Ed,

As a permanent resident of Yamba, I was unaware of a survey that the Council was asking for responses regarding the Clarence Valley Affordable housing. I am against any high-rise or any further dense living buildings in the town of Yamba.

Yamba is a beautiful coastal town and I know that our visitors to the area always come back and holiday and spend their hard-earned money in our local businesses. But that is the reason they keep coming back  “because they love the town for what it is”.  If they wanted medium or high-rise buildings, they would stay in Queensland, but they don’t, they come back to Yamba for its character and heritage.

Yamba does not need high or medium rise buildings and it doesn’t need filling brought into build on flood plain areas. Why can’t the land outside of the township be for development? And I’m not talking about the application to squeeze in as many house blocks as possible on the land at James Creek. Please be reasonable, it should not be about how much money is made by Council or the developers.

Council needs to look at what they have at present to deal with before causing more problems for the town – like a second access and exit road into Yamba. With Council’s strategy and developments already, we have to deal with traffic jams on Yamba Road. Heaven help if there is an emergency that we have to get out of town! Grafton and Maclean have more than one road in and out. The fires near Angourie were close enough to make one aware of our problem.

But I think Council have put that into the “too hard basket”. They would prefer to make more money on Council rates and help businesses get rich with over planning and over building in our small loved coastal town taking away it’s history, character, and charm.

Please, first deal with the problems you as Council have already made for Yamba, like mowing all long grass on our one road into Yamba and cleaning up our parks and tourist areas for our guests on holidays. Installing more rubbish bins so people can actually put their rubbish in a bin, instead of throwing it away because there is not a bin where they are, or the bin is full and has not been emptied. But that would need staff and from what I read, Council have lost staff for some reason or other that they are not divulging.

Thank you for allowing my Submission.

Lee-Anne Jones, Yamba