I WRITE in response to your article ‘Boom town Kudla’ (August 30).
For decades the residents of our southern rural zone have pleaded for low density residential development, and year after year chief executive Henry Inat, Gawler Mayor Karen Redman and their ‘Team Redman’ faction refused to listen.
Council shelves are littered with reports from decades of community forums and consultation, including hundreds upon hundreds of submissions pleading for action and for rezoning into low density residential.
For seven years as Councillor and Deputy Mayor I championed the cause of those in our rural zone, passing motions geared at rezoning, and getting the Jensen 2 report released from confidence.
The Jensen report recommended four zones across the rural zone, including low density half acre blocks in Kudla, along the rail and road corridor, but this report was buried administration because they and their supporters didn’t like the recommendations.
I regularly warned the administration, and my fellow elected members, that not only was agriculture/horticulture not viable in the vast majority of the rural zone, that the imaginary green buffer zone was a fantasy.
I warned that if they did not act to protect the zone from SA Government imposed high density residential development along the rail and road corridor, protected by rezoning to allow for low density half acre sized residential development like we have on our towns eastern entry in Hamilton Estate, then it’s only a matter of time before the government steps in…as they did with Springwood and are now poised to do with Kudla.
High density residential development will now come to the southern rural zone, starting with Kudla, in what could have been a very green low density buffer zone of beautiful half acre blocks.
We can thank the council administration and their ‘Team Redman’ factions for that opportunity now lost.
Ian Tooley, Gawler East
