Port Stephens Council's minutes dated July 28, 2015 suggested future sales could yield $1.7 million and at this same meeting I moved to stop further work on any attempt to take vital parts of the oldest community park out of the hands of its shareholders. The community has yet to see account of the resources that have been spent on this exercise and I dare to suggest this could amount to over $250,000 in covering reports, consultants and indirect costs. I really look forward to being publicly corrected.

The argument supporting subdividing land around the perimeter of Boomerang Park has always been clouded by the worn-out political spin that it's about support for aged care housing. This nonsense has been peddled out every time rezoning and development in inappropriate or environmentally sensitive areas is trotted out in an attempt to redirect public attention.

If you want to use an argument about providing housing for social disadvantaged groups in our community the focus should have been at very least on affordable housing and start lobbying for more State funding to reduce the current huge public housing waiting lists.

The desire to see Boomerang Park subdivided goes back 20 years to individual local politicians who long desired to rezone and sell parts of Boomerang in exchange for concrete infrastructure and a new depot. Local politics is warming up with a council election less than 12 months away and a desire by councillors to clear the decks of any controversial issues that might divide the community.

If you want to know who supported this whole resource wasting process look through the minutes provided, you can't fool all the ratepayers and residents all the time.

In this time of massive drought and bushfires, how arrogant is it for us to use our precious ground water to keep a footpath green.

Are you aware that the rain that fills our dams is the same rain that replenishes the ground water?

It is not an inexhaustible resource. What will you do when the fire brigade comes to put out the fire lapping at your back fence and finds there is no water left to use?

Please, people with spearpoints, act responsibly. The grass will grow again, when it rains.

For all those misinformed souls out there, who blame the 'tree hugging hippy Greens' for the current bush fire crisis - I urge you to look up the word 'sustainability'. This is what the Greens stand for.

The politicians on the other hand have a lot to answer for - with their mismanagement of funds and internal bickering, to name a few of their less than desirable attributes. Stop your bickering - and see the truth beyond the smoke haze.

A feeling of love permeated the council chambers on Tuesday night when the mayor proposed a motion to abandon the development, an in my opinion destruction, of Boomerang Park.

He declared that he had listened to the residents' objections to this proposed act of ecological vandalism and so took it off the table forever. It didn't fool anybody who knows that there is an election coming and that Mayor Palmer won the last one by proclaiming that he intended to "lead a council that listens to its residents".