The Ladysmith Rail Trail has been given a small chance at life, with Wagga Council electing to establish a steering committee to understand how to best move forward with the project. Photo: Supplied.
Only a few months after Wagga Wagga City Council (WWCC) elected not to proceed with a rail trail to Ladysmith, it has now decided to establish a steering committee for the potential project.
At their recent ordinary meeting, councillors voted in favour of establishing a new committee to look at the potential of a trail, which would comprise members both for and against the project.
According to a statement released by WWCC, “The steering committee will be an advisory body that will provide strategic guidance, stakeholder coordination, and recommendations to the council throughout the planning and potential implementation stages of the rail trail.
“A call for expressions of interest [EOI] will be held to select members for the steering committee. Councillors [Jenny] McKinnon and [Richard] Foley have been appointed as the two councillor representatives.”
Council’s Manager City Growth & Regional Assets, Ben Creighton, said WWCC would establish an EOI period to best select members for the committee.
“We’ll develop the criteria over the next few weeks, and within the next month or so, look to go out to the community,” he said.
“We’ll receive those submissions, we’ll assess them, and then we’ll report back to council with a recommendation around the potential members.
“We understand that the rail trail project itself is quite a divisive project, and so really what we’re looking for from an independent chair is to be able to balance the debate, but be able to balance the argument and then really contribute to the actual governance of the project.
“So we will be looking for people with specific skill sets just to make sure that this project is both well governed, but then everyone gets their opportunity to have their input.”
Mr Creighton said that following council’s decision not to go ahead with the project in May, it took on board community feedback when creating the foundations for the future steering committee.
“We’ve had lots of discussions with proponents, land owners over the last three or four years, and really this steering committee is around trying to pull all of that together and look at establishing a way forward for the delivery of the project,” he said.
“The project has had some initial investigations completed that were made up ahead of the previous council reports, but there’s a long way to go in terms of the detailed planning, and then sourcing of funding and then looking to implement the project itself. So this steering committee has really been set up to help us try and guide that process.”
