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description= This blog is a diary of the struggle to save an avenue of significant and beautiful street trees - a struggle that was ultimately unsuccessful. It pitted community volunteers against a toxic council administration and a conservative elected council - and at the end, some of the media and the riot police. It still amazes…;
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e 31 8 2011 it turns out the spending on laman street is like something out of the weimar republic inflation has run riot in newcastle since july council admin has allegedly spent over 100 000 without a single interesting report to show for it yeah right 29 8 2011 we had a crowd for the community picket line in civic park today from 5 30am onwards we have a last minute reprieve three councillors john tate sharon claydon and michael osborne have been helpful by trying to ensure that procedural fairness is observed in this process 11pm the trees are safe until sept 13th when they will be discussed at a council meeting since two councillors were missing from the meeting where the last crucial vote was taken and because councillors were not briefed on the process of mediation and because councillors were not fully informed about the costs of third party determination the issue should go back to the elected council so the birds and bats and fluffy things are still happy in the trees the trees still form a stunning backdrop to civic park and the identity of this part of town is intact and the frightening and ugly business of turning those healthy and stable trees into stumps didn t happen today more later did you know that if the trees are felled they will be reduced to metre high stumps over 4 days that will then adorn one of our most important streets until several million dollars are found for the development that council has been talking about for a year what vision what creativity what respect for this city thankyou newcastle city council 26 8 2011 council management have won aided by elected councillors the laman street trees will be felled after each item of business relating to the magnificent fig trees were voted down one after another last night elected councillors rejected an opportunity to examine the risk evidence by a process of third party determination they rejected the opportunity to use dynamic testing to confirm the stability or otherwise of the trees and they failed to rescind their appalling july 19th decision to fell all 14 saying they re a traffic hazard the councillors who voted to remove the trees are graham boyd aaron buman shayne connell bob cook brad luke mike jackson and scott sharpe i believe several of these are rumoured to imagine they are lord mayor material amazing absent were councillors king and nelmes i suppose council s arborist said it all when he told the urban planning and design advisory committee in july that to review previous reports would call into question the reputations of the arborists who produced them we couldn t have that a job well done the latest post is extraordinary council meeting about the rumoured meeting this thursday mediation joint statement 18 8 2011 mr mchugh was fantastic and everyone worked really hard to reach an outcome what s new on this page you can read two assessments of the trees in laman street done by a company called treelogic first in 2008 and then this year dry stuff but easy to understand most of the trees were thought to have decades left in them in 2008 this year their useful life expectancy was zero double click on each page and it will enlarge in twitterspeak wtf on 4 8 2011 i wrote fig tree dispute headed for mediation which is now old news after council wrote a long letter to mr mchugh he declined to be involved in mediation shame the issues now are will he change his mind will a new mediator be appointed or does it need to go back to council to appoint a new person laman street went back to council this week the result was that save our figs and council were to enter into a mediation process with justice michael mchugh before insurance cover lapses on laman street the vote was 6 6 so the lord mayor used his casting vote to enable mediation it was a night of some drama with more people attending than the chamber could hold cr buman absent cr sharpe bringing his six broken ribs late and staying only long enough to vote to fell these beautiful trees cr connell declaring that a 6000 cost is too much to expect council to pay and cr jackson voting in favour of mediation here s a youtube video of an interview with two very famous arborists about the management of laman street http www youtube com watch v k0hr80uto0q the arborists conference was held in parramatta recently one of the highlights was the award of merit presented to mark hartley the community commissioned arborist who did peer reviews of the council s flawed reports on laman street 30th july 2011 we had a a picnic in civic park today from 11am till 2pm it was a lovely get together where we gathered more petition signatures listened to some speakers including the lord mayor and councillors nelmes and claydon and watched some world war 1 re enactors aim a pretend mortar at the council administration building and we enjoyed the trees for what could well be the last time nice coincidence that it s national tree day the fight to save these trees was lost this month when councillors voted 7 5 to remove them efficient council officers prepared to fell the laman street trees before the vote to remove them had even been taken on july 19th 7 councillors who presumably think making wrong decisions is better than making the right ones as long as they re not seen to be thinking about anything for too long made the wrong decision tonight featured photos burano is a small island off venice unlike newcastle they don t do beige well it s gorgeous recent posts are about the latest working party meetings and the workshop held to come up with positive and creative solutions to managing the alleged risk in laman street omg you would not believe these people and council s insurer has brought pressure to bear to fell the trees by the end of august bizarre haste after all these years and in the middle of a regime of looking after the fig trees and in spite of no formal updated risk assessments apart from a single documented matheny and clark assessment which apparently rates large street trees badly whether they re in good or bad condition weird we have exciting new black fences in laman street oh and one of the councillors could not restrain himself any more he wants to chop the trees down news 31 5 2011 nbn interviews cr cook and save our figs 30 5 2011 nbn tv has a story about cr michael osborne who has suggested ways to keep the street safe news the budget brought zip for newcastle surprise surprise this blog was started in response to newcastle city council s plans to fell an avenue of beautiful fig trees in a street called laman street for some background read the community commissioned arborist s report and his response to some councillors on the page key documents and links the war memorial cultural centre 1957 from council photo bank 11 5 2011 the draft street tree masterplan briefing was given to elected councillors by the council s former arborist this is one of the experts who helped bring us the plan to fell the laman street trees 6 5 2011 a lawyer and engineer addressed both council in secret confidential session and the laman street working party in public session it was reported presumably based on either media release or interview that the lawyer s said it s too risky to take the rented ugly fences down it s not the message i heard him give but whatever at least the plan is to monitor the trees using some technology rather than having another of the boys tree felling club come and scratch his head and possibly take a wild guess 2 5 2011 the elected councillors will be addressed by an insurance representative tonight presumably that will be mostly doom and gloom but you never know tomorrow the working party on laman street meets for the second time tree preservation measures other than not felling them the most significant one are yet to begin almost five months after council resolved that this should be our approach 25 4 2011 today s whine post is about how ridiculous it is that honeysuckle development corporation is building a car park on waterfront land on the harbour i m taking bets on how many trees are planted in the process 21 4 2011 the working party met for the first time last night enspec will be briefing council in 2 weeks and i can t wait they re the tree experts who are among the leaders in testing trees the lord mayor tried to have the fences removed from the safe trees but to no avail 19 4 2011 council discussed removing the fences no luck there yet 16 4 2011 the first meeting of the working party is on wed 20th april 2011 between 5 and 7 30pm in the waratah room at the city hall it s open to the public see you there 13 4 2011 the working party on the laman street risk is about to meet at last the 20th april is the first date and council is about to start its apparently annual large tree inspection great to see this gets a mention on the website we should inundate the arborists with advice about trees that need mulch i can think of a few 1 4 2011 ncc has appointed the members of its working party and announced the date of its first meeting april fool still waiting a friend actually said to me recently he doesn t think the fences will ever come down in laman street and the working party will never meet and the idiotic risk qrap will never go away sunday 27 2 2011 newcastle city council has advertised for expressions of interest for the laman street working party saturday 22 1 2011 a selection of some of the very tidy pictures of a revamped civic park is here these were cobbled together done in haste in a motel room overnight by the consultants who ran the charette early in 2010 they alleged they used two architecture students to help them they look a lot like the 2005 plan grassy tiered platforms no figs formal rows of new trees we were never given tree species advice the people at the charette were supposed to come up with that but there was no encouragement to come to conclusions about this thursday 20 1 2011 do the laman street civic park online survey on newcastle city council s website go to http www newcastle nsw gov au hover over the council tab 4th from the left then click on community consultation 2nd from the bottom then click on current consultations http www newcastle nsw gov au council community_consultation current_consultations then click on complete the laman street survey online now if i give you a link to it it won t work because it sensibly recognises that i have done this survey the islington park survey was here as well but it s now over 26 1 2011 that s a fantastic park with some absolutely fabulous trees the other way to do this survey is to sign up for newcastle voice on council s website please email me if this doesn t work for you lamanfigs gmail com or ring the nice people at council of course we won 10 12 2010 i won the 20 cent bet see below that the council officers would recommend against a pull test on the laman street figs we re looking forward with some anxiety to the last council meeting of the year where a report will be delivered to councillors on whether a pull test can be done to test the claims that the street trees are unsafe bet you 20cents it will be deemed not to be feasible it s hard not be cynical about when the decision was made that it wouldn t be 17 11 2010 am council will be investigating the integrity of the trees using technology great result from tonight s council meeting thanks to the councillors who proposed this motion and supported it re the court case legal cases are always challenging to run the parks and playgrounds movement is a community organisation with limited resources and needs assistance from the community to keep up the battle with council you can help by donating to or joining the parks and playgrounds movement click here to go to parks and playgrounds home page there s a handy donate button on the right 14 11 2010 by now most people will know that the parks and playgrounds movement tried in the land and environment court to stop council from felling these trees this case was lost and we are looking at an appeal the case was not about whether the trees are safe or unsafe the community know they are safe it was about whether the council can use the roads act to chop down these trees calling the trees a traffic hazard our team of legal people are looking at the detailed judgement to help us decide whether to appeal you can read the judgement here the online petition is still relevant you can sign it here altogether we are at the time of writing up to about 8500 signatures thursday 11 11 2010 the court found against the community today the injunction will last another week more soon wednesday 10th november 2010 we just heard that the court will hand down its judgement tomorrow at 4pm i m uncharacteristically lost for words but i am taking bets on whether the tree mulchers will be sitting in laman street tomorrow the other thing that is new is that i uploaded the submission for a renaming of laman street to anzac centennial place which sadly seems to involve yet again moving the war memorial grove you can see the pictures by clicking here or on the link anzac centennial place in the blogroll on the right on this page i don t see the grove i don t see the fountain and i certainly don t see eight or is it 9 hill s figs in the middle of the street i only see 30 pretty and unrealistic european looking trees let me guess they re ornamental pear trees they seem to be the fashion at the moment at least i suppose there are some trees in the da for the art gallery extension there are no trees in laman street and no parking for the gallery just lots of car parks in laman street show me a veteran who should have to stand in the hot sun to remember the fallen how insensitive and novocastrians will love that we are reinventing ourselves that s in the submission presumably in the image of someone from sydney we re part of the way towards paying for our david and goliath fight to save the laman street figs what a sad concept that residents have to go to the length of going to the land and environment court to change we hope a very unpopular decision i d love to see you there newcastle leagues club on friday november 12 at 7 30pm had a successful movie night a couple of weeks ago with lots of fun before and after the gorgeous movie the tree poor harassed moreton bay fig it was a star along with the stunning scenery the trivia night is the next instalment to fund the legal efforts to stop council from clear felling laman street monday 4th october 2010 only 2 days to go until the land and environment court hearing which will decide whether council can use the law they have chosen to remove the laman street figs a few of us had a meeting with the lord mayor last week about the issue in spite of what some people have called a gag order from the general manager the lord mayor offered to read the evidence we had for the safety of the trees i was a touch surprised that he hadn t read it already since we sent it to all the counci...
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