Cr Yench received no support from his fellow councillors for his four notices of motion to last Thursday’s Cobar Shire Council Ordinary meeting.
His motions about free camping and combining council services failed to receive a seconder and so were not able to be discussed.
Cr Yench’s two other proposed motions (for a pedestrian crossing in the main street and a call for all work to be stopped on council’s parks and gardens) were seconded and discussed at Thursday’s meeting.
However when it came time to vote, both motions were lost with Cr Yench the only one voting for them.
On the matter of installing another pedestrian crossing in the main street, council’s general manager Peter Vlatko advised that it was a matter for council’s traffic committee.
Cr Yench responded that he didn’t have “a lot of faith in the traffic committee” saying he didn’t think anything had been done to protect the safety of pedestrians since a fatality had occurred at the Marshall and Barton streets intersection a few years ago.
Cr Yench said he had previously put forward motions to council for the speed limit in the main street to be reduced from 50km/hr to 40km/hr and also for a main street bypass for heavy vehicles.
He also listed a number of serious accidents that had occurred in the main street over the years.
Cr Tracey Kings, who had previously been a member of the traffic committee, responded to Cr Yench’s comments.
“In theory this all sounds quite good,” Cr Kings said of Cr Yench’s ideas.
She said as the main street was also a highway, the speed limit was not council’s decision, but was determined by Roads & Maritime Services (RMS).
“I don’t like being told that we don’t care because of something we didn’t do in the past,” Cr Kings said.
Cr Yench’s call for all work to stop on council’s parks and gardens was also voted down by his fellow councillors at the meeting.
He said Morelli Park, situated between Kurrajong Circle and Yarran Circle had been “neglected by council”.
“It was good until it got damaged a few times and council got a bit sick of repairing it.
“I think we should keep repairing it,” he said.
“We’ve had three or four lots of damages done at the cemetery and we fix that the next day. This seems to be about ‘the haves and the have nots’,” Cr Yench said.
He suggested that money council was to spend on an upgrade at Dalton Park could be spent at Morelli Park.
Cr Bob Sinclair responded that he was “astounded” at Cr Yench’s comments.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago that Cr Yench wanted to cut down the number of parks and gardens in Cobar.
“Now we’re talking about re-booting the park,” Cr Sinclair said.
He said with Dalton Park only two blocks walk from Morelli Park, the children of Cobar had a lot more access to parks than that of their city counterparts.
Cr Sinclair said he felt spending more money on Morelli Park would be spending “good money after bad”.
Cr Jarrod Marsden weighed in on the debate and suggested that as council was currently in the process of doing a costing analysis on its parks and gardens, that no further decisions should be made until the report had been completed.
