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Wednesday 5 August 2015
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On right track A NEW volunteer is on the lookout for members. Penny Donovan is calling on the Aspendale community to work together to take pride in the look of Aspendale train station, the gateway for many visitors to the suburb. The Friends of the Aspendale Station will follow in the tracks of the Chelsea Bonbeach Train Station Group which has organised clean ups and shrub plantings at the Chelsea and Bonbeach train stations for several years. Ms Donovan said she hoped the new group can install a mosaic at Aspendale train station with the help of St Louis de Montfort’s School pupils. “We’re looking to get the children and the community involved to beautify the station and look after it,” Ms Donovan said. “It’s such a nice community and it would be good to have that as a focal point for the community.” Interested volunteers should contact Penny Donovan at Pjpd1@optusnet.com. au or on 0412 716 638. On lookout for members: Penny Donovan is starting a volunteer group to look after Aspendale train station. Pic: Gary Sissons
Rural living loses out Neil Walker neil@baysidenews.com.au THE dream of rural living in Kingston’s Green Wedge is over. A report by consultants Meinhardt delivered to Kingston Council has rejected the idea floated by a narrow majority of councillors. Council asked Meinhardt to investigate the possibility of a Rural Living Zone in areas of the Green Wedge between Kingston and Heatherton Rd
and Centre Dandenong Rd and on the eastern side of Tootal Rd in Dingley Village - but the consultant noted landfill buffer zones made residential development impossible in the near term in the two areas. The Meinhardt report cost ratepayers $164,000 despite Kingston Council having previously spent about $340,000 on a Kingston Green Wedge plan by consultants Planisphere that was formally adopted by council in 2012.
Kingston mayor Cr Geoff Gledhill defended the use of ratepayer money to commission a further report on the Green Wedge. “My view always has been that the Green Wedge Plan that the last council adopted was, to me, unfinished as it left a number of questions unanswered,” he said. “In many ways it’s a worthy document and a worthy plan … [but] the last remaining piece was never addressed.”
Cnr Springvale Rd & Wells Rd, Chelsea Heights PH: 9773 4453 www.chelseaheightshotel.com.au
Cr Gledhill said the Planisphere report had never investigated a Rural Living Zone option in the Green Wedge so “naturally we kept getting questions from landowners in that area”. Councillors have been bitterly divided on the future of Kingston’s Green Wedge during the past few years. At last month’s public council meeting Cr Ron Brownlees, a long-serving councillor and five times mayor, railed against the establishment of Melbourne’s green wedges by the Hamer
government in the 1970s. “I guess we go back to ask why the Green Wedge zone was put in place in the first place. It was done with little consultation with the people who live in it and the landowners who own 80 per cent of the land because the government at the time were pandering to ‘the greens’, a minority group, to get their support.” The Australian Greens political party was formed in 1992. Continued Page 4