Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

The management of this project is becoming clearer as communication is running rampant between individual residents groups and DPTI, between these groups and Jennie & I, between the groups and between DPTI and Jennie & I. In this background we met with our Management today.

As the Goodwood Junction runs ahead at a rate of knots with Pile Driving this weekend and while the Electrification project is proceeding without anyone knowing what is going on the Greenways project may be one we can control.

What I am about to say is based on current knowledge and as we know the goal posts keep changing on these joint projects. So tiem will tell.

The Greenways Project is only a DPTI concept at this stage. Our General Manager of Infrastructure spoke with their Management Team in the last couple of days to find out what is going on with it given concerns being expressed by you out there and by Jennie & I. The response floored him.

Apparently Council, as reported at the Cromer Parade residents meeting this week, WILL be designing the greenways bike path. Now don’t get carried away just yet.

It will mean that YOU WILL be consulted over locations of fences and the actual path (I think) and absolutely on the vegetation that will go back. This is, as I reported to the Cromer parade meeting, the way Council approaches development. Resident views are always wanted.

But it IS NOT our project. It is still a DPTI project and they will have the final say.

Council will also be constructing the path. But both the design and the construction will effectively be as a contractor of DPTI. In other words we will not be funbding it and they will be paying us. We will not therefore have to seeking funding as was suggested by the DPTI representative the other night.

Just how much control we have over the deign remains to be seen and it is hoped we may have this information later this month. Rest assured that if it goes as I have detailed above we will be coming to you soon, noting that this work itself will be at the end of the project, so after June.

And I am talking the whole length of the path, from Emerson through to Greenhill Road.