Edgewater Quarry Park

Celebrate World Environment Day

Start time CHANGE to 09 am

Save the mature Tuart trees on Northshore Drive. Sign the petition please!

The petition for Kallaroo's moving along,
Three hundred have signed and the feeling is strong!
The trees of the Northshore still stand tall and proud,
But the Once-lers are coming (they're not very loud).
They work in the background with schemes and with plots,
For roundabouts, medians, and parking lots.

By working together we can make them pause
The pen, after all's, mightier than the saws.
So sign if you haven't, and share if you've time,
The link's in the comments. Monday's the deadline!

It looks like the books weren’t in as shiny a state as some would proclaim but if you read Daniel Kingston’s election flyer you will have seen his clear understanding of the issue. Now that the agenda is to fix the problem, let’s hope all councillors prioritise this.

Earlier this week The West finally reported the City is facing a $20 million operating shortfall. Interesting timing.

Now that Daniel Kingston is Mayor, we suddenly see a very different narrative from the same outlet that spent years celebrating the largesse. Convenient that the truth only appears once someone else is left to deal with the consequences. It is also curious that they didn’t appear to seek comment from the new Mayor.

But let’s not pretend this came out of nowhere. When former Mayor, Albert Jacob left office, The West published a glowing farewell and without a single pushback, quoted him saying:

"The city is in the healthiest financial position that it has ever been in."
"We had an entire year’s worth of rates in reserves… and zero debt."

Yet now that same newspaper reports:

🚨The Strategic Asset Reserve is empty
🚨The City faces a $20M operating gap
🚨Major projects like Heathridge Park are currently unfunded
🚨Service cuts and rate hikes are on the table

Let's be clear: this didn’t just happen out of thin air.
How do you go from the “healthiest financial position ever” to a $20M crater?

And who was keeping watch while reserves were depleted?
Certainly not The West.

This situation did not magically appear overnight. It is the result of years of decisions and a political culture built on big announcements and even bigger bills, while The West cheered from the side-lines and the community was kept unaware of what was coming.

Some of us saw it coming. Anyone who actually read the financial statements did.

Daniel Kingston has been warning about this for years, and now he is the one tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind. He put his hand up knowing exactly how hard it would be, because real leadership is not ribbon cutting, chest-beating or vanity projects. Real leadership is fronting up, telling the truth and fixing what others preferred not to confront.

You cannot clean up what you refuse to admit is broken.
Finally, the truth is on the table.
Now we need the accountability to match.

And in my view, there is not going to be a magic-bullet solution to years of poor financial decisions. We are all going to feel the consequences of this supermarket sweep because the bill has finally landed.

It is not pleasant, but waking up rarely is, Joondalup.

Can you help?