Bright community meeting report

Six Alpine councillors were present but had little to say, except when asked by one community member if they intended to seek re-election

Council admin in good hands

We just need some ‘Bright’ councillors!

That’s my honest opinion after attending last night’s inaugural Bright ‘community forum’ held at the Alpine council chambers and chaired by CEO Ian Nicholls.

I’m not referring to the councillors when I say that but to the CEO and senior staff, such as John Carter manager strategic services (including economic development) and Trevor Britten manager community services. Ian, John & Trevor gave impressive, open and honest accounts of council plans & projects for Bright as well as answering a range of questions from the disappointingly low crowd of about 25 community members (see footnote).

I don’t mean to diminish the other senior council managers in attendance. It’s just that the three I refer to have been at the council a lot longer and seem well and truly on top of their portfolios as well as having a clear understanding of the key issues facing the town.

I believe we are fortunate indeed to (finally) have such a strong and communicative group running the shire’s administration. All we need now is to elect some councillors from Bright (the right ones!) to give Ian and his staff the direction & decisions they need in order to do the things they want to do for Bright.

Getting onto the meeting, several key issues were raised & discussed including the breaking (but not surprising) news that the Bright Indoor Swimming Centre has gone into receivership and is now closed. See previous post. Other key issues included:

Residential Land Review:

Several large parcels of land around Bright have been identified over the past few years as suitable for future rezoning for residential use and that process is now reaching its final stage. Details are soon to be released but I don’t think there will be any major surprises. Unfortunately most parcels will be on the outskirts of the town east and west along the Great Alpine Road. This will extend the unappealling ’ribbon effect’, whereas I am more in favour of containing the town within existing boundaries and looking at ‘urban consolidation’ rather than an urban sprawl to cope with population growth.

Little things mean a lot. Things like this need to be saved as part of the town's character

Heritage Study:

A study of heritage buildings and ‘places’ that was started some time ago has now been completed and will soon go up for public comment.

Apparently it identifies 41 ‘heritage places’ and I’m rather curious about what that means. We’ll just wait and see.

It’s certainly important to protect historic buildings (of which we have very few) but obviously the little rustic footbridge next to my place didn’t make it onto the list, as it was demolished by the council earlier this year – much to my displeasure!

Hopefully the study has identified even the ‘quirky’ and smaller things that form part of the town’s heritage.

Original concept plan for Bright Village Square as per Bright Future Project circa 2001

Bright Future Project: 

In the best news of the night (as far as I’m concerned) John Carter is to re-start the Bright Future planning review committee, of which I am pleased to be part. This process started about 12 months ago but came to a halt last December when (in my opinion) it didn’t go as some people had hoped it would. Those hoping to rewrite this brilliant master plan for the upgrade of Bright’s public places in and around the CBD to also include restrictive controls on commercial & residential development appear to have been thwarted. Ian Nicholls has (thankfully) stepped in and said NO, council will not spend $100,000 re-writing the plans to halt growth! Good on him.

According to John the main priority will now shift back to the CBD upgrade and especially to come up with workable plans to remodel the area around the clock-tower as a key focal point for the town, a meeting place and a major tourist area. This is something I’ve been pushing for years and I do feel somewhat vindicated by this exciting development. These works, when completed, will reinvigorate the town and should now be supported by those Ireland Street traders who spent the past 18 months protesting the Coles supermarket.

One of the key issues for the Bright Future works of course is funding and the committee is to also look into that. At the meeting I suggested that if we are to attract the millions of dollars of Government funding the full upgrade would obviously take then we need to have credible and indisputable data on our tourist visitation numbers- in order to prove conclusively to Mr Brumby et al that Bright is indeed the most strategic and important tourist destination in the entire north east and of great significance to the State’s economy. The data could also be used for tourism promotion purposes and to attract further economic developments. I’m pleased to say my suggestion went over very well and (hopefully) we’ll see some form of local data collection started before too long. It’s about time!

The Bright Future committee will also look into ‘neighbourhood character controls’ for the residential areas but perhaps that’s more to appease the ‘naysayers’ who seem to be opposed to attracting new arrivals. It’s certainly to be a secondary function of the process, at least that’s how it appears to me.

Bright water supply:

To secure the sustainability of our water supply it requires us to rethink which industries are to be actively encouraged

Further highlighting that this area’s future lies almost entirely in tourism and residential growth, Ian Nicholls advised that the Government is soon to introduce ’stream controls’ that would prevent farms drawing water directly from the Ovens River for 5 years out of every 7. However, the continuity of our residential water supply is more certain as Ian has obtained absolute guarantees that the off-river water storage facility will be built just upstream of Bright and be online by 2011.

And that’s all the more reason, in my opinion, to put our faith in achieving economic sustainability via residential & tourism growth, which use far less water than other pursuits. More visitors and more new arrivals = more wealth.

The historic Mt Buffalo chalet circa 1910 is in danger of deteriorating beyond repair

Mt Buffalo Chalet:

Andrew Wilson, who has been involved in the talks with Parks Victoria, advised that the lessee has now (regrettably) left the historic chalet building completely unattended and surrounded by a fence (an ugly cyclone fence, I presume).

The council is to make a direct plea with the Minister for Tourism (35 year old Tim Holding) to get the required infrastructures in place and the chalet re-opened.

Ian stressed the importance of this historic icon to our tourist trade. The council is advocating that the chalet NOT be demolished and that it be restored and preserved.

Unfortunately though this matter is really out of the council’s control and I am sceptical that Minister Holding will see it as a big priority – he being such a huge fan of Mt Hotham & Falls Creek. Furthermore I believe the lessee Burbank fully intends (or desires) to all but demolish this building and I fear the State Government will eventually cave in to their proposal, not the council’s.

* Footnote:

The Cittaslow proposal was not raised, even though two members of the Bright Citizens Association (who were part of the small group that secretly convinced the council to give it ‘in principle’ support last month) were present.

As I have suspected, the pro-Cittaslowers are just NOT prepared to discuss this ‘out there’ proposal with the community in open forum.

Perhaps they were deterred by the lack of support among the gallery. Conspicuous by their absence were any members of the Save Bright group, who it seems are not so ‘community minded’ after all – surprise, surprise.

Also absent (to my observations) were any members of the Bright Chamber of Commerce executive committee, who are also pushing Cittaslow (but only via a $30 per head dinner it seems).

But what sort of Chamber of Commerce fails to represent itself at such an important community meeting? Well, one that doesn’t really represent a lot of people I guess. Poor show.