By BELINDA PARKES
THE Tweed’s long-awaited Local Environment Plan is back on the table once again at an extraordinary council meeting called for tomorrow night (Friday, May 31).
At the 16 May council meeting, councillors had voted to submit an environmentally-focused blueprint for the Tweed’s future to the State Government including changes that would give better protection to koala habitats, reinstate environmental protection areas along the Tweed Coast and retain environmental protection zones in the rural hinterland.
But when councillors Katie Milne, Gary Bagnall and Michael Armstrong did not manage to convince their fellow councillors to postpone the signing off on the document so the community could have more time to look at the finer details, they decided to force the delay by lodging a rescission motion against the vote and stopping the documents from being sent off to the government until council voted on it again in mid-June.
However councillors Warren Polglase, Carolyn Byrne and Phil Youngblutt have upped the ante and sought to hurry the process along by calling for an extraordinary meeting to deal exclusively with the rescission motion.
At the May meeting Cr Polglase who, although preferring an LEP without the environmental inclusions, voted to get the draft LEP lodged with the State Government so land owners anxiously awaiting a decision would finally know how their properties would be affected.
He argued the consultation process had been thorough and there would be an opportunity to look at it again once the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure had responded to the proposed LEP changes.
The meeting will be held in the Murwillumbah council chambers tomorrow night, 31 May, at 8.30pm.
