Councillor fails to defend her patch from subdivision

Meander Valley Councillor and Westbury resident Tanya King.

A Meander Valley councillor stepped down from her council role in October to argue that her neighbour not be able to subdivide property at 277 Jones Street into three blocks.

Cllr Tanya King, who lives adjacent to the Jones Street site at 18 Clark Street, recused herself from the whole October council meeting to put the case that Sarah Pike should not be allowed to subdivide her land.

She did not succeed as her fellow councillors, Wayne Johnston, Stephanie Cameron, Michael Kelly, Andrew Sherriff and Deb White supported her neighbour’s right to subdivide the land.

Councillors Michal Frydrych, John Temple and Rodney Synfield voted against the motion. 

In the past year Cllr King has voted against subdivision of properties in her home town of Westbury at 40 Suburb Road, 23 Five Acre Row, 5 Five Acre Row, 138 Ritchie Street and Black Hills Road.

In May 2020 she said, ‘I have never been in support of these subdivisions and the intensity of living density in Westbury.’

But Cllr King has voted for the subdivision of properties in other areas of the Meander Valley at 77 East Church Street in Deloraine, 2 Seymour Street in Carrick and in Reedy Marsh at 209 Farrells Road and 239 Wadleys Road.

At the October meeting Cllr King excoriated people who subdivided land in Westbury, saying, ‘The introduction of the special area plan has allowed these properties to be sub-
divided to the detriment of the town. 

‘We are losing these properties for the short term financial gain of a greedy few at the expense of amenity.’

Cllr King described her situation, that she and her husband Danny had set out to bring up their daughters in a spacious rural environment.

But Ms Pike’s representative said that Ms Pike, now based in Sydney, had been born and raised in Westbury, inherited the property from her grandmother and wanted to retain the character of the building on the largest subdivided block. 

Ms Pike also wants to retain as much of the hawthorn hedge on Jones Street as possible, recognising that hedgerows add to the charm of Westbury.

Cllr King described how, not wanting to see the Jones Street property ‘carved up for financial gain’, she had approached Ms Pike’s mother and father to offer to buy the property and been refused.

Cllr Cameron said, ‘As much as I look at this, it’s allowed [under the planning scheme] and I have to support it.’

Cllr Kelly said, ‘Our hands are tied. There’s a high chance of losing at a tribunal if we refused it.’

Bit Cllr Rodney Synfield said subdivision would have a detrimental effect on the surrounding area and the arrangement of the resulting battleaxe blocks was ‘ludicrous’.

Cllr King left the meeting straight after the decision.