Parks divestment plan is civic overreach

COMMENT by MIKE GILLAM

I struggle to see any merit in the Alice Springs Town Council's bizarre project of civic overreach.

I'd certainly like to probe the methodology used to justify its position that Alice Springs is somehow indulged by vast parklands. If it's true the town is generously endowed with parklands compared with other population centres, well surely that's great.

What if Council provided real encouragement for residents to be involved in managing neighbourhood parks and indeed bringing some energy and vision to the buffel grass infested nature strips!

Perhaps our town would become more liveable for locals and attractive for new settlers. Hell, some of those invested members of the community might even seek election at the Council elections in August.

Behind the lavish graphics of this park divestment study, do the land ratio comparisons make any real sense, geographically or otherwise?

For some areas such comparisons will be redundant within a decade eg. McCoy Park. Are registered sacred sites included in the optimistic calculations of the m2 area that's available?

The sites at Maynard and Davidson Parks include significant sacred sites that are fragile in nature and clearly not desirable or suitable for intensive recreation.

Adjacent flat land provides valuable buffer zones that increase foreground amenity, assist the protection of sacred sites and provide useful options for recreation.

Removing flat land surrounding these rock outcrops will displace people and dramatically increase their impact on surviving sacred sites.

Council claims this scheme is not about selling land to make money!! Surely these modest parcels of land provide amenity, quality of life and future options for the town as residential densities rise – which they most certainly will.

I imagine Council spends very little on maintenance for a significant number of sites it now seeks to terminate.

My greatest concern is that ASTC will flog off any parcels of land that are not vigorously defended by locally active community members and this will impact negatively wherever residents lack the vigilance and energy to push back.

PHOTO by Jacqueline Arnold. The vegetation in the foreground is the declared weed buffel.