Residents and home-owners of fast-growing North West Sydney gathered on Saturday to voice support for a campaign by Blacktown City Council to win fairness in community facilities for the huge new growth areas.
Developer levies have been capped by State Government policies and Council’s hands are tied when it comes to providing community centres, swimming pools and libraries to new communities.
The Mayor of Blacktown City Council, Tony Bleasdale OAM, said “”The NSW Government is piling 260 thousand new residents into new parts of Blacktown City which have no community infrastructure whatsoever.”
Furious residents have said they have “moved into an infrastructure and amenity wasteland”.
“Western Sydney locals have had a gutful of being treated like second class citizens,” Mr Bleasdale said.
Residents need the NSW Government to restore the ability of councils to build basic facilities for communities in new housing precincts. Council is leading the campaign to address infrastructure backlogs over more than a decade in precincts which are absorbing vast amounts of Sydney’s population growth.
“Existing facilities are over capacity and the NSW Government took away Council’s ability to build any new ones. They have sent huge numbers of new residents to live here without basic facilities that everyone else in NSW takes for granted,” Mr Bleasdale said.
In the past these facilities were paid for by levies on land rezoned for housing. When land is rezoned, its value goes up enormously, creating windfall gains for the previous land-owner. A small part of that ‘lottery win’ used to be contributed to pay for facilities such as pools for the new communities.
The NSW Government changed this in 2010 to cap the amount of levies raised – no matter how much the land value went up. Councils cannot now use levies for any buildings or community infrastructure.
“As a result, Blacktown City alone has a backlog of facilities like pools, libraries and leisure centres that is now over $525 million,” Mr Bleasdale said.
“We demand they fix this NSW Government-created problem now. Or if they won’t, we’re calling on Chris Minns and Labor to commit to fixing it if they win the election in March. People in our area will vote for whoever promises to reverse this terrible injustice,” Mr Bleasdale said.
The NSW Government has already pumped 100,000 new residents into ‘Growth Precincts’ in Blacktown City alone in a decade and has plans for 160,000 new residents over the next 20 years.
Mr Bleasdale said “All these people will be in neighbourhoods with absolutely no facilities like libraries, community centres or swimming pools. Blacktown will soon be bigger than Tasmania and the ACT in population.”
“Blacktown Council has bought land for these facilities and made the plans but simply has no money to build them. We are not the only area suffering this terrible injustice. We are just the biggest.”
“We want the NSW Government to fix this so our people can simply get the same facilities that people have all across the rest of Sydney like the Eastern Suburbs and North Shore. Western Sydney residents will turn out in droves to support whoever offers to fix this terrible injustice.”
“These are people who currently have no swimming pools in the hottest part of Sydney where summer temperatures are often in the 40s. They have no libraries. They have no community centres for social interaction and programs to support seniors.”
“They know everyone else in Sydney has these facilities. They know that their neighbourhoods are taking the load of massive population growth while other suburbs take almost none.
“They are now demanding fairness and will elect a government which promises to deliver that,” Mr Bleasdale said.
