Mayor responds to security fence story

The Editor,

I wish to respond to the Council Watch article “Black ‘Diplomat’ security fence to cage residential walkways” [Dubbo Photo News, May 14].

It’s a terrible shame that the article didn’t mention the positives and ignored the key facts on why Council is seeking to close these laneways.

Let’s look at the actual facts that were ignored in the story.

1. In our surveys, support for the closure of walkways averaged 80 per cent, with support for the closure of the 10 individual walkways ranging from 78.3 per cent to 86.3 per cent. Those opposed to the closure of individual walkways ranged from 13.7 per cent to 21.7 per cent. The results were quite clear that the majority of people were in favour of closures.

2. Where possible Council’s preference is to sell the walkway land to adjacent landowners and have boundary fences adjusted. However in some places this isn’t possible because of an operational need to retain the land such as a utility easement and that is where the black “Diplomat” fencing will be used.

3. The first paragraph saying that the global trend of building walls in hope of curbing anti-social problems is not only using emotive words, but is totally irrelevant to a neighbourhood social issue. Donald Trump’s wall is not a relevant or logical argument when it comes to the streets of Dubbo.

4. Local police have always indicated that these laneways are problem spots. They serve as an escape for people wishing to evade policing and police have been very supportive of closing these.

5. Modern town planning and safer by design principles certainly advise against these kinds of small narrow lanes because of the problems they cause. They are a bad design from the ‘70s and ‘80s that we are left trying to find a solution for.

6. The article mentioned issues with roaming cats. The report to Council, and the subsequent debate by Councillors, didn’t mention any of this. I am unsure what relevance this has to do with closing the laneways.

I am proud of the current Council’s attempts to assist in fixing some of Dubbo’s social problems. Not only are we partnering with local police and social service organisations, we are actively putting in infrastructure like security cameras and extra lighting.

We are also pushing for a drug court and rehabilitation centre for the region.

Fixing the region’s anti-social elements requires a broad array of initiatives. It should be acknowledged that some of those initiatives include better-designed neighbourhoods.

Ben Shields, Mayor, Dubbo Regional Council

Editor’s note:

News wishes to clarify part of the story referred to in the above letter [“Black ‘Diplomat’ security fence to cage residential walkways”].

The second last paragraph of the story stated, “It is unknown if cats allowed to roam at night triggering incessant barking dogs in otherwise quiet neighbourhoods will cease their anti-social nocturnal behaviour once they see the fences installed.”

To clarify, this was not reported as a view of Council or any specific councillor, but instead an observation by the author based on her research into the issue, and we should have made that clearer at the time.

UNFORTUNATELY, a missing word in the letter to the editor from Melissa Gray, “More water should be held by the taxpayers”, Dubbo Photo News, May 30, was exacerbated during our editing process by adding a dollar sign instead of the word “litres”, giving the letter an intention it never had.

To correct the record, the last paragraph should have read: “The Commonwealth has a responsibility to purchase the remaining 47.5 billion litres of water still under the buyback cap, most of that water is to be purchased in the Northern Basin, for use in the parched Darling River.”