Quaint controllers
WELL, well, well. So the mighty Herald is a risk to the reputation of the City of Melville (“Newspaper a ‘risk’ to council, Melville City Herald November 30, 2013). How quaint.
But it is the city’s administration itself, with its almost paranoid restrictions on councillors as it relentlessly usurps their authority, that is sapping the confidence of ratepayers.
The city’s reputation is being torpedoed by self-inflicted wounds—the Herald merely tells us about it. The embargo the City of Melville has imposed on the Herald with its apparent refusal to answer emails and supply news information, is childish and unprofessional.
The City’s decision to exclude the Herald from its advertising program diminishes its ability to communicate vital information and is counter to the best interests of its citizens.
The Herald clearly has a better circulation than its rival publication, which has not reached my letterbox or front lawn in more than five years, so why is it shunned?
I don’t agree with every comment made by the Herald, it is well to the left of my political thinking, but it is a very good read.
Paul Redman
Doney St, Alfred Cove
Former deputy mayor,
City of Melville

Junk decision
LOOKS like another win to an almighty multinational grocery chain (Herald, December 7, 2013). Who would approve a shopping centre next to a primary school?
The Cockburn city council has a lot to answer for. Mixing children with excessive traffic will lead to a tragedy.
Not only is there a liquor store, the worst of it is yet another junk food outlet—we don’t need more of either of them. The only thing school children will learn is where to waste their money and ruin their health.
Parents will be happy it will keep the kids off the street before school, at lunch time and after school as well as during the school holidays. I can just see the junk food outlet full of under-13s at least five days a week, what a gold mine.
Are there any planning rules these days or does the dollar rule?
Ray Willis
Hillberg Rise, Spearwood
The Ed says: With fairness to the council, its powers are extremely limited. Successive state governments have tightened the screws giving local councils very little wriggle room on things like liquor stores and shopping centres.

Wrong path
I WOULD like to ask the Herald to indulge me yet again by publishing this letter.
As predicted, Melville council has started on the controversial 500m replacement of the 50m path, this would seem to be deliberately done to pre-empt the electors’ meeting to be held December 17. Very ethical!
There are many very angry ratepayers who feel that in spite of all the good work put in by the Friends of Attadale and other community members for a more equitable and cheaper solution to the reinstatement of the foreshore footpath, they have been totally ignored by the officers of the council.
Their reply to questions is it has to be wheelchair- and bicycle-friendly, even though it has been pointed out the path from Lentona to Haig Road does not comply and neither do various sections of the cycle path.
Our councillors who represent us are treated with disrespect at meetings and there are many witnesses to this! And to further gag them they will now not be allowed to sigh, shrug nor roll their eyes! One has to wonder how this will be policed—CCTV cameras perhaps with sound! And of course installed at ratepayers’ expense.
I am sorry to say there will be no free drinks or other enticements at the electors’ meeting, but a little drama perhaps.
I would highly recommend that all ratepayers interested in maintaining our “supposed” input into community matters make every effort to attend this meeting at 6.15pm sharp, Tuesday December 17 at the council chambers.
Thank you again Herald for your help in getting ratepayers’ views noticed.
Dawn Davies
Burke Dve, Attadale

Blame yourself
MELVILLE city council continues to feature in our news (Herald, November 30, 2013) with more bizarre items such as the forbidding of the use of body language to make detrimental points at meetings, and implications of incompetence and irresponsibility of members.
Those who feel this alleged incompetence needs to be addressed have to be quite clear who is responsible for this chaotic situation.
It is us, the electors and the citizens of Melville. The council and the mayor are elected by a democratic process and we are the voters. But how many of us take local elections remotely seriously?  How many people, stopped in the street, could say who their councillor is?
Voting in council elections is not compulsory, and the numbers that do vote is disgracefully small, even with the sensible provision of postal voting. How many of us bother to get to know the candidates by attending public meetings held by them, or ask them questions? Or even bother to learn who they are? The democratic right to vote for our governments at all levels is a right gained by previous generations at great cost. We need to exercise it with careful consideration at all levels: Local government is an important  protection we have against injustices imposed by higher levels of government.
Ralph Hickling
Lilian Ave, Applecross
The Ed says: That reminds us that the origins of the word “idiot” are Athenian—and was used to describe those who put their private affairs ahead of their democractic participation in the City State.

Facts run over
THE press advertisements entitled High Street Upgrade—The Facts contain untruths and half-truths in equal measure.
The biggest untruth is that Main Roads WA knows the minds of Fremantle residents better than we know ourselves.
MRWA knows full well most Fremantle people want a safer High Street/Stirling Highway intersection, something that can be achieved easily and cheaply. MRWA also knows the majority does not want the over-sized proposal it wants to ram through.
That sentiment has been expressed again and again throughout the decade or more history of this project.
Rather than register that fact, MRWA alleges the White Gum Valley Precinct Group, Gibson Park Precinct Group, Booyeembara Friends Group, North Fremantle Precinct Group, Fremantle Environmental Resource Network, Fremantle Road to Rail and Holland St Residents do not represent residents.
Does this mean it has given up trying to persuade people through genuine public consultations, because they are not working to MRWA’s favour?  For example, on September 25 it convened a public meeting at which more than 200 attended. Of those only seven supported the current design proposal.
It is a great pity the MRWA has to waste public money funding propaganda rather than genuinely listening to the community.
Gerry MacGill (North Fremantle Precinct Group); Roy Lewisson (White Gum Valley Precinct Group); Annolies Truman (Gibson Park Precinct Group); Billy Amesz (Fremantle Environmental Resource Network); Gaye Page-Burt (Holland St Residents); Rob Dobson (Booyeembara Friends Group); Barry Healy (Fremantle Road to Rail)
The Ed says: We think paid advertisements in the Herald are an excellent way to communicate with the public. A “waste of public money”? It’s a lump of coal for you this Christmas, Mr MacGill!

Friends needed
THE Friends of Coogee Beach are attempting to regain their former credibility by means of a supportive petition. However we find it very disappointing that on our home ground at Coogee the signatures are pretty low, whereas elsewhere things are much more satisfying. Why should this be?
We know for a fact our council is hampering us, but surely visitors to Coogee Beach haven’t forgotten who we are and what we have been doing for the past 40 years.
I would like to ask that all beach-goers visit the Coogee Beach Cafe and sign our petition, in recognition of the cleanliness and friendliness of this unique beach.
Colin Crook
Doolette St, Spearwood

An ugly baby
THE plan for Kings Square seems like a love child conceived when Tiananmen Square met with Nuremberg Stadium.
The scaling is without humility, the spaces disempoweringly grand. The church should be the jewel in the crown, rather, it has become the pimple on the gigantic pumpkin. Fremantle’s signature essence is the un-jazzed arcane marine so that unique theme should be enshrined and heralded with a small stone village: Captain Cook cottages and cobbled Italian and Provence-style winding streets, quaint courtyards and wells and wine taps, the small pizzeria with mum and dad living above their port home.
Maintain the human scale, expunge pseudo-impressive horrid modernity. The profit-seekers have entered Fremantle’s Temple. Instead, this Brasilia concrete echo chamber and more but wait, more boring glass with blank walls for graffiti and Che Guevara posters is yet again a rubber stamp of any other buildings in any other asphyxiated boring town in the aftermath of the western wrecker’s ball.
Could such a plan float in Paris or Venice despite its assumed profits? Modern architecture plus the city councillors should go back to the school of basic common sense.
Then, the Visigoth councillors should be sent on a junket tour to Devon, Cornwell, Venice and Rome’s Ostia, permanently.
Dr Julian P O’Brien
Berwick St, Victoria Park

Fun in Fremantle is no laughing matter
I CAN no longer refrain from expressing my general dissatisfaction concerning the various projects that are going ahead in our fair port city and my determination to see the annihilation of the progress of any and all ventures that result in change taking place, anywhere in Fremantle.
Skate parks, J-Shed breweries, Kelp bars—fun. All these things have had a large bearing on my decision to form a gang of like-minded residents who are determined to see that Fremantle does not change in any way from the place it seemed to be when we were able to afford to purchase a home here some time in the 1980s.
In fact, I’m completely at home with the prospect of moving Fremantle a little backward in time to a period where adolescents never attempted to rebel and when kids would have chosen to work on the ports or constructed railways, rather than ride skateboards high on various nefarious substances before moving onto a Rohypnyl and methamphetamine-fuelled night of probable daterape and gang-violence at some so-called “boutique brewery”.
Enough’s enough.
Owen Fry
York St, Hamilton Hill