More must be done at council level for Edgeware Businesses

The Peter Timbs flooding issue has clearly not been top of anyone’s agenda, especially our elected members on council.

David Timbs from Peter Timbs Meats today told media that each time it floods he has to close the shop and its factory at a cost of up to $25,000 a day. He was not confident any work would be done by the council to resolve the flooding. He believed it would depend on who was elected at the local body election and has endorsed Ali Jones as the Innes ward councillor.

Jones says the community board was led to believe that communication with the businesses in the Village and especially Peter Timbs Meats, was regular and long standing. However, information reported today in the media, was never communicated to the community board.

A media report said, “(David) Timbs said raising the height of the kerb would help, and then he could also raise the floor of the shop.”

Jones says the height of the kerb was not supported by the community board because council officers’ advice was that raising the kerb would not make much difference.

“We did not know that Timbs Meats would consider raising the height of their floor if the kerb was raised so did not support this option. It’s unfortunate that we now learn this through a media report,” she says.

Additionally, Jones says there have been unfortunate comments by elected members suggesting there are other areas that flooded which need attention.

“The areas affected by rain events, identified by some elected members in media reports today, do not result in houses being flooded. Of course, homes are and have been, key to the councils’ recent work in addressing flooding however I have asked many times for information about recent home inundation and have been told there have been none. So we need to address water entering buildings and this is happening in Edgeware,” she says.

Ali Jones says the issue has remained unresolved because councillors are the only one who can change “Levels of Service”, the mechanism used by council officers to plan their work.

“Our council officers are only doing what they can as directed by councillors. I only recently learned that the Levels of Service (LOS), in this case regarding flooding and water inundation, don’t apply to businesses.  So there’s basically nothing they can do even short term. It’s a total cop out by people around that table who could’ve, should’ve made a real difference even with short-term mitigations, such as temporary pumps, sucker trucks, better communication with businesses,” she says.