Welcome to another issue of Gungahlin Smokesignals. As I write this, it has been an incredibly busy couple of months, and it-s likely to be mid-June before we see any let-up. Some of it has been self-inflicted - taking on new things and stirring things up on behalf of the community. But a big share of the workload has been due to a number of ACT Government consultation processes all going at the same time - they have simply just had too much on for us to be able to respond to everything, and some areas have had to go without a response from us.

Here's a quick look at just a few of the things that have been on our agenda in the GCC of late:

Territory Plan

The ACTPLA Draft Territory Plan has seen me at four evening meetings in April and May, and in the draft sinking quite a few hours into writing up our response to issues we've identified in the draft. The main things I have concerns about so far are:

• Inadequate flexibility in house setback requirements for different block sizes to allow good passive solar design
• Inappropriate land use types in a number of zones (like houses and light industry in C1 Commercial Core zone, and boarding and guest houses in R1 low density residential!)
• Some residential areas being of too high density, and some inappropriate areas earmarked for commercial zones.

On the other hand, the areas designated for business park development at the top end of the town centre have been expanded considerably. This will help a lot with preserving land big enough to build serious employment bases like government departments. However the central commercial areas retain a four-storey limit, which I think is one of things holding back commercial investment in the Gungahlin town centre - the May GCC meeting agreed that we should pursue an eight-storey limit for these areas.

Buses

In the midst of this, the ACT Government finally conceded that they got it wrong when they slashed bus services last year, and called an inquiry into Action services. Ian Ruecroft, Kevin Cox and I - with input from a number of interested residents - put together submissions seeking improvements for Gungahlin plus the wider Canberra area. A poll on our website asking if people wanted a bus service down Horse Park Drive and Majura Road to the airport and Brindabella Park drew 70 responses, overwhelming supportive. We included this in our submission, plus shot a copy straight to Minister Hargreaves for his attention. The submission is on our website under the Bus Inquiry article.

Website

Our website administrator Boni David (from OptimumOSS Technologies) and I have been working to redesign the GCC website www.gcc.asn.au. We hope to make it a place of discussion and debate for Gungahlin residents. To that end, we have created an area where residents and organisations can submit their own articles to be published on the site, plus everything we on the GCC executive write is also open for your comments. We welcome your feedback because it is the only way we know if we are on the right track in representing your interests.

The work seems to be paying off - unique visitors to the site have jumped from an average of 924 per month between October and March to 2485 in April, and the number of visits (not including search engine robots) went from 1780 per month to 4129 in April. An average of just over nine pages are being viewed per visit - that's an incredible 38,000 pages downloaded just during April!

Town Centre Park

Ian, Kevin and I also finally had a meeting with the LDA about the design of the town centre park. This meeting came about because Simon Corbell, just prior to losing the planning portfolio, conceded: "we got that one wrong" by not consulting with the community during the design process. I'm not sure at this stage whether everything we are asking for in a redesign is going to happen, but there is more work for us to do there. Personally I feel that the amount of land set aside for the town centre park is woefully inadequate for a city centre that will serve a population of around 100,000. It isn't helped by being completely surrounded by streets. A better solution would be to close off the short sections of Gungahlin Place between Gribble and Ernest Cavanagh Streets, and make a beautiful park and outdoor dining area with vehicle access limited to loading zones for the businesses.

Off-road cycling track

I've been meeting with the Canberra Off-Road Cyclists to help with their proposal to build a dirt bicycle track on the hill behind the scout hall. I have a broader idea to create an artificial wetlands park around the lower parts of that land parcel - an environmental "learnscape" for the students of the adjacent Burgmann School and the soon-to-be-built Gungahlin College. I think this would work in well with the cycle track and make for a wonderfully different parkland not too far from the town.

April meeting

And of course there was April meeting, to discuss Gungahlin planning and infrastructure issues, with more than 50 people attending, plus Minister John Hargreaves and LDA reps Anne Skewes and Gordon Lowe. Minister Corbell was a late apology, for reasons that became obvious the next day! Two TV news stations filmed the whole meeting, I did one TV news interview, three newspaper interviews and three live radio interviews before and after the meeting. One thing is for sure, the depth of feeling that people in Gungahlin have about some of the planning blunders that have happened here was heard loud and clear.

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