Cable car blame game

Costs blowout fault of council, says proponent

HOBART City Council only has itself to blame for the costly cable car saga, the Mt Wellington Cable Car Company says.

The comments come after the council revealed it had spent more than $240,000 to assess the cable car plans, only to reject them earlier this year.

Company chairman Chris Oldfield said ratepayers should blame the council for doing “everything it could to draw out the assessment process”, leading to a cost blowout.

“The delays caused by a sepropriate ries of requests for further information adds to their costs as well as ours,” Mr Oldfield said.

“It was the council’s decision to appoint expensive external consultants instead of using their own planning staff, as is the normal practice.”

Ratepayers will soon fork out more, with the cable car company taking the council through a tribunal in an attempt to overturn its rejection.

But Mr Oldfield insisted that too was council’s fault, because it could have approved the project with conditions attached instead of defending the decision to the tribunal.

Residents Opposed to the Cable Car spokesman Vica Bayley hit back at the company’s “disingenuous spin”, saying it was its incompetence which was really to blame.

Mr Bayley said the council only had to make repeated requests for information because of the company’s “substandard” development application.

Mr Bayley said the company had complained incessantly about the council’s repeated requests for information, but on the one occasion it appealed to the planning tribunal, those requests were deemed perfeclty lawful and reasonable.

“Blaming it on the council’s processes ignores their own ineptitude and culpability for dragging this out for years and costing ratepayers more than they should,” he said.

Hobart City Council CEO Kelly Grisby said the cost of hiring external consultants to assess the development application was appropriate.

“Given the scope, complexity and importance of the planning application and noting that council is the land owner on which the proposal was to be located, it was entirely apto engage external independent planners with expertise in dealing with large and complex projects,” Ms Grisby said.

“The assessment process was conducted in line with our requirements as a planning authority and the request for further information from the applicant that significantly contributed to the delay in the assessment was independently determined by the Resource Management and Planning Appeal Tribunal to be correct and appropriate.”