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Ingrid van Dorssen
Ingrid van Dorssen was elected to the Fremantle City Council as the representative of the (new) North Ward in the October 2023 elections.
Ingrid after being elected, with Jemima W-W on the left and the mayor on the right.
Election statement (from the Council website):
I have spent my childhood and most of my adult life in this ward. This, combined with my experience as a professional planner, gives me the local insights and technical capacity to provide a strong voice in facing the many challenges that confront us. High among them are the Future of Fremantle and Swan River Crossings projects, both of which are encompassed by this ward and will impact greatly on its future for decades to come. I am committed to keeping you informed about these projects and to advocating in Council for our community’s interests. I will not, however, neglect the everyday issues that affect us, such as traffic, planning, and provision of amenities. High among my priorities will be communicating the details of current issues and inviting residents’ feedback. To this end I commit to regular newsletters as well as digital forms of communication. Fremantle has given me a great environment in which to raise my family. My aim is to preserve that and make it even better.
Postal Address: 4 Coventry Parade NORTH FREMANTLE 6159
Email: ingridvandorssen@gmail.com
Social Network Address: facebook.com/lngridforCouncil2023
Nomination Submission Additional Information
I have nominated to stand as your member of Council.
I would like to explain why.
I spent my childhood and most of my adult life in Fremantle, giving me the local insights to
deal with those issues that affect us all, such as traffic, planning, and provision of amenities.
But importantly my experience as a professional planner gives me the technical capacity to
also provide a strong voice in facing the major challenges that confront us right now:
• The as-yet unresolved Swan River Crossings project that threatens our riverside
amenity and will bring traffic chaos to our neighbourhood streets.
• The Future of Fremantle project, an undertaking bigger than Melbourne’s Docklands
and Sydney’s Darling Harbour, which will determine our city’s and the region’s
economic and social future for generations to come.
Added to this is a transformation of Fremantle’s local government with a reduction of wards
from 6 to 4 and councillors from 12 to 10 this year and to 8 in 2025. The new skill set now
demanded of councillors will need to combine a capacity for strong local representation with
a function more akin to that of a board of directors
In meeting these challenges my commitment to you is to:
Represent: a councillor’s primary function is to be in touch with and to reflect the
diverse concerns and values of the community members who elect them.
Consult: consultation is the very essence of local government. Our community
demands it and councils must insist on it at every stage of the development process.
Communicate: larger wards and fewer representatives demand effective means of
communication. Precincts, local meetings and reliable electronic systems are essential
tools in keeping the community involved.
Inform: communities must be made aware early of developments and issues that
directly affect them if they are to participate in the decision-making process.
Fremantle has given me a great environment in which to raise a family. My aim is to preserve
that and make it even better.
I'll republish here an article she had published in Michael Barker's Fremantle Shipping News as a result of her presentation to the the Better Bridge Fremantle Town Hall Meeting on Thursday 10 September 2020.
I am a local resident of North Fremantle, born and raised, and have lived there most of my life. My contribution to this campaign is to present the views of the North Fremantle community who stand to be affected by the current Main Roads proposal.
In my working life, I am a town planning consultant. It was my love of North Fremantle that drew me to town planning – specifically, the desire to protect this special place from outside threats, and help to make it a better place.
The position of the North Fremantle community is:
• We do not support the current Main Roads proposal and bridge alignment.
• We accept the need for a new bridge, but plans need to consider the wider strategic planning for the area, and be decided in FULL consultation with the community.
• Our mission is to get the State Government to PAUSE THE BRIDGE PROJECT to allow proper consultation before the new bridges are built, in order to get the best long term outcome for our suburb and much-sloved town centre.
The first issue is the current proposal poses a significant threat to the amenity and quality of life of our North Bank residents, and threatens the heart of our community, the North Fremantle town centre.
Secondly, the community engagement process undertaken by Main Roads is a bogus consultation process and totally unacceptable by government and community standards. The plans have been drawn, the renders prepared, and the project is out tender, with no real community input. This is ‘top down’ planning at its worst, and we are furious.
This form of engagement may have been acceptable in the 1960s, but this is 2020, and we have a right to have a say in decision making, and we deserve better.
In North Fremantle, we are tired of government running roughshod over our suburb with their major road building projects. It has taken our community and town centre years to recover from the Stirling Highway carving up of our suburb in the 1970s.
With this Main Roads proposal, our community and town centre is under threat again, with a similar lack of consideration for our people and connections to place.
Our community and local businesses have worked hard, and invested so much, for many years, to create a beautiful and vibrant town centre that is much loved by our community.
The current proposal does not consider our town centre, or our community, and misses a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to build a Better Bridge, in a better location, that better meets the needs of our community, for generations to come.
The questions we want answered by State Government are:
1. Why isn’t Main Roads following its own consultation guidelines which states:
Ensure stakeholders, immediate communities and interested parties are able to influence the early stages of project planning where possible. We say, it’s not only possible, but critical that the community are given the opportunity to influence the bridge project now.
2. Why aren’t the community being properly consulted on this complex and important Swan River Crossing, in relation to a State heritage listed traffic bridge that means so much to the community?
3. Where is the community views reflected in the Main Roads proposal?
4. What about the North Bank residents who will be adversely impacted by the current proposal, and have been given no consideration in the design process whatsoever? An elevated bridge with retaining and acoustic walls within metres of residents. How is this acceptable??
5. Where is the transparency in decision making?
6. Why haven’t we been presented the outcomes of previous studies and options to comment on by Main Roads?
7. Where is the costs and benefits analysis of all options, especially in light of the Westport announcement, which has not been factored in, and presents significant opportunity for the growth and development of the Leighton Peninsula and surrounding area.
This proposal does not pass the amenity impact test, does not pass the community engagement test, and does not pass the sniff test for what we expect from a modern democratic government. Quite simply, UNACCEPTABLE.
To get a better outcome for our community, we need to unite and rally together to make our voices heard, because it is only people power that will put a stop to the current bridge proposal.
We call on the State Government to PAUSE THE BRIDGE PROJECT NOW, and undertake proper consultation before the new bridges are built, to ensure all options have been properly considered and we get the best long term outcome for Fremantle.
References and Links
Fremantle Shipping News , 15 September 2020.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 19 July, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/vandorsseningrid.html (it was last updated on 1 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.