Ok, so I wanted to start my posts being a little bit more dignified than "I have to get this off my chest", but I cannot help it this time.
As you may be aware friends of mine are attempting to hold a street party in Moorgate Lane on the 21st of November. It's intended to be a saturday arvo-early evening bbq in Moorgate Lane where neighbours in Moorgate and Shepherd St invite friends and family over to chill and chat in the street which backs on to many of the houses of the organisers.
Sounds ok right?!
Wrong!
After doing a polite notice drop this week (well before the proposed date) to some of the neighbours in and around the lane someone complained to Council and Council sent around a representative who preached endlessly about public liability and all the things that could go wrong.
So in response to this, I called the Council this morning to have a bit of a chat and found the discussion very disappointing.
According to my new friend at the Council, if you want to have anything done in a street (even a street that is only used once or twice a week by the garbage collection vehicle) you're looking at $2000 administrative fees ($1300 to have your application considered and $700 to "shutdown" the largely inoperative street) and whatever it costs to get at least $10 million worth of public liability insurance.
When discussing this with a colleague today, she seemed unfaised. "Yeah....that's why all the community festivals have lots of corporate sponsorship" she said calmly "they couldn't afford to do it any other way".
I don't know about you but this really annoys me. The idea that a community event (unless it is contained to "a park in the day time" - the suggested alternative from the bureaucrat) requires so much red tape and fear management. I mean really, are we as litigous as the States so as to require $10 million dollars of public liability insurance for a street-based bbq that may attract 50 odd people?
I would love to see this small initiative evolve over the years to an event where we could showcase all the brilliant things our suburb has to offer, however, the event may not even get an opportunity to occur this year. I just feel that this is another situation where the law is largely out of sync with society.
If you have any suggestions of what should be done in this situation, please leave them in the comment box.