Going ‘troppo’ in the silly season, car park site doesn’t pass pub test

Anyway, after the summer holiday break we all just endured with unseasonal humid weather and the stress of coping with unachievable demands to cross state borders due to the Federal Governments latest cock-up in their COVID-19 (testing) response, Ernesto felt he was "going troppo" when he finally got back to Shepparton to see some of the happenings here.

Let’s look at a couple of issues that have developed locally.

• Firstly, the council proposal to build social housing above the car park on the corner of Maude and Nixon streets.

Now Ernesto is all for the concept of building more social housing close to the CBD, indeed Terry Court, Robert McLean and John Pettigrew have articulated the arguments in favour very well in this paper recently.

My issue is the location. Jammed between the popular café-restaurant strip, Shepparton's premium north-central residential area and slap-bang next to a school does not pass the “pub test” in anyone’s language.

Ernesto thinks a much better location for this housing would be the car park in High St opposite Target.

This location is in the dead-centre of the CBD, near a supermarket, food stores, chemist, government services and would not impact on an existing residential area.

Another obvious location is the site of the soon-to-be demolished Shepparton Hotel.

Can our council please consider either of these two options?

• The second issue is the reappearance of the Spring Car Nationals (or SpringNats) to fill our CBD and residential areas with thick toxic smoke and fumes.

While I get the excitement and economics of the event, surely it should be relocated back to DECA where it began its life, well out of town.

Also could the council please explain to us ratepayers how this event fits with council’s recent declaration of a climate emergency?

• The third issue is the impending demolition of the Shepparton Hotel. This has been a running sore for Shepparton for 15 years and I am sure the shenanigans over all this won’t stop there.

This is another possible site for the proposed social housing plan but Ernesto thinks maybe it should be considered as the site for the rebuild of the Shepparton Post Office. Certainly there are plenty of bricks available on-site.

Can the council guarantee that the ratepayers won’t be out of pocket over this issue and the owner, who has caused so much grief over the years, will have to pay all demolition costs?

Finally, Ernesto has written a couple of manifestos questioning our council’s commitment to the provision of electric vehicle chargers in the town.

You can read one of them here: https://www.sheppnews.com.au/ernestos-manifesto/shepparton-the-solar-city/

Progress has been slow.

• There’s a couple of chargers at SAM that are very low power (22kW). Maybe we should call them “slo-mo”.

• The new “Evie” ones in Mooroopna and Fraser St, Shepparton, are a little faster, at 50kW.

And that’s it.

Note these chargers are a long way short of the fast chargers at Euroa, which run at 350kW.

On Monday this week I observed the two charging spots at the Fraser St charger taken up by EVs.

I would make the following points.

• It was a hot, quiet Monday in Shepparton yet the charging stations were full. Nowhere else to charge unless you wanted to spend a few hours at SAM waiting for those slow chargers, or try your luck in Mooroopna.

• There is no shade over the charging point. You won’t find many petrol stations that don’t shade their pumps.

• The recent figures released show that sales of EVs in Australia have tripled in the past 12 months, going from 6900 vehicles in 2020 to 24,078 vehicles in 2021.

Australia still has a long way to go due to our lack of consistent policy across the nation and the anti-EV stance held by the Federal Coalition, but it’s happening and is happening quickly.

Shepparton needs to be at the forefront of this change, not barking up the rear as it so often seems to be.