By Alison Noonan
CLYDE residents have vowed to fight a Casey Council decision to approve a Muslim mosque on Manks Road.
Outraged locals say they will take their battle to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after councillor Colin Butler’s attempt at Tuesday night’s council meeting to overturn the decision proved fruitless.
Councillors Lorraine Wreford, Roland Abraham, Mick Morland, Rob Wilson, Brian Oates and Angela Dunleavy voted at last week’s planning meeting to grant a planning permit to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association of Australia to build a place of worship.
The motion was carried despite a council officer recommendation to reject the application.
Cr Butler described the result as “the worst planning decision he’d ever seen” and slammed his fellow councillors for choosing to ignore the advice of council officers.
“You are virtually saying that the planning department don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said at Tuesday night’s council meeting. “Half the councillors haven’t even been down to the site to have a look. They are just making a decision from a map.
“They have overturned the most clearcut planning decision this council has ever been presented with. How can they justify that?”
Cr Butler said the mosque was completely inappropriate for a rural farming area and failed to meet any of the council’s planning requirements.
“There are no planning reasons to approve this building,” he said. “If we continue to allow this sort of adhoc planning, next thing we will have a skyscraper in Devon Meadows.
“What is the limit? What’s the point of having a planning scheme or a zoning scheme?
“This is a disgraceful decision,” Cr Butler said.
About 50 residents packed the council gallery in the hope councillors would acknowledge their 180signature petition objecting to the mosque.
Resident Leanne Ross said they were bitterly disappointed with the result.
“This is so insane. Everyone is gobsmacked,” she said. “The councillors are morally corrupt. They shouldn’t be allowed to do this.”
Ms Ross said residents were prepared to do whatever it took to stop the development.
“I want to let everyone know what these councillors are doing to us,” she said.
“These morons, these deficient idiots should not be allowed to make decisions like this.
“This mosque will impact on the whole area. Everyone’s land will be devalued.
“I didn’t spend top dollar to have this postcode in prime agricultural land to have it wiped off by this structure.”
Ms Ross said it was impossible to build anything on the land as it was located on a zoned flood plain.
“There is no sewerage, no mains,” she said. “There is nothing you can do with that land. It floods. That’s why the planning department rejected it.
“But the councillors are too ignorant. They think they’ve got to go somewhere so we’re just going to dump them there.”
Cr Abraham baffled the gallery in his defence of his decision to support the mosque.
He said the decision to grant a planning permit should be based on planning grounds, yet was one of the councillors who voted to overturn the planning department recommendation. “I support the mosque being built wherever it is,” he said. “This is not about individual beliefs but planning grounds.”
Ms Ross said the fight was far from over. “They haven’t seen anything yet,” she said. “We won’t give up.”
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