Cygnet’s sheltered agony

The new Cygnet parking lot — scheduled for completion by June 30 — eventually was ready for use in mid-November.

This illustration shows the bus shelter a bit to the north . . .

. . . of where this diagram puts it (probably where council really wants it to go) . . .

. . . whereas, in this photograph, the shelter is indicated back where it is placed in the first picture.

Huon Valley Guessing Games Shemozzle, debacle, disaster, tragicomedy, farce, stuff-up, call it what you will, the so-far abortive where-to-put-a-Cygnet-bus-shelter saga proceeds apace. The topic, still without a permanent solution, has been bruited about for years. Just about everyone with even the vaguest interest has had their two-bobs’ worth.

On Wednesday night (December 11), at Huon Valley Council’s monthly public meeting in Huonville, another attempt (as a consequence of yet more secretive scheming by council) will be made to clear the way for the construction of a bus shelter.

And it’s likely the motion to put a shelter in the new car park behind the Cygnet Town Hall will be voted through unchanged, irrespective of the merit of ideas to improve what, to many long-time observers, appears to be yet another flawed plan.

Part b) of the motion (17.052/13) reads: That a DDA compliant bus shelter be installed off the traffic lane at the eastern boundary of the newly constructed Cygnet car park for a 12-month trial period, to be reviewed at the end of this period to determine any adverse problems at this location.

Council, having been thwarted last year in its intent to put a bus shelter in the then proposed, now completed, parking area behind the Town Hall, still appears determined to put a bus shelter in it. About a year ago, the original car-park plan had a bus shelter on it, but that idea was quickly scuttled when it became apparent it wouldn’t pass muster for a variety of reasons, probably mainly because it wouldn’t meet DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) standards.

As is frequently the case with HVC “visions”, this latest bus shelter proposal (as was the earlier one) has been preceded by no serious consultation with the people of Cygnet, especially its hardy public-transport users.

Via petition and through representations, many people objected to the earlier bus-shelter-in-the-new-car-park proposal — as they did to the car-park design in general. But, by late April, Mayor Robert Armstrong, being rather loose with the facts, was quoted in a council media release as saying that “business owners and residents had been looking forward to the new car park being completed”. That might be true, but it seems the people Armstrong talks with and those I talk with live in two different worlds. Few in town disputed that a second car park was needed in Cygnet, but there were an awful lot of them who didn’t want the design council had in mind for the car park. It was, they felt, not compatible with the Cygnet Township Plan, a vision that Mayor Armstrong has seemingly worked to diminish.

And then, when construction did start, it went on for months after its scheduled completion: June 30, 2013. Although the selected contractor got the project off to a whirlwind start — and then acting general manager (and GM-to-be) Simone Watson confidently predicted in mid-June that the work would be completed “on schedule” — bits and pieces continued to be messed around with for months afterwards; and there also seemed to be long periods of inactivity on the car-park site.

All sorts of reasons for the delays were flicked on around town — title problems, pipeline issues raised by Tasmanian Water, stormwater problems (confirmed by the GM last month), car-park entrance too narrow, service-vehicle access problems . . . It was November before the gates were eventually opened to the public. By then, the car park had seven solar-powered lights on lofty poles, whereas there had been only one light on the original plan. Who knows what influences were at work for that leap in lighting to occur.

It’s been difficult keeping up with the council’s quest to find a site for a bus shelter, starting as it did when council was told $300,000 of State Government money — originally offered to put Cygnet’s power lines underground (a project that proved too costly, according to council) — was still there to subsidise the cost of the then $500,000 estimate for a new car park. (We’ll probably never know if the project came in on target, so difficult is it to trek through council’s financial statements.)

WHEN THE second car-park idea was mooted, HVC township committees existed (a system was axed by Mayor Robert Armstrong’s caucus group of six at the end of June this year). Cygnet had one of those committees — a fairly hapless one to be sure — which, for years under the chairmanship of Armstrong, then under Councillor Bruce Heron, achieved nothing very much.

There was often talk (unproductive) about bus stops, bus shelters, public seating . . . and committee member Andrew Blaxland in particular did heaps of good work towards trying to get informative signage on significant structures in the township. But even that latter project, now that the committee has gone, seems to be on hold or, at best, limping along.

When all is considered, nothing much at all got done through the Cygnet committee. Only in its final couple of months did it start to show cohesive initiative of any kind after committee member Trent Cowen became acting chairman as a result of Heron taking a few months leave of absence from council earlier this year.

With Cowen in the chair, suddenly even the most silent members of the committee discovered they had a voice; and, just briefly, there was a distinct hint that something might get done. Cowen even invited observations (as long as they were respectfully presented) from the few usual suspects who sat in the spectator seating.

But the mayor’s controlling Futures Group — or whatever it calls itself these days — was awake to such rebellious rumblings and soon put the kibosh on the very existence of township committees — by eliminating them: damn-it-all, without a councillor in control, the Cygnet committee was beginning to look as if it had a mind of its own, and might even be on the way to actually getting something done.

However, it must be acknowledged that the decision to end the township committee system, in itself, was not such a bad thing. The committees, constrained as they were by tight council rules, and with councillors almost always at their helm, must have felt — as they tried to push a project to fruition — as if they were trying to pull an elephant that happened to be wanting to go in the opposite direction. But I’m digressing . . . Back to the bus-shelter saga.

IN JUNE this year, when council, seemingly without consulting the priest or others pre-eminents in the local Catholic hierarchy, decided it would build a bus shelter on the northeastern corner of the hugely over-engineered, long-extant Mary Street car park that sits on land rented from the church. I’m told the Pope’s servants were not impressed, so, consequently, council’s June decision to build the shelter on holy ground has come to nought.

Council staff’s report on bus shelters to this Wednesday’s meeting notes: “ . . . a number of concerns were received from the community and the installation [of the June decision to put the bus shelter on the NE corner of the Mary Street car park] was postponed while other options were again explored . . .”

Perhaps I’m guessing wrongly here, or maybe my imagination is in overdrive, but could some of those “concerns . . . from the community” have come from within the buildings on the hill behind the Mary Street car park? [So far no motion has come before council to rescind the June decision.]

In the ‘Attachments to the Agenda” this week (only available to the public online), council reproduces a copy of the minutes of the June 2013 meeting to help put today’s thinking by council into perspective.

LET’S GO further back, to late 2012, when council decided to press on with its then car-park plan (the new car park as it now is varies in several ways from the original plan). First, the original bus-shelter idea was removed; and the re-drawn plan made no mention that the road along the east side of the car park would be a “bus lane”. Public fears about a bus shelter in the new car park were thus allayed.

Now they’re back. In the latest drawings, the east-side road is clearly branded “bus lane”. (It’s as if the wording has always been there, at least in the mayor’s mind, and possibly in that of the now general manager). And, in among attachments for Wednesday night’s meeting, are three illustrations: the first and third (the latter a photographic illustration) have an arrow pointing to the spot where the
DDA bus shelter will go; the second has an arrow pointing to another location in the car park, a few metres to the south, where the shelter will go.

Perhaps council would explain the confusion caused by its illustrations. Has council accidentally left one of the suggested locations of the proposed bus shelter in a document that has been accidentally released for public perusal (if you use the internet, that is)? Or are the illustrations that show the shelter slightly to the north of where I think council really intends it to be, documents that have accidentally been left in, thus adding to the eternal confusion that seems to have reigned over the never-ending story of the search for a suitable bus-shelter location? Whatever is going on, it seems council is still in a dither over where exactly to put it.

The construction phase of the car-park saga itself has been a fascinating study of mix-ups and delays. After council, in April, deliberated in closed session over who would get the contract to construct the car park, the chosen, local contractor was on the job in less than 48 hours. That might either have been a sign of a company desperate to find something for its workers to do in the jobs-starved Huon; or of a finely honed business machine ready to start work just as soon as its tender got the green light.

So, the way things are at the moment, in theory, council’s June 2013 decision to put a bus shelter on the Mary Street car park (19.005/13) still stands; yet there is now an item on Wednesday night’s agenda proposing a bus shelter (in one place or the other) be put in the brand new car park.

Questions need asking. Are two bus-shelter options still in the wind? (I don’t think so.) Have the two bus companies serving Cygnet been fully appraised of what’s going on? Have the people of Cygnet been consulted on council’s latest, until-now secret, thinking? Or has council conveniently used representations that pre-date the decision early this year to construct the new car park as evidence of its “consultation” with the public? (Because council will not countenance questions from the public relating to issues on its agenda, none of these questions can be raised in ‘public question time’ this Wednesday evening.)

A SIDELIGHT to council’s silliness to keep a project like this under wraps until the eve of a vote seeking approval for its introduction, is the need to assess safety considerations. As the more detailed illustration with this article shows, council’s plan is for a pedestrian walkway (DDA-compliant, of course) from the Town Hall (western side) across the car-park in-lane, and then on across the out-lane to the triangular island on the eastern side, and then on across the now-designated “bus lane” to the planned shelter location.

At the best of times, such a pathway will be fraught with dangers from arrivals and departures of vehicles using the car park. Now, imagine a dark and stormy evening in the middle of winter, when light is just about gone by 5pm, and someone handicapped or enfeebled is out on that walkway, or a youngster is racing to beat the pouring rain, and workers and shoppers are moving their vehicles hither and yon . . .

LAST MONTH, council, approved its second ‘Community Consultation and Communication Strategy’. It is an intriguing document that, rather than improving council’s association, co-operation and communication with the public, is slickly designed and worded to radiate high-sounding ideals while really discouraging people even more from taking their problems, complaints and ideas to their elected municipal representatives or staff.

It is a document that embodies material for another Guessing Games adventure. Someone with better analytical powers than I have should have a shot at giving that platitudinous piece of rubbish a severe examination.

So, with yet another year at an end, I am, once more — as I have been, again, and again, and again, for years in my Guessing Games offerings ( Here ) — moved to say, despairingly, “The mind truly boggles at what this council will get up to”.

Bob Hawkins is a Huon Valley ratepayer.

Wednesday’s evening’s proceedings at the Huonville Council Chambers, commencing 6pm, comprises council’s monthly meeting and its AGM for 2012-13