beaches Community Association. "I don't think they want this too widely publicised."
"Two previous public notifications and consultation processes to do with the upgrade of this caravan park were all done over the Christmas period," says Fiona Tulip. "I even joked to a friend about looking out for the ad just before Christmas, and bingo, she spotted it!"

The Combined Beaches Community Association says that he two public consultation processes so far have been "lip service" and nothing more.
"A promise by the Mayor at a community meeting held earlier this year in Clifton Beach for more community involvement in the upgrade decision making processes came to nought," Fiona Tulip says.
This tender process should have been advertised at a less busy time. What an insult to the community. If the new CEO does not over rule the planning department and extend the public submission until at least the end of February, we'll know who's got the trousers on.

5 comments:

Palm Cove watcher said...

Rumour has it that the old Surayi on Williams Esplanade will become a backpackers palace. It has been bought by the owners of PK's. No doubt soon the liquor license for extended hours will be applied for, just as in the case of Apres Beach bar and grill, also on the waterfront.

The hotels will then have their cheap workforce but I wonder if the noise from the backpackers and the late night venues will be worth it for the hotels and accomdodation houses along side.

Palm Cove should steal itself now for a drastic change in culture and acceptable behaviour as the bad seeds are being sown now. Perhaps Mr Palm Cove (read here Ratty), is behind this negative shift for the Palm Cove waterfront precinct, cos he has plans to move the Palm Cove CBD to Argentea, with an 18m bell tower, ringing for coctail hour every afternoon at 5pm and Italian style piazzas, bakeries, coffee shops and everything European......Enjoy....

sunfish said...

yes palm cove will go the way of other worthwhile destinations and FNQ in general . Drunken English backpackers pissing in the streets etc . A destination that people come to not because of any unique assets but for sun sand and sex.
Maybe the expected below 2% destruction of the reef will put a dampener on things. or we could hope for some further reverberations from the GFC. or maybe a strong Australian $.
as a long time resident of Cairns (1961) i despise the tourism runs this car" stickers they should read "tourism runs this CRAP' .

nocturnal congress said...

Uuuhhhhh, if I close my eyes I can remember Palm Cove when it just had a couple of beach shacks on it....**heavy sigh**

Palm Cove Fox said...

I am amazed that Ratty/ Mr Palm Cove/ Leigh Ratcliffe has escaped comment on this Blog. If you have ever picked up a free Magazine called Style you would notice a constant reference to the "reclusive" "shy" "sympathetic developer" Leigh Ratcliffe and how he alone sculpted Palm Cove and made it what it is today. It does not reference the fact his Companies have gone broke 3 times and have been to Court on numerous occasions. This Magazine is in fact part of Ratcliffes Group of Companies and is nothing but a publicity machine to tell the World how wonderful Ratcliffe is. He is currently behind the Development known as the Village as well as a Resort that sold out years ago to Royalty that would fly in in their Helicopters but has remarkably not commenced construction in spite of being sold out.
One wonders if he and his Melbourne Jewish friends will be able to handle the $600,000 they just paid out to Matrix. Interested to see if some of the Bloggers have any comments on this.

Unknown said...

Is it relevant that this blokes' friends are Jewish ?

Would it be better if they were Catholics, Buddhists or Atheists ?