Opinion: Serious concerns about cafe at Shelley Beach Park precinct

I AM expressing my serious concerns about a café/restaurant on the Shelley Beach Park Precinct.

The City of Canning Council chose not to release the results of the substantial petition against the survey, which had 715 signatures.

These concerns are in respect to the City of Canning Mayor and councillors and their consideration for the format of future surveys to avoid the exclusion of the rights of individual participation.

The current resident survey was based on dwellings.

Selected dwellings were each served with only one survey form in an envelope addressed to “The Resident”, without consideration for the ratepayers and residents as a whole.

In respect to the impact on the electorate, and because the Council stated that “this survey was to be a statistically significant survey of residents”, the survey mail-out list should have been based on the electoral role.

I believe the format of the survey and the ensuing media reports based on percentages, rather than actual numbers, did not represent to the true impact of the survey, which had such a low response.

Further concern is that the survey format disenfranchised a majority of the combined community electors.

It must be the Council’s responsibility to ensure that the results of this survey be disregarded and that no future survey be based on such a limiting format.