HOW good is the Tudor Street green corridor? Sustainable city, how I love you.
Old mate Percy Reckons bent my ear about that untamed forest in full splendour after recent rain. How wonderful it has been in these times of plague to see such wild growth in the concrete jungle.
I normally don't pick the phone up when Percy calls. He'll be on for an agitated chat about how poor the maintenance of public amenity has become on this council's watch. "Bring back the town clerk," he'll drone on, ranting about the City of Newcastle's (CoN) general loss of plot when it comes to the upkeep and care of public spaces. "The look of the joint" is how Percy sees it.
Percy said I must get down there with a photo machine (I think he meant a camera) to document the uncultivated beauty of the Tudor Street green corridor, because he reckons there are strong rumours circulating the city that CoN endorsed lawnmowing gangs could arrive there sometime before Christmas - possibly under the cover of night and police escort - to heartlessly chop it down.
Percy reckons it will be flogged for a pittance to one of the NSW Minister for Transport Andrew Constance's university mates for mixed-use apartments with easy access to state-of-the-art gaming facilities. I guess that's possible, ever since an unreleased report obtained by the Herald revealed the business case for the extension of the light rail was not apparent and therefore any extension of the service must be delayed until at least the first of Neveruary.
Percy said he called CoN to discuss long-term plans for the Tudor Street green corridor and ask whether there was any chance of walking tracks being provided through the area. Percy was eventually put through to someone very nice who took the time to explain to him a walking track through the green corridor might be activated one day, but at this time the policy was to enhance wildlife and provide high public visibility to CoN's sustainable city strategy.
Percy was also told mowing around much of Newcastle was no longer occurring regularly because sustainability consultants engaged by CoN had provided a detailed report. The report outlined that high visibility green growth corridors provided both a refuge for native bugs and priceless educational enhancement to residents and visitors concerning the value and importance of green corridors. Additionally, native birds fed on native bugs and there could even be frogs in there one day, although future frog population speculation was not included in the terms of reference provided by CoN to the consultants.
The consultant's report concluded that native birds are an important contributor to public amenity as birds lift spirits during times of plague and therefore to eliminate an important source of bird food would neither be sustainable nor in the interest of enhanced community spirits. The nice person at CoN directed Percy to Disney's The Lion King for a more sophisticated understanding about the circle of life.
I've regularly passed the Tudor Street green corridor - one of the city's key arteries - and admiringly watched it develop. The other week I even thought of using CoN's Snap Send Solve app to report it, but then I remembered that my last two reports of matters I thought warranted CoN attention received nothing more than an automated email thank-you note - as opposed to an automated thank-you not, which subsequent CoN inaction suggested it might be better known as.
That fence remains as loose as an NRL player in a Bali nightclub.
Small matters such as reporting the broken stop sign on the corner of McCormack and Church streets on February 22 must have gone straight to the "delete" file when it hit the depot for attention. Almost six weeks later, a little thing like fixing a stop sign seems beyond CoN capability. I would have thought the replacement of a stop sign would be a high priority for CoN, but if it is a deliberate strategy not to replace them when they are knocked down, I've got some suggestions where stop signs might be eliminated in nearby Cooks Hill to enhance traffic flows.
I also used Snap Send Solve and reported on February 18 that "the wire on the fence on the promenade south of Surfhouse is loose. It is a trip hazard. It needs urgently tightening ... I myself tripped over it while walking along footpath...."
Nada. That fence remains as loose as an NRL player in a Bali nightclub.
Snap Send Solve.
More like Nap Fend Dissolve.
