While respecting your imperative to remain impartial on issues, I was a little perplexed as to your editorial conclusion.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
People were angered because they do not want the plane trees removed and do not wish to have a median strip installed. Equally they do not want scarce dollars spent on a CBD they regard as first class when some ISC roads would insult the notion of being as good as goat tracks.
Your call for a compromise is laudable however it needs to be pointed out that with four extensive polls of ISC ratepayers including two conducted by CIRA (change.org/petition and the survey of Otho & Byron street business owners), as well as ones conducted by 2NZ and The Inverell Times, that the vast majority of people are opposed.
It was stated on 2NZ talkback that many people do not understand what the TRCP involves. I would suggest that the Chairperson of CIRA would have as much of an understanding of the TRCP as the Councillors and staff.
Apart from perhaps 3, the 76 people who felt passionate enough to have left their work places to express their displeasure at the 25/2/15 council meeting were angry and could see that the Council’s position was intransigent.
I am drawn to the words of the former British PM Margret Thatcher when she said that consensus is “the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘
Might I suggest such a compromise is no result at all?
Cr Mal Peters
Kayannie, Ashford