THE FOLLOWING IS A RECORD OF THE EMAILS SENT TO THE WINDSOR BRIDGE PROJECT TEAM AND HAWKESBURY CITY COUNCIL REGARDING THE LOCATION OF SANDSTONE REMOVED FROM THE HISTORIC THOMPSON SQUARE PRECINCT, WINDSOR.
CAWB EMAIL 1
- Peter Conroy is the General Manager, Hawkesbury City Council
- David Gainsford is the designated CAWB contact in the Department of Planning
- Matthew Lawrence is the editor of the Hawkesbury Gazette
- When we drafted this email we actually anticipated an answer along the lines of: “The project team has, to date, removed x [number] sandstone pieces from the Thompson Square precinct. Of those x items, y [number] have been transferred to the care and control of Hawkesbury City Council and the balance (z [number] items) remain stored on site.”
- That is not what occurred...
FIRST REPLY
There are matters in this reply we wish to draw attention to:
CAWB EMAIL 2
- The President of CAWB, Mr Harry Terry has been corresponding with the RMS relatively frequently for around seven years. He has met the addressee on numerous occasions. Addressing the reply email as “Dear Terry” is either a studied insult or evidence of completely disinterested, unauthorised correspondence procedures and email processing.
- Whilst the original email was directed to Mr Graham Standen, the reply came from a generic account without attributing the answer to a specific individual.
- Mr Terry wrote seeking “urgent and absolute assurances NO MATERIAL of any kind "salvaged" from Thompson Square has passed from the care and control of Roads and Maritime Services, now Transport New South Wales, or is being sold BY a third party on behalf of these .
- The reply received says “no sandstone blocks from the site have been sold TO a third party. This does not answer the question posed by Harry Terry on behalf of the community.
- It was at this point our interest in the matter sharpened.
CAWB EMAIL 2
SECOND REPLY
- Whilst the brevity of this answer is commendable, the wording is unnecessarily complex.
- Mention of “our specifications” is a warning the project team have some sort of bureaucratic documentation to support whatever they are doing.
- The description: “clearing the sandstone kerb, gutters and paving” is disturbing as the word “clearing” implies wholesale eradication.
- The question which arises from, “...is either being kept on site or a Hawkesbury ity Council’s depot” is, “On what basis was the sandstone allocated to one site or the other?”
- As pointed out by Mr Terry in his next email, use of the words “recycling or reuse”, rather than “reinstallation” is a matter of considerable concern.
- Once again the reply is sent from the Project Team, not an individual.
- Despite two further emails from CAWB on this matter this is currently the last answer received.
CAWB EMAIL 3
CAWB EMAIL 4
As at COB, Monday 19 August 2019 no further correspondence has been received from the RMS.
