Ever felt like you were the ping pong ball being tossed between two bats? Each hitting away with their own ideas, and you in the middle going back and forth trying to get the correct answer for the community?
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That’s a little how we are feeling over the current plan for the hospital parking.
First, Dubbo Regional Council mayor Ben Shields pitched his idea to gift the state government council land for parking.
But is it council land? Council says yes, the state government says no. Dubbo MP Troy Grant is saying the land is actually Crown land and, therefore, already owned by the state government. Not something the council can gift back. Or are they talking about two different parcels of land?
The cost of the proposed parking lot is another in question. Council’s plan to transfer Therease Maliphant Park to NSW Health to allow for the 88 parking spaces estimates the cost to be $1.2 million. But, Mr Grant says, it would be far more expensive than planned and has issues such as the flood retardation function.
And if that’s not the only project, we now have a multi-storey car park thrown into the mix, though we haven’t seen where that’s planned for, only that council will push for the government to consider building it.
It was on Monday night that Cr Stephen Lawrence put forward an amendment to a motion to contact the government about a multi-storey car park - only, following debate, to vote against the amendment to write to the NSW government about the car park.
The mayor has been campaigning for better parking at the hospital since early last year when he called on Health Infrastructure to “fix the problem now before it gets worse,” saying one only had to look at the issues in Orange to see it was better to sort it now than before the final stage was complete.
At the same time Cr Shields, then the former Dubbo Council deputy mayor, called on the government to build a multi-level car park or start negotiations with the newly formed Dubbo Regional Council to increase parking spots in front of the hospital.
It’s been over a year so we are starting to wonder if our local council and the state government have actually met, talked, and come up with a plan together. A plan that benefits the community they are meant to be working for.
Who knows if we are actually ever going to get adequate parking at the hospital – but we will continue to ask the questions. Let’s see what answers they come up with next.
