Council overgrown

Springwood Town Centre is the heart of the town. It’s got beautiful sandstone paving and walls with some communal seats and a bubbler. It also has power outlets to allow buskers to project their sounds. It is Blue Mountains Council property. 

Its tree, central to the square, is currently overgrown. At the time of writing, Council has had seven business days, or ten days in total, to address my concern that the overgrown branches are hindering pedestrians. No-one had considered that they needed to ring up Council to get the tree pruned - they probably figured the tree had a schedule of works that would fix the problem. 

In speaking to a Council staffer, there is a schedule, but they also only address issues when citizens notify them. They then grade the issue on a scale of urgency. In speaking to this staffer, they said they’d visit the site on Thursday - two days later, the job was still not done. I could do it myself for the sake of pedestrians that have to duck to use the footpath currently, but another Council staffer and a couple of local businesses urged me not to, for regulatory and insurance reasons. 

This lifting of responsibility from the individual to the centralised authority is omnipresent as we edge towards socialism in the form of rising taxation and regulation - walk down a Blue Mountains footpath, even in residential areas, and you’ll most likely find that you have to navigate overgrown branches even when the property within the fenceline is immaculately maintained. 

This is the bystander effect at play - as the state extracts more and more wealth from its citizens in the name of the common good, people expect more in return, thus disincentivising them to take responsibility to improve each other’s lives. There is also a fear that the authorities will punish you if you show too much initiative. Thus, we have a community falling apart. 

Should we trust an entity who “achieved” an extraction of wealth of $2200 per resident in the 2022-2023 financial year - and yes, they’re still working on more recent annual reports - when 28% of that budget is allocated towards public access that they are inhibiting? It is a glaring reminder of the waste of community resources that I’ve reported on before in my live music gatekeepers video. 

They see fit to hamper events that will enrich the community even though they can’t even maintain the walkways out the front of their offices. Are they competent enough to pursue legal action if property owners refuse to pay rates?