Dear Councillors
Request
I am writing to you to seek your support to decide to retain Maidstone Hall as Community Use at Maribyrnong City Council Meeting of Council in March 2010.
Personal Background
I write to you as a person who was born in Summerhill Road West Footscray in 1950, lived in Hex Street Tottenham from 1954 to 1969, returned to West Footscray 1978 to 1981, returned to Yarraville in 2004 and returned again to Footscray in 2009. I was a member of West Footscray YMCA from 1962 to 1969. I established Lonesome Road Folk Club in Ballarat Road Maidstone with teenage friends in 1967 ~ the sign still remains today.
My father’s family were very involved with community from the time they arrived in 1882, to take up quarry men positions in Summerhill Road, where they later established a poultry farm and engineering fabrication workshop. Our family worked along side many others in the West Footscray and Maidstone neighbourhoods to raise funds and to contribute labour & materials to establish community facilities and services. My Great Uncle Earnie is named on one of the Commemorative Light poles at the entrance to the “Footscray Town Hall” ~ where you are meeting tonight once again!
I am imbued with a family tradition of “neighbours that play together, enjoy life and get through the hard times together!”
The street that I was born in, Summerhill Road West Footscray, was in 1950 to 1970, a neighbourhood of proud generational Australians, mostly from the British Isles, but our own family included Uncle Jacky Poppy, of French descent. The street I moved to once my father & mother built our house, Hex Street Tottenham, has 58 houses, which in 1954 had people from 32 language groups, and English was the minority. Dad, at first called most of them wogs, but soon they were our family friends and neighbours.
My wife, Dr Srebrenka Kunek, and I returned to Footscray in April 2009, to provide services as Creative Director to the Living Museum of the West. We are passionate about community and its capacity for social enterprise and support during times of radical change, hardship and opportunity.
Argument for retaining Maidstone Hall as Community Use
1. Community facilities such as Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts are more than Municipal Assets for Use or Sale. The very existence of them is testament to community efforts to nurture and sustain a better life for all, regardless of wealth and education.
2. Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts dilapidated state reflect an absence of community custodians, due in part to an ageing neighbourhood and poor stewardship by Council. These transitional failures are no reason to forsake community at a time when gentrification is producing new energies that can be leveraged by community and Council together in a partnership for sustainability.
3. The environmental imperative for innovation to nurture sustainable neighbourhoods ~ food, gardens & lifestyle, is supported by the availability of Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts.
4. The Permaculture Out West submission to project manage the site for five years provides a robust community organisation to replace the lost community auspice, and to enable Council to manage community engagement seamlessly.
5. The business model presented by POW is one which enables community to leverage resident, recreation & sporting, corporate and government resources to sustain the project and the community asset.
My question
With the above argument in mind, why would Council decide to sell the Maidstone Hall & Tennis Court site for an MCC Officer forecast sum of $2,000,000?
Final assertion
Councillors have an opportunity to provide the citizens of Maribyrnong, particularly Maidstone, with the leadership to meet the challenges of sustainable healthy living by demonstrating the opportunities for food security, bio-diversity and healthy living at the neighbourhood level.
I urge Councillors to vote unanimously to support the POW application for custodianship & social enterprise of Maidstone Hall & Tennis Courts site.
Yours sincerely
John Shone
Footscray Victoria 3011.