We finally have a response from government on their position with regard to the Healesville Freeway Reservation. The press release and map with the location of the two parcels to be transferred to Crown land is attached.
It is worth noting –
- The Biolink/Shared path is included
- The Terrara preschool playground is secure
- There is no indication of what will be done with the two heritage properties – Greenways and Mirrabooka.
- The amount of land being preserved for Open space is 44% in the attached announcement.
- The land proposed to be protected includes the Eastern extension of the Dell and land for Vermont Secondary school.
- The Open space percentage is similar to the allocation in the VicRoads ‘Shared path’ concept, so no additional land is being set aside for Open space, however the protection of Crown land is more secure.
- All the work done by VicRoads over the last 3 years has been set aside, which is a colossal waste of taxpayer funds and all the man hours put in by VicRaods staff and all the consultants who were hired for this project.
Now that the position of all three major parties is known, we will try and set up a public forum where representatives from the parties will be invited to present their views on the HFR in particular and open space/ biodiversity in general. The community will have a chance to ask questions and seek clarifications. There is not much time but we will try and do it in late October’14, more information will follow so please keep a look out for it and tentatively pencil in Sunday 26th Oct in your diary. We will try and hold it as before at the George Road entrance of the Bellbird Dell.
Hope to see you there!