I received a copy of this letter from tenants at my rental property from non-English speaking tenants.
https://i.imgur.com/OztWNB2.jpg
I know this area well as I grew up in it before I left and retailers already pick up the trolleys. So, I have no idea what the heck they are thinking about drafting legislation. Imposing fines on retailers will just lead to more price increases for the community and fill the coffers of their fraudulent council; add additional bureaucratic paperwork and rules. It's not like they get paid a kickback per piece of legislation or do they?
I think Sophie Cotsis is being stupid, by combining both issues into one to get support for some dodgy trolley bill. Unless the litter issue is the trolleys themselves which I find hard to believe because they are usually gone within a day. lmao. The "real" litter issue has been around for what I would call a decade or more and is due to the following:
I'll tell you why there is so much litter around. There are plenty of bins without lids, lots of non-english speakers who don't know English and thus don't even know how to get their bins fixed. When bins aren't emptied they will just leave them out because the garbo missed it, no one seems to call because they just don't want to get involved with such a crappy council. Then those bins get overfilled and you guessed it. That's where the rubbish comes from. I mean first is first, have proper multilingual support, your residents pay their rates but never use the services.
Shitty maintenance since merger with Bankstown council is something else I have noticed. Grass used to be cut regularly outside the train stations and surrounding areas of Campsie, but that has since been abandoned due to what I can say just amounts to poor management and cost cutting. If you want, just travel to Campsie, walk outside the train station, boom, plenty of weeds growing through the concrete or tiled areas… Worst of all is the area around Cooks River where I go to cycle sometimes. There are so many weeds colloquially known as "farmer's friend" just littering the sides of the path. Grass is not cut anymore in their parks either.
I mean what more can you say about this council? First fraud, now this. This new policy will just legislate a few jobs for trolley pickups, which retailers are doing anyway. If anything, this is just a useless PR exercise that will backfire because it will cause paranoia in the business community and as a result lead to price increases as a hedge for any possible fines into the future. What I think is that they will draft it to be onerous for businesses whereby trolleys that have been there for less than 3 hours will be fined; otherwise how else would they justify drafting it in the first place if there is going to be no revenue?
This just looks like another crazy Councillor looking for excuses on how to destroy their community whilst doing nothing to actually fix the issues.
If I could vote in this area, they would have immediately lost my vote. I think a lot of us are going to vote for the Liberals this time around, all across the state. This labor council screwed up on local issues and abandoned the area because it is an Asian enclave. Plus a Liberal government with Liberal council usually gets things done better, which I have to admit is the case in my area (no idea why but they don't go skimp just because the labor guys are in power). It's not a funding issue either, it's like they deliberately funnel the money out when Labor isn't in power. But it's funded by council rates, so I don't understand why the council rates I pay don't even go to fixing up the suburb properly. What happened to all that money that they got from all that development approval in Canterbury? What a scam.
If it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, acts like a scam; guess what it's probably a scam.
Does anyone know if this is just addressed to tenants/owners in Campsie or not?
Like, screw what happened to doing the right thing as a Councillor and doing unilateral actions which help the community rather than damage it? Smells like a scam to me. You'll be like right; it's not your problem and only retailers are going to be hit and you don't buy from that area anyway. Damn, I care more about this community than their own councillor. That's how bad its turned. It doesn't really matter that it doesn't affect me.
I sure hope residents don't fall into the trap by thinking that the retailer is going to get fined; but don't be fooled as that will trickle down in price increases. I also wonder who was the resident/s who raised the issue in the first place. My guess is that no one did, and this is just a stunt for the election.
TL;DR?