How to deal with your local Council.

Not always a sure thing.

Our local council help support and develop some local trails.
Part-time employed a trail manager, helped buy equipment to help maintain it then decided that i wouldnt be such a good Idea,locked the gates and left it for dead.
shame on them.
We are now trying to get tho the bottom of it and find out why there is no longer any support.
 
Thank you this has helped alot becuase my friends and i have planned to build a downhill trakc around the corner form our houses. we now know that we have to consult the council first.


Btw they probally wont say yes to a bunch of teenage kids will they or should we get our parents?:confused:
 
You have to play the game their way if you want to have any reasonable chance of success. It can be done - you just have to do it properly. Have a look at the MTB Wagga website, they have reached agreements with the Council AND NPWS regarding maintaining trails & access to singletrack on public land.

It is a lot of work, which is why doing it at club level is easier. You can invest time and effort into getting it right to start with (and learning a few things on the way), or put a lot of hard work in building it and watch it being demolished because you didn't get permission. Just be aware that if you build illegal trails and make a mess of things, it will create a negative image of riders, which will make it harder the next time someone tries to approach council.
 
in Mussy (Muswellbrook) theres a place called queen street out the back of the houses and in the bush theres a bunch of tracks and jumps it's pretty shot now from the recent rain we've had but council didnt do anything to stop us riding there cause we kept on fixing it and doing it up again lol
 
It has taken two years of planning, discussions and negotiations before I was in a position to begin submitting planning paperwork for legal jumps in the ACT. If I'd just sent a letter/petition saying "can we build dirt jumps?" I'd have had the door slammed in my face.

even after getting CAD plans of the site drawn up and getting pre approval from the land managers I'm still looking at another 4 months before planning approval comes though.

This stuff is do-able, but it takes time, effort, negotiations and leg work. A half arsed attempt will usually result in a nil response. To get stuff happening takes the hard yards.

Results by next school holidays? You're dreaming. Results for the community in the long term (within the next 3 years) you're in with a good chance if you do your homework.
 
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To tell you what i did.
My nan owns a small propety in sydneys outer west and i built a small freeride track (pretty crap but good for first time) and i know not alot of people have access to farms through relations but why don't you just ask people who don't look like they are using most of there propety and see if you can use that. i know with scouts (i am a scout) thats what we did to start camping out of normal camping grounds. all you do in return is maby help out with cellecting sheep poo for the farmers gardens. (or even keep it for yourself make alot of money foundrasing)

P.S. Sorry about the spelling:)
 
And this means that they don't have control over what you can build and where? Nice one. Good luck with that.:rolleyes:
 
steffo123 said:
Thank you this has helped alot becuase my friends and i have planned to build a downhill trakc around the corner form our houses. we now know that we have to consult the council first.


Btw they probally wont say yes to a bunch of teenage kids will they or should we get our parents?:confused:
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So you're nobody from a minority group that pays no taxes aye? Please hold....
 
hey thanks for this i have had problems trying to get the council make my town a track. I haven't got fair but i have

. writing letter to council
. planned out sites for tracks
. got petition of 1000 (our town is like 30,000 so thats pretty good)
. got freinds involved

kinda a bit bummed though i write a letter informing them of the benefits of our town having a track and still they did nothing. (the letter was more then 1000 words)
 
Gareth666 said:
hey thanks for this i have had problems trying to get the council make my town a track. I haven't got far, but I have:

. writing letter to council
. planned out sites for tracks
. got petition of 1000 (our town is like 30,000 so thats pretty good)
. got freinds involved

kinda a bit bummed though I write a letter informing them of the benefits of our town having a track and still they did nothing. (the letter was more then 1000 words)
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Okay, getting a council to do something comes down to a couple of things:

Is the benefit big enough to outweigh the risk?
Is it a priority?

Lets face it, most MTBers aren't voting in council elections, so it's not that a grumpy set of voters is going to be a problem.

There will always be other groups in the queue for money and resources. Does the local cricket pitch need resurfacing, or the grandstand need new seats or a roof? What about the tiles around the swimming pool? What work is needed at the bowling green, the golf course?

Who owns the land you want to build on? What is it worth? How much will the work you want actually cost? Is the area easy to access? In order to be suitable will it need to have extra stuff added? Fencing, seating, toilets, car parking, signage.

Are there likely to be complaints from neighbours?

It's not as easy as saying "We want a track, here's a spot, build it for us."

If there are loads of other resources in your area for youth then the council may feel like it has already put enough money in the direction of kids and they now want to focus on other groups in the community.

For what it's worth, it's taken nearly 3 years of work in order to get dirt jumps in Canberra on the agenda of land managers. And even then I'm not sure what they'll actually let us build in the end.
 
FR Drew said:
It's not as easy as saying "We want a track, here's a spot, build it for us."
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Absolutely true. With something like this you are going to have to be prepared to do most, if not all, of the work.

Pitch it as a partnership between you/the bike club/ organisation and the council. Work it in so they need to do as little as possible. They help you obtain permission on suitable land and apply for funding grants, you do all the hard yard in design and construction, they get all the credit.

FR Drew said:
For what it's worth, it's taken nearly 3 years of work in order to get dirt jumps in Canberra on the agenda of land managers. And even then I'm not sure what they'll actually let us build in the end.
Click to expand...

Ditto. it's long process of banging your head against a brick wall.

Try getting community support. A bunch of young DHers may not vote but their parents do. Get parents involved in writing letters of support and submitting them to the elected councillors, writing into the local news paper. Point out the benefits, if there are any kids doing well on the state or national series point that out. Get them to submit race reports to the paper saying were they went how they found the experience of visiting somewhere else to ride...
 
Actually it more than helps.

From an inside of Council perspective, nothing gets a council employee off side more than the old "I pay rates, so you work for me" line.

Go in with a positive attitude and be willing to help yourself, and I think you will find Council employees will be more likely to go out of their way to help. Once something heads to the floor of Council though, that's when sanity goes out the window.

I'd suggest that even if you have a staff member on your side pushing for you, it wouldn't hurt at all to lobby Councilors to find out where you may have a sympathetic ear on the chamber floor. It is this person(s) that you need to load up with as much factual info as you can.
 
Have you spoken to them about it?

I know that the Council I work for legalised some DJ's after the kids that used them approached and lobbied Council with a well thought out argument, and the assistance of locals.

5 years on, the jumps are still there, we receive no complaints about them, and driving past they look to be in a constant state of change, but they have caused no issues.
 
ok i don t have the care to read all this but everyone else should trust me if u piss of ur council then ur trails doomed
 
jackoo said:
yer
thanks
well i tried with that and they haven't got back to me in like 2-3 years
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I read that as: "I haven't bothered to chase it up in 2-3 years".
Seriously no one said it was easy. It takes persistence and doing something 2-3 years ago and then not doing anything doesn't qualify.
 
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