Darlington Ratepayers and Residents Association (DRRA)

The DRRA meeting held on February 10, 2023 was attended by 36 people who engaged in a lively discussion about Darlington's relationship with the Shire of Mundaring and the Save Perth Hills campaign.

The community expressed their concern about the Shire's expenditure of ratepayer money on the electronic signage board in John Morgan Park in Glen Forrest, which was erected against the community's wishes. The Shire President, Cr James Martin, and two councillors, Cr Trish Cook and Cr Luke Ellery, attended the meeting and listened to residents' views. The consensus was that the community wants to move from a reactive, to a proactive stance, in our dealings with the Shire. Consultation and partnership is the community’s desired end game.

Cr Luke Ellery shared the Shire's proposed capital works for 2023, including the resurfacing of Glen Road, works in Glebe Road, and the Mofflin Avenue bridge. The attendees requested more information about these works and this will b requested from Shane Purdy, head of Infrastructure at the Shire.

All interested residents in Glen Road, Glebe Road and Mofflin Avenue, Dalry Roads and users of the railway trail, are invited to attend DRRA's March community meeting to comment.

The new DRRA Committee of 10 people, working on behalf of Darlington’s ratepayers and residents has already bourne fruit for local Pine Terrace resident, Ceri Kitely. The Committee addressed a noise complaint, resulting in the event coordinator addressing the problem and registering it with the Shire's Community Engagement Officer for future events. Ceri thanked the DRRA committee for acting on her concern. Tania Whisson, DAF Event Coordinator, made contact and identified the problem was caused by the DJ’s base level setting.

The next DRRA meeting will be in the Lesser Hall on Thursday 9 March, starting at 7:30pm sharp. Please bring any agenda items and concerns to the attention of the DRRA Committee by emailing these to drra@darlingtonvillage.org.

Louise Stelfox | Deputy-Chairperson, Darlington Ratepayers & Residents Association Inc.

New Logo

The DRRA has release a new logo which we welcome community feedback on. Established in 1909 as the Darlington Progress Association, our residents' organisation has a proud history spanning over a century of continuous meetings, with only a brief interruption during World War II.

As one of the oldest representative organizations in Western Australia, our new logo aims to draw on this proud legacy. Send your feedback on the proposed logo to: drra@darlingtonvillage. org

Next Meeting:

March Community Meeting:

Date: Thursday, 9 March 2023

Time: 7:30pm

Venue: Darlington Hall, 1/3 Owen Rd, Darlington

Darlington Community Recreation Advisory Group (DCRAG)

Details of the AGM on Monday, 27th February at 7.00pm are not available at time of print.

Sports Clubs' Oval Widening/Realignment Proposal

In late 2021, the idea of widening and realigning the oval to accommodate an additional age group of players was proposed by the Darlington Junior Football, Social Cricket and Junior Cricket Clubs. In response to divided community opinion on this suggestion, a DCRAG Oval Widening and Realignment subcommittee was established in February 2022. The subcommittee developed a Brief which was approved by DCRAG delegates, and they have embarked on some preliminary information gathering.

The objectives of the Subcommittee are to:

• Review the Sports Groups’ proposal for widening and realigning the Darlington oval

• Obtain detailed information about the use of the oval by the sports groups and casual users

• Encourage and seek a wide engagement of the Darlington community in d discussion of the proposal

• Receive and gather and review the feedback concerning the Sports Groups’ proposal to widen and realign the oval

• Use a range of different engagement strategies to maximise responses from the broad community

• Present updates at DCRAG meetings.

The subcommittee role of proposal review and community engagement, however, has effectively been on-hold while awaiting the following information which has now been received.

1. Further written proposal details from the sports clubs (September 2022)

2. The Shire’s infrastructure teams technical assessment (October 2022) which indicated the proposal is technically feasible, and suggested the idea is evaluated by their Recreation Department as part of their whole-of-shire Recreational Facilities Informing Strategy (RFIS), due for review later 2023/2024.

3. The Sports Clubs’ decision, in light of divided community opinions, as to whether they wished to pursue their proposal as part of the RFIS or not (February 2023).

DCRAG has now received confirmation from the Sports Clubs, via DaSRA, that they do wish to pursue their detailed proposal, to widen and realign Darlington oval, with the Shire of Mundaring RFIS Review. Thus the DCRAG subcommittee will now be reactivated as per their objectives above.

The Subcommittee will aim to provide a full report, to be issued to DCRAG, and then to the Shire of Mundaring, to be considered alongside the proposal as part of the RFIS Review.

The full DCRAG Subcommittee Brief and the Sports Clubs’ Oval Widening and Realignment Proposal will be uploaded to the DCRAG Community Groups page on www.darlingtonvillage. org.au in the near future, as well as the DaSRA page at https://www.darlingtonpavilion.com.au/oval-realignment

Feedback for the DCRAG Oval widening subcommittee may be submitted via dcrag.feedback1@gmail.com

Previous written feedback to Geoff Barker will be given to the subcommittee also.

DCRAG Subcommittee members are volunteers and include: Stacey August, Ceri Kitely, Phil Daniels, Nerissa Rickard, Tim Hunter, Geoff Barker. We thank our local volunteers for respectfully collecting and collating the diverse views of our community on this proposal.

Trish Cook Chair | Colin James Secretary