By Sharon Webb

A DRUG rehabilitation facility planned for the Meander Primary School site is in limbo after four years of legal brawls on which community groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2017 Meander Valley Council agreed drug rehab group Teen Challenge would lease the empty school site in the centre of Meander.

Since then the council and the Meander Residents and Ratepayers Association have faced off on six occasions in Tasmania’s planning tribunal and the Supreme Court, the council defending its decision and MARRA challenging it.

Now Teen Challenge and Meander Valley Council refuse to commit to staying the course over the decision.

Asked whether the facility would go ahead given the latest ruling against the council in the Supreme Court, Teen Challenge executive director Tanya Cavanagh equivocated.

‘I have no comment. We’re taking advice from our board and talking to Meander Valley Council,’ she said.

Meander Valley Council’s position on continuing the legal fight is ‘to be determined’, said council manager John Jordan.

After twice refusing to answer the Gazette’s questions about ratepayer funds that Meander Valley Council spent on legal action, Mr Jordan now gives the figure of $60,000, repudiating the Gazette’s $250,000 estimation (see letters, page 6).

But MARRA, backed financially by local business Timber World, has been billed $140,550 plus 18 per cent GST, including $57,000 for the last Supreme Court challenge.

Why the council’s legal costs appear to be so much lower than MARRA’s is unknown.

Teen Challenge has paid nothing in legal costs.

Teen Challenge has less than a year left of its initial five-year lease of the primary school site but it has the option for two more five-year leases.

Members of Christian communities in the area surmise Teen Challenge may drop out of the project because four years after being allocated the site for a peppercorn rent, the ongoing legal challenges mean they have never used it. In the interim Tanya Cavanagh is taking the anti-drugs message into Tasmanian high schools with her Not Even Once program.

According to Meander residents, the school site is in need of maintenance.

MARRA president Bodhi McSweeney said the council should never have spent ratepayers’ money fighting for Teen Challenge.

‘I hope the council walks away from it and lets Teen Challenge fight their own fight for the school site,’ she said.

‘If councillors had done due diligence on the Teen Challenge program they would have realised it would suit only a small number of women who already have Christian beliefs.

‘Teen Challenge is backed by the Assemblies of God church and has a religion-based drug treatment program using no professional staff. It’s worst practice in drug rehabilitation treatment.’

Teen Challenge’s board of directors includes Ms Cavanagh Meander School in limbo who has 20 years experience in the automotive industry; her partner Peter Ferrall, formerly a bed retailer in WA; former George Town Council general manager Ngaire McCrindle; Lalla resident Margie Dockray; and Mark Brown, state manager of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Teen Challenge’s original 2015 pitch document to Meander Valley Council indicates Launceston mayor Albert van Zetten and Stan Pisulak, former director of Presbyterian Aged Care, were Teen Challenge Tasmania directors at the time. The application included letters of support from former MLC Greg Hall, MHA Guy Barnett and Meander resident Neil Johnston, father of the current council mayor Wayne Johnston.