Andrew Toulalan works in tourism and wants to know why the City of Joondalup doesn’t have a tourism information booth
Camera IconAndrew Toulalan works in tourism and wants to know why the City of Joondalup doesn’t have a tourism information booth Credit: Supplied/Emma Reeves

We weren’t heard

Staff ReporterFremantle Gazette

THE comments in the Gazette about the FICRA (Fremantle Inner City Residents’ Association) and council meetings concerning the skate plaza forget an important difference.

The FICRA meeting was called to allow the community to comment on things they were upset about, while the large crowd of enthusiastic skate supporters at council were there to support getting a $1.9 million project.

Understandably, the two crowds were in a very different mood.

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The community was never allowed to comment on the location of the skate plaza in the Esplanade Reserve, a development that was clearly forbidden in the master plan for the park.

After the FICRA meeting, the mayor said the attendees were ‘nimbys’ who ‘didn’t represent the people of Fremantle’.

The 220 people at the meeting were hoping he would listen.

The council’s own agenda document shows the large 3500sqm plaza taking up a great deal more than the 7 per cent now claimed by the mayor.

The Fremantle History Society originally supported the skate plaza after discussions with the mayor, but on examining the plans themselves, they wrote to the mayor to withdraw their support.

That letter and none of the FICRA meeting resolutions were tabled or discussed at the council meeting.

FICRA attendees made every effort to support the idea of a skate plaza, despite the fact that 80 per cent of kids don’t skate.

Because council dismissed community concerns, a petition is now underway, and a special electors meeting of council will be called to make the council address the resolutions of the FICRA meeting.

John Dowson,

Fremantle