Dear Mr McFeely,
While reviewing the stack of election brochures from my letterbox before deciding who to vote for today, I came across yours.
Let me first say that I admire any citizen who decides to stick their neck out and run for local council. Good on you.
But then I read your brochure.
At first things were going well, but then I read your proposals for cyclists and “The Tunnel” and couldn’t believe my eyes.
In my view, any would-be elected official who still doesn’t embrace long-term sustainable solutions, especially to issues that impact more than just “traffic”, but go much further to the fundamental impact of vehicular transport – safety/accidents, financial, energy consumption, environmental – is NOT one I will ever vote for.
Undertaking such a massive infrastructure project to add capacity as ‘The Tunnel’ proposal does, is ultimately only postponing the problem of growing vehicular transport, and all the “externalities” that brings. Our collective efforts MUST be to reducing car usage, NOT encouraging it, and PROMOTING better alternatives. Spending a billion dollars on a new tunnel/road system is really just saying “not in our back yard” and sweeping the problem under the carpetsuburb. As a local citizen who thinks about more than just my own back yard, I reject this “build more capacity” mentality.
Which brings me to your proposed policy to implement a license system for ALL bicycle riders who ride within Yarra City, WHETHER THEY LIVE HERE OR NOT. WTF? So, if other councils were to eventually follow suit, I’d need a separate licenses – that I presumably would have to pay for too – for EVERY council area I ride my bicycle in? I think you can glean from my tone where I suggest you put that proposal.
Then you have the hypocrisy to call for a change to the “deep-rooted ‘town hall’ culture that has been allowed to fester over the years which has helped stem the flow of common sense”? By wanting to implement an utterly unenforcable and irrational bicycle rider license system for all would-be bike riders whether they live here or not, “BECAUSE THEY DON’T DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTE to any infrastructure…”? Seriously?
My NOT putting another car on the road when I ride, and my NOT contributing to energy consumption and environmental burdens when I ride, and my contribution to the overall health of the citizenry FAR OUTWEIGH the few bucks you’d make from me for a ridiculous bicycle-riding license.
So on one hand there’s your pro-car/tunnel hammer, and in the other an anti-bicycle hammer. I think you are certifiably NUTS, and my choice is clear.
Why am I not surprised that a man who’s almost singularly been unable or unwilling over so many years to lift The Peel from its musically indecisive, try-to-be-all-things-to-all-people-but-just-fester-as-an-ugly-dive-bar morass should propose such short-sighted, anti-sustainable, and utterly ridiculous policies?
Yours sincerely,
no-comply.org 