DRC Mayor Mathew Dickerson said they have taken a "blank piece of paper" and started all over again, since the old master plan was no longer relevant.

"We are starting again with no preconceived ideas of what might be on there," he said.

Moir Landscape Architecture, the organisation creating the masterplan, is currently half way through the process of creating a draft masterplan.

"They are consulting with the community, and they will do more of that in September," Cr Dickerson said.

"Once they gather that information from the community, they'll go away with their expertise and come back with some form of a masterplan for the area."

The plan will then come back to a council workshop before it is put in the business papers for a draft version to go out for public exhibition for a few months.

"We will try and get as much feedback as possible and then finally, and this won't be until next year, it will come back to be resolved by council to say 'yes this will be our masterplan'," he said.

With many residents concerned about the environmental purposes of the land, Cr Dickerson said at this point it was hard to guarantee anything.

"I would be jumping ahead of where the architects are at...I'm letting the process play out out and the other councillors are the same," he said.

"We need to let the landscape artists do their job otherwise why are we paying them a significant amount of money if we were already set in our mind what we are going to do?"

Cr Dickerson said he was "confused" as to why the community seem to be unhappy with how the DRC has proceeded with this matter.

"In the past seven months we have achieved a lot more than the last council in 10 months," he said.

"This council is doing what the last council should have done...we didn't wait for a period of time, we saw this as important enough that in that very first ordinary council meeting we decided this needed fixing urgently."

With more than 60 hectares of land to be used, Cr Dickerson said he hoped it could be used for both active and passive recreation.

"It's a big chunk of land that can have multiple purposes, some for environmental purposes, some active and passive recreation," he said.

"It's not mutually exclusive to have active and passive recreation, they can work side by side."

The effort of creating a masterplan

At the ordinary council meeting in June 2018, it was decided that "no further capital improvements be undertaken on land identified in the Regand Park Master Plan."

But in February 2021 Dubbo Regional Council welcomed the mayoral minute that proposed for the St John's Junior Rugby League Football Club proponents to potentially develop up to 10 hectares of Regand Park.

The development would have comprised of playing fields and ancillary infrastructure, contingent upon Council endorsement of site drawings, technical plans, relevant supporting documentation and approvals.

Cr Dickerson said mayoral minutes should only be used for "emergencies" or if there's no time and something needs to be done "urgently".

"I was confused by that because they rescinded the last masterplan because they didn't want it built on a flood plain, then in February 2021 said 'lets build football fields and infrastructure' there two years later," he said.

Cr Dickerson said he remembered the amount of effort that went into the original masterplan and dropping something without proper consultation was the "worst thing" the previous council could have done.

"It did a disservice to St John's as well since they didn't get an opportunity to speak with the community and tell them their plans," he said.

"That should have been the time the community jumped up and down severely."

After a motion in March 2021 asking for an update on the masterplan, nothing came of it again.

"So the very first thing this council did in January was have a resolution to go and do a masterplan for the whole area," Cr Dickerson said.

"Go back to scratch and start again with the whole area."

Dubbo City Council first purchased Regand Park in 2005 at a cost of $490,000 before subsequent purchases including the ex Sunderland's Land, ex Smith's Land, ex Pavan's Land and ex-Battistel's Land.

These areas were zoned RE1 - Public Recreation.

Regand Park's zoning has remained unchanged (RE-1 Public Recreation) since the 2011 Dubbo Local Environment Plan (DLEP).

When DRC first purchased the land it was acquired for passive and active recreation but they didn't have the funds to create a masterplan.

The masterplan was then completed in 2013 and resolved in 2015 after extensive public consultation.

"It was a fantastic plan," Cr Dickerson said.

At the time the concern was around it all being built on a flood plain, which ultimately led to the rescission motion by council in 2018.

With rumours abound about secret deals happening behind the scenes with St John's JRLFC or environmental groups, the mayor says that no such things are happening.

"No councillor I know of has done a deal with anyone," Cr Dickerson said.

"The reason we resolved it in the first meeting of council is because we need to get it sorted out, if we had deals why would we waste money on architects?"

Cr Dickerson said commentary from former councillors being critical about the way the new council has handled the situation was "hypocritical".

"It's somewhat intriguing, they had their go at it, they had their time with it and what they did was rescind a perfectly good plan and then put forward a proposal for St John's to have 10 hectares of that land and now because we're saying 'let's fix this problem, they're experts on it'," he said.

"I feel like saying to them you had your go, it didn't go so well with what you did, so now let the new council do what is the right way to go about it and engage the community in consultation process and again finally come to a resolution."

With community petitions floating around online, Cr Dickerson said he thought that residents were "going too early".

"There's months to go, engage with our consultants and let them know what you want and what you don't want," he said.

"Petitioning against things that aren't happening has the potential to confuse the community and get engagement burnout."

Cr Dickerson said he was worried that people petitioning against council now won't want to give feedback in a few months when it is critical.

"When it finally comes to council and we say we have our draft plans ready and want feedback people will say 'oh I've already done that I signed a petition months ago'...so we have the potential to reduce the engagement in the process," he said.

Cr Dickerson confirmed that while there are pictures online of Regand Park with football fields over the top of it, they were not official plans.

"Council has no plans," he said.

"We have consultants but nothing has been formally presented to council, we are letting them do their job."

Cr Dickerson said DRC was letting the process play out and they were trusting the process.

"The last group of councillors did things that were wrong there's no doubt about that, but don't go and tar this group of councillors with the same brush as the last group," he said.

"We have not given the architects direction, because I'm not a landscape architect, so we are letting them use their expertise with ideas and concepts."

According to Cr Dickerson the rescission motion in 2018 has put DRC back a "number of years".

Originally the masterplan of 2015 would have cost $19 million to develop and with government funding they could have been halfway through that masterplan had DRC stuck with it.

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