We care about care

Caring for our parks - Badgers Park Old Bar

General maintenance and care for our public shared assets are often overlooked and taken for granted. Just like the cleaning that goes on everyday in any household - unseen but making life better for everyone.
I was lucky this morning to catch the Greater Taree Council staff (I think) with the mower in our park. They keep the grass beautiful and it is a nice piece of open ground. Thank you to the staff who do this and probably receive no recognition and appreciation for what they do. This allows us to use it more readily and there is a patch of purple weed type flowers that spring into life again after it is mowed.
Sadly, I suspect that it is the lovely open mowed look that has developers questioning its 'use' when it could be sold so readily for profit. The park looks so fantastic in its mix of unkept bush and mown grass. We are so lucky to have these small suburban green band parks in our neighbourhood. This is a legacy of town planning given to us by previous Council's based on the idea of what constitutes a good planning for development, but now under threat. In saying this I also acknowledge that the entire lands belonged to the Biripi nation not so long ago and was taken from them. They also were seen not to use it in a valid way so didn't have any ownership in new laws. What is the answer? What type of use or value to citizens is valid to keep our green spaces now?
See the latest news on the threat to our parks.
Look at completing the online submission again as the questions seem to have changed. See here.

Parks are used in many ways...not only with balls

Colours of the park

A local community book club came to a Saori workshop in the studio on Saturday. One of the new weavers created a textile which reminded me of the richness of open space and how we are so influenced by our environment.
According to many sources open parkland and parkland with facilities contribute to land values in an area, especially if it is an unvandalised and peaceful park environment like Badgers parks and indeed all the "pocket parks" of Old Bar that are proposed for disposal to private sale.

Our Open space in Badgers Park

Old Bar is a walking place and proximity is important. We tend to take advantage of close parks rather than getting in cars to travel to another with more structured facilities.

Badgers Park walk leads to Badgers Beach

Page 46 of the Draft Open Space Improvement Plan maps the proposed improvements which will be paid for by the permanent sale of our parks. Although these improvements to other parks are relevant they are not any that I would value in any way until they can be funded by other means.  If they can't be done without selling off our parklands they will have to wait until better times.
The biggest outlays of these proposed improvements  are connected with organised sports in the active sports field (1.2 million). When sports are being played on these fields it isn't appropriate to walk through or picnic on the grounds and sometimes temporary fencing is erected and residents have to pay for entry. These sports groups monopolise these grounds and we generally accept this, but not if all our other parks are sold down to only this type of use.