THERE was an unexpected revolt at East Fremantle council last Tuesday week.
And for the first time in living memory a mayor, in this case Jim O’Neill, was left stranded with nowhere to go.
The cause of the revolt was the hottest item on the agenda: A recommendation from the council’s planning department, due to go to the new supercharged WA Planning Commission’s fast track assessment unit last Friday, August 18.
The report was on the application by aged care provider Hall and Prior, for a massive 160-bed aged care institution and medical centre on the former Woodside maternity hospital site between East Freo’s leafy Dalgety and Fortescue Streets.
The planning officer was recommending qualified support subject to various conditions such as three storeys instead of four or five.
This report, which will still go to the WA Planning Commission, along with the council decision which the WAPC regards as a submission only, was voted down 4 to 3.
The decision shocked the mayor, according to eye witnesses in the 42-strong public gallery.
Instead of adjourning the matter to a special meeting on another night, the flustered mayor supported an adjournment to allow opposing councillors to prepare an alternative resolution.
Their resolution to oppose the development then sailed through with the support of all 6 councillors. The mayor then requested his support for the planners report be recorded.
With the council’s red-carpet out for the developer from the beginning, residents have been outraged with the council’s process They have felt excluded from the very the early days, so have mounted their own direct action campaign over the last two years or so.
The surrounding residents are unanimous in their strong opposition to the industrial scale of the project, the four to five storey height which towers over local homes, the boundary to boundary coverage, the destruction of a significant heritage buildings on the site, and that it breaches just about every important provision of the East Fremantle town planning scheme.
by ANDREW SMITH