A MORNINGTON Peninsula council candidate has withdrawn an application for a planning scheme amendment that would allow planes to be on her property abutting Tyabb airfield.
Lisa Dixon and her husband Ken Ingersoll had sought approval to amend planning rules over their property in Stuart Rd, Tyabb.
Ms Dixon says she intends to stand for the Watson ward seat left vacant since the resignation in May of former councillor, Lynn Bowden.
“It has been a massive journey, not to mention the financial and emotional toll it has placed on us,” Ms Dixon said in a letter asking the shire’s strategic planning manager Allan Cowley to end the amendment process.
The shire’s decision to exhibit the planning scheme amendment came despite a 2014 ruling that any decision on use of the site must wait until completion of the Tyabb Airfield Precinct Plan which is expected to begin this month.
Objectors claimed the move would give the Peninsula Aero Club member Ken Ingersoll “backdoor approval for a hangar in spite of the still-valid 2004 reasons for it not being there” (“Anger over hangar plan” The News 19/7/16).
Tyabb and District Ratepayers’ Group sees the use of private land to store aircraft as “an incremental expansion of the airfield”.
Ms Dixon’s letter to Mr Cowley thanked him for the “inordinate amount of time and effort you have spent over the past five years in trying to deliver an outcome for the No. 2 shed at 62 Stuart Rd”.
The shire has not been able to provide The News with details of how much it has spent on processing the planning amendment requested by Ms Dixon and Mr Ingersoll.
Ms Dixon has also asked council to not order demolition of the shed, saying that they would continue to abide by a Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruling “of leaving it vacant”.
“I wish to make it clear that should I be, or not be, successfully elected to council in the upcoming elections, I will be striving forward to seeing an eventual plan come into fruition for the betterment of the Tyabb community,” Ms Dixon stated in her letter to Mr Cowley.
She also sent the letter to many people “due to the fact that over time they have been directly dragged into this through a number of channels”.
Ms Dixon said “personal attacking from the Tyabb ratepayer group – while not acceptable – was born out of the continual frustration of being promised a township plan. We were the ‘cat’ to kick to make themselves heard”.
Ratepayers’ group members Peter and Val Davis said in July that there was still a VCAT order in force prohibiting use of the land for aircraft storage, which would lapse if the amendment application was successful.
In 2011 Mr Ingersoll was ordered by Frankston Magistrates’ Court to pay a $10,000 “bond” for building the shed without a permit in 2010 and for storing 11 aircraft on the site.
VCAT also ordered Mr Ingersoll to stop using the shed as a hangar and remove any aircraft.
The couple’s Low Density Residential Zone land is on the east side of the Tyabb airfield, and contains a house and two large sheds.
Mr Cowley told the council in April that a VCAT order to remove the shed “was deferred pending broader consideration of issues relating to the Tyabb airfield and is no longer in force”.
“In this case a site specific amendment under Clause 52.03 (Site Specific Exemptions) is proposed, to make the most limited change possible in order to enable the use of the existing building by the owner of the property for private storage.”
The preparation of a precinct plan for the Airfield was one of the recommendations of the Tyabb township plan adopted by council in May 2012.
Shire officers have recommended that the amendment be abandoned. “This will not prevent consideration of a new amendment proposal in future.”
First published in the Western Port News – 20 September 2016
