February 17, 2015
A community plan for Yarraman adopted at a public meeting on Tuesday night will be presented to Toowoomba Regional Council before the end of the month.
The plan – “Moving Yarraman Forward” – is the outcome of a survey of Yarraman’s householders run late last year to determine what the community felt were its top development priorities.
The survey drew 52 responses – almost 10 per cent of the town’s households – and was followed by a public meeting on February 3 where the results were presented and the community was asked to discuss the topics raised.
The results were then translated into a final plan presented at a follow-up meeting in the Yarraman Memorial Hall on Tuesday night for a final round of talks.
The process of running the survey and converting the results into a final plan was undertaken by a sub-committee of the Yarraman Progress Association led by Yarraman RSL president Terry Reid.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Mr Reid and fellow sub-committee members Linda Smith and Helen Mead walked the audience through the document’s final draft to ensure nothing raised at the first meeting had been missed, and nothing rejected at the first meeting included.
As was the case at the last meeting, the agenda covered a long list of items at a brisk pace.
However, audience members were given free rein to speak to any point in the document, and handed a microphone when they wanted to talk to a particular issue.
Mr Reid explained the community plan was structured to match Toowoomba Regional Council’s preferred community planning structure, and dealt with “broad brush” issues rather than specifics.
Council representatives had been deliberately excluded from all steps of the process to ensure the plan genuinely reflected the community’s wishes.
Mr Reid said the primary purpose of the document was to help guide Council’s future decision-making when it spent money on town improvements.
However, the inclusion of any particular item did not necessarily mean Toowoomba Regional Council would action it in the short term, the longer term or at all.
“In the end, whether or not any particular thing is done is entirely up to Council,” Mr Reid said.
The meeting also identified the town’s top priorities, which are:
- Introducing regular bus services to Toowoomba and Kingaroy
- Development of parks and open spaces
- Development of recreational cycling and walking trails
- Opening an accredited Visitor Information Centre in the town’s CBD area
- Upgraded public amenities
The finished document will be presented to Toowoomba Regional Council representatives at a special meeting on February 27.
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