Save Long Reef

What an interesting weekend we just had. There was a hidden little piece in the Manly Daily on page 4 where Mayor Regan put out a press release saying there will be a meeting with community members and groups facilitated by an independent consultant. Note, that this is the next stage of the process and will be conducted over the next 3 months. The media release by the Mayor is dated April 1 - DON'T BE FOOLED! This means that the concept plan remains approved which means the location is till up on the hill and the building envelope is still the same thing we don't want. Warringah Council is still not listening to you because it s fixing the things you have the biggest objection to. We must continue to fight until Warringah Council presents options that can be properly evaluated by the community. The best case of course is that the Council engages with the community on what those design options are. Go to the council website and read the full media release. http://www.warringah.nsw.gov.au/news_events/documents/MicrosoftWord-LongReefSLSCconsultationcontinues.pdf It's a whole lot of nothing where nothing is actually delivered. There are vague promises, no legal obligations and the Mayor has still failed to address the key concerns. We suggest that you write to the Mayor and demand that he suspend the concept design pending further consultation. Also ask the Mayor to outline specifically the terms of reference for the "next stage of community consultation"

WHERE ARE WE NOW??? 31/3/2011

Firstly welcome to the birth of savelongreef.com.au!!! Make sure you put this in your favourites and that you have registered properly. Today is the closing day of submissions on Mayor Regan's request for public input on use of the public space. We have sent him 252 letters telling him an upgrade is ok, the latest concept is too big and in the wrong spot and the consultation has been awful. There was a raucous council meeting on Tuesday where the council successfully stopped any motions that included any level of consultation with us or anyone else except the surf club. Check out the webcast on http://www.warringah.nsw.gov.au/council_then/meetings.aspx

The council are promising more consultation but as of today there is nothing to say they have to and we have no reason to believe them based on their past performance. Councillors supporting the community are Ray, Kirsch, De Luca, Harris and Laugesen. Councillors killing all consultation are Sutton, Wilkins, Falinski, Giltinan and Regan voting once as Councillor and then once again as Mayor. The restaurant space has been reduced to 45-50 seats but that just means that they change the label on the plans. The size of the building is still not changed - think a 10 metre tall building sitting on top of an Olympic Pool! The Mayor was pretty categoric that the location is not up for debate so we are stuck with something up on the hill. We have a huge objection to this and the council have not properly justified this decision. We will give you more information later. We've been talking with the surf club and tried to find a consensus solution for everyone. At the moment the council is standing in the way of anything happening there. There has been a lot going on in the Manly Daily and we encourage you to keep following that. We have the links up for those stories in the media links section. Its good to check the online versions because you can then see the letters section as well and some of those are very interesting. The issue has now become about how badly the council has handled all this so we are continuing to make a noise and discuss with as many people as possible. We think something is coming and will tell you what we think shortly. In the meantime keep talking about it and remember:

We are not anti clubbie

We support a new surfclub

The present concept is too big

The present concept is in the wrong spot

The consultation has been terrible.

SAVE LONG REEF!