The plan is one step closer to fruition after council voted in favour of it, but not before opponents had had their say.

Former councillors Larry Cameron and Peter Lloyd along with Greg and Sue Moran spoke out against the plan at the start of the meeting during public forum. All suggested changes they considered necessary to be made to the plan.

When the matter finally came up on the agenda, it was former mayor, Barry Johnston, who moved ‘that we adopt in principle the Town Centre Renewal Plan, and that the working party that was put in place for the development of that plan have a continuing role and assist with the management.’

“Obviously, out of that the next step for council would be to develop a long-term plan of the method, and the funding and the construction program for that development,” Cr Johnston said.

“What we have to understand is that we have to maintain a safe area.

“I don’t believe that some of the issues that are currently in place could be regarded as safe in the long-term. We would only need one court case and the cost of the new plan would pale into insignificance, if it was a major accident.”

Cr Johnston said he believed that the recommendations that had been made to council were appropriate and needed to be phased in over a long period, according to the finances available.

Deputy mayor Di Baker withdrew from the debate citing her ownership of a building in Vivian Street as a conflict of interest. 

Cr Mal Peters said he was vehemently opposed to the proposal and called it a waste of money.

“I don’t think council can spend ratepayer’s hard earned money like drunken sailors. It has no surplus money to waste on this type of thing and I see absolutely no reason to do it,” Cr Peters said.

“I have sat around this table a lot of times and heard councillors rave about how fantastic our CBD is, and now we’ve got to go ahead and spend a lot of money on it. Well, I don’t see it.

“I thought a statement by a guy called Sir John Benn really fits into this situation. He said ‘politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy’, and that’s what’s going on here if ever I’ve seen it.”

Various aspects of the draft plan were debated heavily, with councillors outlining their preferred variations of it.

It prompted Cr Harmon to remind the councillors that they had already had the opportunity to make recommendations about what they wanted in and out of the plan on no less than four occasions during the evolution of the plan.

“So do we want to make it five times?” he asked.

“I want to make it quite clear that you’ve been given that opportunity to have all that on numerous occasions. It comes to the pointy end of to make the decision and we want to go back to the community again and say, well perhaps we need to take this out and put this back in. 

“We’re endorsing the proposal for ongoing design plans to come through for then a roll-out plan where council than will still have an input into the implementation.”

Cr Johnston’s motion was successful and the plan would seem to be over it’s first hurdle.