HOW much longer are the Busselton ratepayers expected to fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to subsidise the council’s ill conceived, poorly planned and shoddily constructed projects, most of which fail to deliver on promised outcomes and many that are left uncompleted despite second and third attempts to achieve a satisfactory level of finish.
Many of these projects were not requested or needed an in some cases not even wanted by the majority of residents.
Others which are needed are either badly built or are put in the too hard basket.
Peel Terrace for example, tens of thousands was spent to overcome road flooding and the result is the road still floods due to substandard repairs.
Ford Road, an alternative entry to Busselton is long overdue.
Council’s response is to leave it for twenty odd years and let somebody else worry about it.
Queen Street, many people favoured a pedestrian mall but the council decided to build a traffic obstacle course and after numerous alterations and a lot more money, the course is finally finished, unfortunately bad planning means the course is too difficult for some vehicles to navigate.
Not to worry, we can ban these vehicles.
How ironic that this was what a majority wanted in the first place.
The foreshore footpath east of the scout hut was washed away by high tides.
Despite three years of warning and there was no action by council.
Not a problem, we just build another footpath at the ratepayers’ expense.
But did they attempt to protect the new path, of course not and the result is it is washed away when the next major storm occurs.
The new world class foreshore we were promised to the west of the Equinox is still not finished despite numerous alterations and still dominated by the car park which was a major reason for the revamp in the first place.
I believe it’s time for an independent enquiry into the way this council squanders ratepayers money on these shabby projects because we sure as hell don’t get value for money, we don’t event get what we need.
Martin Walkins,
Geographe