June 26, 2013
Maidenwell’s sports field will be levelled and renamed J.A. Gorton Memorial Park if the town’s recently formed community group has its way.
About 40 people met at Maidenwell Hall on Tuesday night to discuss a proposal by the South Burnett Regional Council to spend $45,000 on civic improvements in the town.
The spending plan had been announced at a public meeting at the hall in early May by South Burnett Mayor Wayne Kratzmann and Division 2 Cr Deb Palmer.
Mayor Kratzmann said the money would be available in the council’s 2013-14 Budget to spend on town improvement projects but only on projects that the majority of the Maidenwell community agreed to.
Two weeks later, Maidenwell community members gathered together to form a town group and arranged to place suggestion boxes at the Maidenwell Trading Post, the Maidenwell Hotel and the Tanduringie State School to collect the community’s ideas about what improvements should be undertaken with the money.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, chairman Gavin Jones said he’d been “very impressed” with the number of submissions that had been received and the good ideas they contained, and was sure everyone else would be, too.
Suggestions included:
- Levelling the Maidenwell Sportsgrounds
- Installing an historic walk through the centre of town
- Installing outdoor dining settings that could be used by tourists during the day and by a range of special events at other times
- Upgrading the town’s public toilet block, and
- Installing coin-operated barbecues and a children’s playground area near the town centre
South Burnett Regional Council Manager Strategic Projects Leanne Petersen attended the meeting on behalf of the Mayor and Cr Palmer to answer questions from the floor and explain the council’s position on some of the suggestions the group had received.
A large part of the meeting was given over to a discussion about whether or not the newly formed group should incorporate, the likely costs of doing so and the benefits that incorporation might bring.
In the end, about 85 per cent of those in attendance voted to incorporate under the name “Maidenwell Community Group Inc”, with Gavin Jones as President and Ros Kidman as Secretary.
A Treasurer and other executive committee members will be elected at a future meeting once the incorporation process has been advanced.
The meeting then focussed on examining the pros and cons of the various submissions the group had received.
Mr Jones said levelling the existing sportsgrounds had attracted a lot of support because it would remedy a long-standing problem in the area, as well as give the town the opportunity to host a wider number of events in the future.
He said the Tanduringie State School had never been able to hold a sports carnival at the sportsgrounds because of the uneven playing fields, and was forced to travel to Cooyar or other towns when it wanted to do so.
He said he’d obtained an estimate on the cost of levelling the grounds and found it would likely be $20,000 to $25,000. So if the meeting decided to pursue this, they’d need to nominate some other projects, too.
Another idea that attracted strong support was a concept for an historic walk along the centre of the town.
However, Ms Petersen said that while this was a very good idea and she could understand why it had so much local appeal, the Department Of Main Roads was likely to apply its own strict criteria to the project because the walk would be immediately next to a main road.
So if the committee chose that particular project, she said they should be prepared for lengthy delays while the department assessed the project.
There was also the possibility of substantial changes if the department found it had concerns about issues such as line-of-sight visibility along the road, or similar matters.
In the end, the group decided it would ask the Council to level the sportsgrounds as the town’s first priority, and see if the aspects of the historic walk proposal could be incorporated into that upgrade.
The group also voted to ask the council to rename the sports field in honour of its original owner, who had sold it to the former Nanango Shire Council for the community’s use at less than market value in 1982.
One final issue that aroused discussion was the town’s waste disposal point, which several people described as “an eyesore”.
The meeting resolved to ask the Council if it could look into either screening the area in a way that hid it from public view, or relocate it to another site altogether.
“This isn’t a good look for tourists passing through Maidenwell,” Mr Jones said.
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