Darebin parking plan voted down after community outrage

Police and beefed-up security were on hand after a controversial plan to ditch all-day parking in parts of Melbourne’s north was unceremoniously scrapped. It came after thousands of people signed a petition objecting to the move.

Darebin Council will withdraw the parking strategy after a councillor vote.

Darebin councillors unanimously voted to dump the council’s parking strategy after an outraged community took their fight to the streets.

Concerned members of the public queued outside the council hall for an hour to attend the meeting and faced beefed-up security and police.

Councillors listened to about an hour-and-a-half of questions from the gallery over issues resulting from the plan including public safety, the impact on traders and poor council communication.

A number of the questions were met with applause from the gallery.

Red areas would have been affected immediately, with blue areas under investigation.

A motion, proposed by Cr Gaetano Greco, suspended the current consultation process and completely withdrew the strategy.

Cr Greco thanked the public for what he described as a “victory for the community”.

“Grassroots organising and mobilisation is quite formidable and something Darebin as a community should be proud of,” he said.

“We have to admit as a council when we get things wrong

“We should not have let this process go as far as it did

“A blanket approach does not work in our city.”

Signs were spread across the suburbs by concerned neighbours. Source: Facebook

Almost 7000 people signed an online petition to stop the proposed restrictions, which would have removed all-day parking near train stations and within 400m of High St and replaced them with two-hour zones.

The strategy also proposed four-hour zones near parks and sporting fields and prioritised paid parking.

Opponents to the strategy spent their spare time making and distributing flyers, producing corflutes (weatherproof signs) and doorknocking neighbours.

In the Neighbours against the Darebin Parking Strategy Facebook group, which has almost 2000 members, posters congratulated each other for the victory and pledged to stay involved with council’s future decisions.

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In a statement, the council thanked the community for their feedback.

“Council strongly believes that community input is critical to good decision making and the decision not to proceed is a clear demonstration that this council will always listen to our community,” it said.

@richardapearce