Unlike the Stop The Rezone Campaign of two years ago, the Truck Off Campaign has seen some interesting, surprising and some downright outrageous turns. Here is a brief summary of what happened when we were just trying to provide the community with a way to express their opinion on the DA.
18th February: Truck Off Campaign launched
18th February 11.11am: Liberal Councillor calls the emails, "mindless" and "abuse". They are so unhappy with the lack of respect, that they refuse to meet anyone regarding the DA (as we had requested).
18th February 3.36pm: Same Liberal Councillor has the emails blocked by Council servers to ALL the Councillors (without ALL of their consent). Later, Council will claim that emails are spam and that most are bouncing back. (Other councillors report only a very small number of incorrect emails, as would be expected due to transient internet issues or typos.)
19th February: Cr Wakefied had the block immediately reversed.
22nd February: Mayor Sally Betts had all emails with Swiss Grand in the subject line automatically deleted from her Inbox. She also referred to your emails as "robotic" and inferred that unlike the Bronte RSL campaign, our emails were neither "genuine" nor deserving of a reply. She went even further to tell us that "there was no point in your case" because she felt that rather a lot of the emails were from unknown senders. Other councillors who DID actually read and reply reported a 2-3% bounce back of emails.
26th February: Cr Joy Clayton calls us "shameful", "destructive" and "aggressive".
26th February: Rescue Bondi formally request a delay of decision making in order for an up-to-date, independent Traffic Report to be commissioned due to the incomplete and out-dated basis of the current report. The Liberal/Independent Councillors refuse to even acknowledge this request.
26th February: Liberal Councillors refuse to allow Rescue Bondi's two minute video to be shown during the Council Meeting. Our video contained messages from local shop owners and business managers. Short videos have been shown at Council Meetings many times in the past. An indecipherable reason was given but when asked by us to explain in plain terms the reasoning, we were again ignored. Cr Kanak moved that the video be shown and this was passed. But, despite a brand new rate-payer funded audio-visual system recently installed, they were unable to display the video with sound!