ALL 36 of Port Phillip’s beaches were declared unfit for swimming on Monday after heavy rainfall and flash flooding hit Melbourne on Sunday. The Environment Protection Authority issued an alert on Monday (6 February) after heavy rainfalls urging beachgoers to avoid swimming off all beaches and in waterways for at least 48 hours due to an increased chance of illnesses such as gastro. Higher bacterial levels have been prevalent in the bay over the past couple of months when faecal matter is swept into the sea from inland stormwater systems. “Heavy rain and storms can create a risk to the…
Author: Neil Walker
FASTER internet will be slower to arrive in Frankston with the national broadband network rollout to many homes and businesses delayed until 2019. In October 2015, the federal Coalition government announced “all premises in Dunkley” were “on track” to be connected to the network “by the end of 2017” amid much fanfare and a visit to Frankston South by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, then federal communications minister. Late last year, NBN Co — the federal government-owned company tasked with building the faster internet network — quietly pushed out its deadline to roll out the infrastructure in Frankston to “the first…
KINGSTON ratepayers will foot the full bill to move soil containing fragments of asbestos from Chelsea’s Bicentennial Park to a tip. Kingston Council was forced to remove a dirt pile from the park after it emerged that soil taken from a Glenola Rd site in Chelsea earmarked for a new kindergarten contained traces of the potentially harmful material. The Glenola Rd site is leased by council from the state government and council CEO John Nevins said he would ask the Department of Education to pay for the $90,000 outlaid to remove the soil from Bicentennial Park. Department of Education spokesman…
A POTENTIAL resurrection of the City Life services to help the homeless in Frankston is being discussed by Frankston Council behind closed doors. Jubilee Church pastor Mark Whitby, CEO and founder of City Life, met with Frankston Breakfast Club representatives, councillors and council officers on Monday 16 January in talks described as “very positive and constructive” by council. City Life and the breakfast club stopped dishing up meals to the homeless and disadvantaged in July last year before City Life’s leased Clyde St Mall premises, near Bayside Shopping Centre, was demolished to make way for a new apartment complex. Negotiations…
A STOUSH is brewing between Kingston Council and the state government over a bill to remove soil containing asbestos fragments from Chelsea Bicentennial Park. A dirt pile was dumped by council at a former landfill site at Bicentennial Park in October last year after being moved from land in Glenola Rd, Chelsea. The Glenola Rd land, a former carpark opposite Chelsea Primary School, is owned by the Victorian Department of Education and has been leased to council as the future site of a new Chelsea Kindergarten. Council CEO John Nevins has advised the full cost of the clean-up of both…