Chris Oldfield, Naracoorte Community News

Naracoorte Lucindale Council candidate Julie Earl is eager to save the North Parklands and allow the town to grow “sustainably and organically”, using 160-170 vacant blocks on the market.

She was asked her first question by Jennifer Grundy if she thought there was a limit on development and population growth during the next four years.

Cr Earl said if “we grow too quickly and have massive housing developments with no additional supportive infrastructure, like child care and health and education, it can be a big problem.

“So I’m in favour of the town growing sustainably and organically into areas that can be zoned as needed.

“So we have about 160 or 70 housing blocks, I believe, available for sale in the township and we have numerous rural living blocks as well. “

“When those become short, then we will look to encourage the community who own nearby land that can be subdivided, to do so.

Cr Earl said if the concern was overdevelopment, “I think we will have to continue developing in a sustainable fashion.”

Mrs Grundy: “Do you think this is what the people want or is this your idea?

Cr Earl: “The feeling I get here is that we don’t want to double our population, and we need to walk a careful path between saying that we just need to keep everything the same forever and over-development.”

Guy Redway said: “Cr Earl, you have spoken a fair bit about Naracoorte. I just wonder if you know about the rest of the district – what about the housing in Lucindale, Kyby and Frances?”

Cr Earl said : “I actually live in the Struan Joanna area and have done for 40 years…”. She said she lobbied for rural living blocks at Lucindale but “the Minister didn’t allow it”.

Mr Redway said: “The smaller towns need encouragement, rather than just sort of, you know, a pump track. We did already have a skate park, which was provided by ourselves, our community.

“I was quite shocked in actual fact, when council workers arrived there, pulled all that steel down and started the concrete work. We weren’t even informed about this. Anyway, that’s in the past. Forget that.”

Cr Earl said there was a masterplan for Lucindale’s CBD and park, Centennial Park.

Roger Dickenson asked if the council had any plans to upgrade some of the poorer roads around or actually build some new roads in the rural area. The council’s road hierarchy “is not true to me”.

Cr Earl said the road “that you have had complaints over (Shuard’s Lane), we needed to define whether the 600m that was in dispute was actually a built road or was a semi-amended track”.

“It was never a properly built road, is what we decided,” she said.

Robyn Schinckel asked Cr Earl to “clarify some of these 166 blocks of land for sale which our CEO Trevor Smart has spoken about several times” and referred to media reports.

“A lot of the blocks he (Mr Smart) has stated (are) in the vicinity of the town. I know most of them, or a lot of them have been on the market for many, many years – some 15 or 20 years.

“So that indicates to me they are probably not blocks that are in high demand. So do we need to open up new areas where people are wishing to live?”

“The council keeps saying this 166 (blocks). I don’t think they are meeting the needs of our community.”

Cr Earl said it was “an open question for the community about what we can do and what we need”.

“The land adjoining current suburbs, if you like, around a town that could be developed or rezoned is currently all held in private hands as primary production land,” she said.

“And those individual landowners need to approach council if they have an interest in developing those sites or selling it as a developable site for rezoning.”

The council could have that conversation “if we think there’s not enough blocks”.

This article appeared in the Naracoorte Community News.