Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Getting ready for the planning phase

Following Sunday's meeting we are moving ahead quickly into the planning phase.

John Burgess and I met with representatives from VBRRA, Vicurban and the Institute of Architects last night to work through a planning process.

We presented a high level summary of the aspirations emerging from the Community Workshop as follows:

- The community wants to take an active role in determining the future of Flowerdale
- The community spirit that has become stronger since the fires needs to be built on and maintained
- The rebuilding plan needs to look to the future
- There is strong support for Flowerdale to become a Sustainable Town, with water and energy top priorities
- There needs to be more community facilities, particularly for children and older residents
- There needs to be a strong focus on all aspects of water
- The plans need to be affordable for existing residents
- The issue of communications including mobile coverage, high speed internet access and television coverage needs to be dealt with
- Residents that are rebuilding need information and advice on bushfire safety, energy efficiency and the planning and rebuilding process. This needs to be established very quickly.
- Residents who did not lose their houses want to be able to plug in to any sustainable initiatives around water, energy and communications
- People want more opportunities to work in Flowerdale and we need to look at initiatives that provide employment in the community

Overall the community wants to ensure that Flowerdale is rebuilt in a better and more sustainable way.

A planning group will be formed very quickly and we will give more info on the process, timelines and opportunity for participation as soon as it is available.

if there are any key aspirations which you think aren't covered above please add a comment and let us know.

We expect that the outline of the planning process will be available early next week.

5 comments:

  1. thank goodness we live in hazeldene.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Pete
    I just wanted to let your community know that over 100 facilitators have offered volunteer services to bushfire affected areas. You may already have this information. If it would be of value to have an external facilitator for any of your meetings you can go to the website http://fhcr.collectivex.com. Once you have registered on the site you will see details of all the facilitators who can then contact directly.
    Best wishes
    Kimbra White
    IAP2 and Aust Facilitators Network

    ReplyDelete
  3. We really need a bus link with the Kinglake bus services as they now have 9 buses each way on weekdays and 8 buses each way on Sundays and public holidays. Each of these buses stop at Kinglake West. If there ware bus link from Flowerdale and Hazeldene that connected with this Kinlake service there would be greater opportunities for the community and a much brighter future for the children. Teenagers and young adults would be able to access jobs in the greater Melbourne area. They would also be able to attend any TAFE course that they needed to pursue their desired career path. In the past it has been, for some teens/young adults, a too hard or daunting task to follow their career dreams as transport has been a major stumbling block.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Anonymous 2

    We will add the bit about transport as part of the input of the recovery plan. Thanks for contributing

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here are some suggestions provided by one of the local residents

    What do we want?

    daycare/health nurse
    adventure playground
    another shop
    motor bike track and skate park
    new community house
    recreation/swimming pool
    aged care centre
    food co-op
    flowerdale primary to have it’s own school bus
    butcher/baker
    an enclosed area for our kids to play in at school
    employ the community in the community
    grow our own fruit/vegetables

    These are my thoughts and some others also, what about your thoughts, why don’t you let us know?

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.