Permaculture Out West

Posts Tagged ‘EOI for Maidstone Public Hall’

Background: Between October 2009 and 2010, Permaculture Out West petitioned Maribyrnong Council not to sell the old Maidstone Hall at 16 Thomson St, Maidstone and won! Subsequently, Council voted to seek Expressions of Interest to lease the site. POW submitted an Expression of Interest to turn the site into a community market garden and “village well”. Our Expression of Interest can be found at this link: Permaculture Out West EOI 2.

Update: Council met on 15 February this year to consider the proposed lease of Maidstone Hall and resolved as follows:

1. “Endorse the suspension of the Expressions of Interest process to lease Maidstone Hall, 16 Thomson Street, Maidstone, until a suitable site for the relocation for the Footscray Senior Citizens Centre is found”

This means our Expression of Interest is on hold until further notice. Presumably, it also means that Council might decide to relocate the Footscray Senior Citizens Centre to the Maidstone Hall site. If this happens, there should be appropriate processes and opportunity to express your views. However, if you do feel strongly about the possibility of the Senior Citizens Centre being moved to the site, we urge you to express your views to your local Councillor in writing.

POW will keep you updated, but it is unlikely we will hear much until much later this year.

We have finally received official notification that Council will be voting on what to do with the Maidstone Community Hall this Tuesday 20th July.  The meeting is open to the public and it would be good to have  strong showing of POW supporters. It starts at 7pm. The Agenda for the meeting, including the Officer’s Report and Recommendation for the site will be available at www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au from Friday 16th July. Please click on a link below to see the official letter from Council. Thank you.

letter re council meeting 20 july 2010

Last month POW received a call from a council officer in charge of writing a report regarding the old Maidstone Community Hall. We were not permitted to see the full report. However, we understand that it covered various options open to council regarding the site, one of which was leasing it at a peppercorn rent to a community consortium of which POW would be part. At least one other option was a commercially run community service.

The report was to be addressed by Council at its general meeting earlier this month. But we understand it has been postponed, we think until July.

POW is concerned that a commercially run community service on the site would require substantial development on the site and would be against the spirit of Council’s decision to keep the land for the community and we have been urging our members and supporters to write to the Councilors expressing their views.

Please be aware however, that the Councilors did not request this report. It has been put before them by the officers, for reasons not fully understood by POW. At this stage, therefore, we have no reason to suspect the Councilors are backing away from their earlier decision.

We will keep you posted about Council’s decision

Message from Katerina

Apologies for not getting the news to you sooner – yesterday was such a big catch up day after all my efforts being put in to last minute campaigning on the hall.

For those of you who did not hear, Council voted unanimously NOT to sell the old Maidstone Community Hall site until they have thoroughly investigated ways of holding onto the land and making it economically viable and a place of community engagement. Council noted this could take years, but they will not rush the process. Councillor Carter was chairing the meeting and as such, was not supposed to speak. However, she made a point of standing anyway to note that she had been particularly impressed with POW’s submission and articulate presentation of the arguments. She was clearly moved by the community spirit demonstrated by our submission and campaign and is excited about working with us in future.

This is a fantastic result for POW. Whether or not Council offers us involvement in the rejuvination of the Maidstone Hall site, we are thrilled. Our objective with our proposal was primarily to keep the site in public hands. The market garden was secondary to this objective. However, given council’s positive response to our group, I am sure that eventually Council will support is in such a project, whether on this site or another.

It should be noted, however. That decision does not save the site forever. Should council not be able to find a viable community project for this site, it has not ruled out selling the land in future. I, therefore, urge all of you who are residents of the Maidstone and nearby areas to let council know you are interested in being involved in any future plans for the site. It is important that whatever happens on this site a) is viable and b) engages the community. So please keep an eye on it and take any opportunity you can get to be involved. We will keep you posted about any further developments.

In the meantime, thank you to everybody involved in the campaign, especially those who wrote letters and turned up to the Council meeting. Thank you for the all the personal emails of support people sent me and thank you to Nina who instigated the campaign in the first place.

Well done everybody!

Council has deferred its decision on our proposal to save the old Maidstone Community Hall site from private sale until its general meeting on Tuesday March 16th.

The general public is allowed to attend these meetings and to ask questions in a 15 minute period at the beginning of the meeting. Generally a maxiumum of 3 questions is allowed per person per topic. If time permits, they’ll return back to a person after all have had their 3 questions.

POW submitted the Expression of Interest to the Maribyrnong City Council on Friday 30th October. It was a big effort from everyone involved. Many thanks to Kat, John (Kunnexions), Scott, Angela and Delia!
Many thanks also to those people who sent emails in support of the application. As you all know, the more public interest there is in the submission, the more the council will take notice of Maidstone. We added your emails as an Appendix.
Regardless of the outcome of this submission, the Maidstone local community showed that there’s a lot of interest and energy, and with everyone’s help, we’ll find other places.

Here’s the Expression of Interest for those wanting to have a read of the submission. I’ve removed the Appendix containing the emails of support for privacy reasons.
Expression of Interest by Permaculture Out West for Maidstone Public Hall