Hobart City Council aldermen, councillors exchange heated words over height limits
Several Hobart City aldermen and councillors have gone toe-to-toe in a heated email exchange as tensions rise over building heights. READ THE EMAILS
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SEVERAL Hobart City aldermen have gone toe-to-toe in a heated email exchange as tensions rise over Monday night’s building heights limit vote.
The council will vote on Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds’s amendment to lower heights in the CBD from the 60m recommended in the council-commissioned Leigh Woolley report to 45m, which was endorsed by the council planning committee last Monday.
In an email thread seen by the Mercury, several aldermen and councillors have exchanged blows with Councillor Reynolds on their positions ahead of tonight’s debate.
Cr Reynolds said they had only received one email to the aldermanic public email address that advocated against 45m limits, whereas they had received more than 190 emails to the same address that urged them to endorse it.
CALL FOR GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION ON HEIGHT LIMITS
But Alderman Marti Zucco fired back, saying decisions should not be made on how many emails were received.
“Based on your assumptions we should not support Dark Mofo as we received far more emails not to support Dark Mofo than on this issue,” he said.
“Decision-making is not based on which group or groups get together to send bulk emails to elected members or how many turn up at meetings.
“Decision-making is about proper evaluation of reports of fact.”
Alderman Simon Behrakis also laid into the Lord Mayor, saying he was unsure how an assertion could be made that the suggestion of a correlation between building restrictions and housing prices had no merit.
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“Rather than making assertions that these reforms will either lead us to utopia or dystopia, we owe it to the taxpayer to conduct this research and make an informed decision on their behalf,” he said.
Councillor Holly Ewin said she did not want to impose height limits without proper studies being done into its implications.
“There is a very vocal group of people lobbying for 45m limit … they have the education, time, space and knowledge to lobby for what they want,” she said.
“We haven’t asked what other groups think, for example young people, homeless people and the working poor.”
However, the Lord Mayor didn’t take anything lying down and hit back that she thought all aldermen were drawing on research and facts, not emails.
She also said the proposed amendments would be comprehensively investigated during the Tasmanian Planning Commission process if tonight’s motion was successful.
jack.paynter@news.com.au
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