Forum
Central Coast Council is going to spend $300,000 on works in the Woy Woy Town Centre (Peninsula News 501), without any indication of what the purpose of these works would be or what long-term goal they serve, if any.
We are still waiting for the long-promised Woy Woy Town Centre Plan which was scheduled for mid-2020 but which seems as far from reality as ever.
In the meantime, without any integrated program to set priorities, Council is embarking on a grab bag of bits and pieces whose point is hard to discern.
There will be tree surrounds at a cost of nearly $200,000 and a $30,000 art installation, but what is all this supposed to achieve?
To quote the classic phrase, it is putting lipstick on a pig.
The Woy Woy Town Centre is a mess, and a few tree surrounds aren’t going to change that.
What is needed is a serious assessment of priority improvements and an implementation timetable for what has to be done.
To revamp Woy Woy into a competitive centre, if it is possible at all, will require fundamental changes dependent on Council initiative – a quality not generally demonstrated by this Council – not a paint and patch job designed, presumably, as a gesture to show the Peninsula has not been forgotten in the carving up of the budget for which we are going into deep debt.
Email, 24 Aug 2020
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy