PORT Macquarie-Hastings Council has responded at length to community complaints about the growing number of property eyesores, graffiti, and overgrown parks and reserves.
It follows the release of the City Heart Master Plan for public exhibition, which has inadvertently drawn attention to the current state of the CBD and surrounding areas.
Council’s Director of Community, Planning and Environment, Melissa Watkins, has provided News Of The Area with the following responses to each concern.
The City Heart Master Plan
The City Heart Master Plan is focused on the long-term vision for Port Macquarie’s town centre over the next 50 years.
It’s about shaping the kind of city we want to be, how people live, move, connect, and experience our town; rather than detailing the day-to-day maintenance of existing spaces.
A Master Plan sets a vision for the future, it doesn’t prescribe rigid policy or landuse outcomes. The functions of a Master Plan are as follows:
-Strategic Direction: A Master Plan articulates a long-term vision for how an area could evolve socially, economically, environmentally, and physically. It’s about imagining possibilities and setting aspirational goals.
–Guiding Principles: Rather than fixed rules, it offers principles and frameworks to guide future decision-making. These can inform future policy development, LEP and DCP provisions, infrastructure investment, and community engagement.
-Flexibility: A Master Plan can take many years to translate to outcomes on the ground and because it’s not a statutory document, a Master Plan adapts over time as circumstances change, whether due to shifts in population, economics, legislation, climate, technology, or community needs.
-Integration: It aims to help coordinate multiple planning layers like transport, housing, open space, resourcing, sustainability into a cohesive narrative. This integration is often missing in more narrowly focused statutory instruments.
We know that presentation and maintenance are important to our community.
Council teams continually work hard to maintain more than 385 open space areas across the region, including our town centre gardens, streetscapes, sports fields, and reserves, with limited resources and competing priorities.
While funding is always a challenge, Council is committed to continuous improvement, reviewing how we plan, prioritise, and deliver maintenance activities to make the most of what we have.
This includes smarter scheduling, more efficient use of equipment, and exploring partnerships and grants that can help us stretch every dollar further.
It is also worth noting that the Town Centre Master Plan (TCMP) levy, which historically supported some of these maintenance and beautification activities, was discontinued in 2024.
Since then, Council has absorbed these functions into broader operational budgets, which makes it even more important that we work strategically and collaboratively to achieve the best results for our community.
In short, while resources are finite, our commitment to a clean, welcoming, and liveable town centre remains strong, and we continue to look for practical ways to improve presentation and amenity across the region.
The City Heart Master Plan looks at many factors, although it is not the instrument to review our maintenance standards.
Abandoned properties in the CBD
Council has limited direct control over privately owned land but can act under the Local Government Act 1993 and Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 where properties present health, safety, or environmental risks.
It needs to be clarified, however, that vacant or undeveloped properties are not “abandoned”; they are owned by someone, and a landowner is entitled to choose not to develop their land.
Council may issue Orders to compel owners to clean up properties or remove hazards, but this must be supported by statutory triggers.
It is important to note that many of these properties are privately owned, and Council does not have the authority to undertake maintenance or upgrades on such land unless there are breaches of relevant legislation.
With regard to 99 William Street, commonly referred to by locals as “the hole in the ground”, this site is owned and actively managed and maintained by Council and regularly monitored for safety, rubbish, and visual presentation.
It is a strategic landholding and forms part of ongoing planning and redevelopment considerations for the Port Macquarie CBD.
Graffiti
Council has been trialling mobile CCTV cameras across the local government area to help reduce vandalism and improve community safety.
The trial has already shown positive results in the Port Macquarie CBD and other key areas, and we will be continuing the pilot for another three months to assess longer-term impacts.
We are also incredibly grateful for the ongoing efforts of our Graffiti Blasters volunteer group, who dedicate their time seven days a week to removing graffiti right across the Port Macquarie-Hastings region.
Their commitment plays a huge part in keeping our public spaces welcoming and well-presented.
By Sue STEPHENSON
You can help your local paper.
Make a small once-off, or (if you can) a regular donation.
We are an independent family owned business and our newspapers are free to collect and our news stories are free online.
Help support us into the future.
