Minutes of the Tourist Attraction Signposting Assessment Committee Southern Region Meeting
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TASAC Minutes 18 March 2015 Minutes of the Tourist Attraction Signposting Assessment Committee Southern Region meeting Wednesday 18 March 2015 in the Gibraltar Room at Wingecarribee Council Civic Centre Elizabeth Street, Moss Vale Members David Douglas Regional Coordinator TASAC and Drive, Destination NSW Phil Oliver Guidance and Delineation Manager, Roads & Maritime Services (RMS) Maria Zannetides TASAC Secretariat Also present Mark Pepping Deputy General Manager Corporate Strategy and Development Services, Wingecarribee Shire Council Steve Rosa Manager, Destination Southern Highlands Izabella Lane Tourism Coordinator, Destination Southern Highlands Claire Digger Organisational Projects Coordinator, Wingecarribee Shire Council Selva Selvaratnam Asset Manager, Wingecarribee Shire Council Nicole Poelzl Member, Kangaroo Valley Tourist Association Karen Barker Executive Committee Member, Kangaroo Valley Tourist Association Dean Simmonds Manager Network and Safety Services, RMS Southern Region Andy Gaudiosi Senior Network and Safety Officer, RMS Southern Region Frank Burke Convenor, Old Hume Highway 31 Limited Diane Gardiner Economic Development and Tourism Team Leader, Wollondilly Shire Council Philip Martin Pulpit Rock Estate and Feast@McVitty Valero Jimenez Historic Joadja and Whisky Distillery Elisa Jimenez Historic Joadja and Whisky Distillery Apologies Cr Duncan Gair Mayor, Wingecarribee Shire Council Cr Holly Campbell Councillor, Wingecarribee Shire Council Anna Borzi Kangaroo Valley Lynne Hocking Executive Manager, South Coast Regional Tourism Organisation Alaistair Saunders Vice President, Bundanoon Highland Gathering Jim Beck Milk Factory Gallery, Bowral AGENDA ITEMS 1. DELEGATIONS / PRESENTATIONS & REGIONAL SIGNPOSTING ISSUES 1.1 Wingecarribee welcome signs Claire and Steve provided the following advice regarding proposed new welcome and advertising signs for Wingecarribee Shire: a) Council recently endorsed designs for welcome signs to be located in road reserves near Shire and town entry points and for two advertising billboards to be located on Final 2 April 2015 1 of 15 TASAC Minutes 18 March 2015 privately owned land adjacent to the Hume Motorway, one near Yerrinbool near the Shire’s northern entry and one near Marulan near the southern entry. b) The entry signs will welcome visitors to the Shire and its towns, recognise the original owners of the land and assist visitors to identify their location in emergency situations. The advertising billboards will encourage motorists to visit the Shire. c) The welcome and town entry signs will refer to both Wingecarribee Shire and Destination Southern Highlands in accordance with an agreement reached between TASAC and Council in 2007 when welcome and town entry signs were last considered. d) The design of the signs has been simplified to reflect matters raised by TASAC in its letter to Council of 3 October 2014. e) Some 150 (75 back to back) signs will be installed to update existing welcome signs in the LGA. The signs will be retro-reflective and the Shire entry signs will be 3 x 1.5 m in size. f) The pictorial billboards will include an image of Fitzroy Falls, which is the Shire’s top tourist attraction. The billboards will be a maximum size of 8 x 4 m but this may be reduced to 6 x 3 m. Development applications will be lodged for the billboards and the concurrence of RMS will be sought as part of that process if the size of the billboards triggers the relevant provisions of State Environmental Planning Policy No. 64. It was noted that advertising billboards on private property are outside TASAC’s area of responsibility. g) The program will be implemented in stages over the next few years and Council estimates the cost of the project to be in the order of $220,000. This includes estimated costs of $25,000 per billboard and estimated costs of $170,000 for the Shire and town entry signs. Council has allocated $100,000 towards the project for 2014/2015. The Committee members responded as follows: i. Care should be taken to ensure that the blue background colour on the Shire and town entry signs is sufficiently different from the blue colour used on service signs. Details of the blue colour on service signs are available in the Australian national standards for road signs. ii. RMS representatives indicated that they support the amended designs for the Shire and town entry signs. However, RMS Southern wishes to check the location of some of the proposed signs to ensure that new “skins” can be attached to existing posts. Decision: TASAC and RMS have no objection to the revised Shire and town entry signs, subject to points i and ii above. Action: Secretariat to advise Council as above. 1.2 Wingecarribee tourist drive signs Selva addressed the meeting and referred to Wingecarribee Shire’s letter of 10 March 2015 to TASAC regarding its commitment to maintain its tourist drive signage. The letter indicated that: Final 2 April 2015 2 of 15 TASAC Minutes 18 March 2015 a) Council officers have audited all of the Shire’s tourist drives signs. There are some 200 signs in total and each sign has been given a condition score from one to five, with one denoting good condition and three indicating satisfactory condition. Scores of four or five were applied to signs that are in poor condition and require replacement. b) Seventy of the signs were rated at condition four and 14 signs were assessed as having condition five, i.e. 84 of the 200 signs require replacement. c) Council’s budget for signage maintenance and renewal is limited and the highest priority is given to regulatory and safety signs. d) A budget of $7,000 will be allocated to the renewal of tourist drive signs during the current and next financial years. This is expected to allow approximately 7 signs to be replaced each year. Signs at condition five are to be given higher priority. e) Additional funding for this work will be sought for expenditure in 2016/17, at which time Council might be in a position to make an enhanced allocation for tourist drive signage renewal. f) Council has already begun to improve signage on Tourist Drive 16 (Sutton Forest to Marulan via Bundanoon) by following the recommended actions of a RMS audit (that was done in 2012). g) All signs are included on Council’s GIS and it is planned to include them on Council’s asset register. Mark added that Council is faced with many demands on its resources and any increase in one area of its budget will require a corresponding reduction in another area. He also informed the meeting that Council had recently replaced signs for Tourist Drive 17 on Berrima Road, in addition to the upgrade of some signs on Tourist Drive 16 referred to at “f)” above. Steve stressed that tourist drive signage is an important navigational tool for the Shire’s visitors and he offered to provide advice to Selva regarding the tourist drives which are the most popular so that the sign renewal program can focus on the most travelled routes. TASAC members responded as follows: i. It is pleasing that Council has confirmed its willingness to maintain signage for its tourist drives into the future. However, it is disappointing that the renewed commitment comes more than four years after the matter was first raised with Council in February 2011. ii. It is also disappointing that only relatively modest funds have been allocated for the work during the current and subsequent financial years. Based on Council’s estimates, it appears that only 14 of the 84 signs that need to be replaced will be renewed by June 2016. At this level of funding, it will take some 12 years for Council to replace all the signs that are currently in poor condition, by which time it could be expected that many of the signs that are currently satisfactory will have deteriorated to the point where they also require replacement. Given that the tourist drives are very well promoted to visitors via material available from Destination Southern Highlands and that many of them are highly scenic and / or help visitors to access many of the popular tourism experiences in Final 2 April 2015 3 of 15 TASAC Minutes 18 March 2015 the Shire, this rate of renewal is disturbingly slow and it will be an unacceptably long time before signage for the Shire’s tourist drives is fit for its purpose. iii. The Committee noted that $100,000 has been allocated to renewing Shire and town entry signs in 2014/16 with a further large allocation expected in future years. The entry signs and advertising billboards are intended to encourage visitors to come to the Shire. However, it would appear that only $14,000 is to be spent during the same period to improve signs on tourist drives that are currently in poor condition and require replacement. TASAC members’ own inspections of tourist drives the day prior to the meeting confirmed that many of the signs along them are so dilapidated that they cannot be safely read. Therefore, TASAC considers that there is a major imbalance between funds ear marked by Council for signs to draw visitors to the Shire and funds allocated for signs to improve the experience of visitors as they travel around the Shire. While the program to replace Shire and town entry signs and advertising billboards is likely to achieve its objective of increasing visitor numbers, visitors will become increasingly dissatisfied because of the difficulties of following tourist drive signs within the Shire. Poor tourism signage also has poor outcomes for public safety. iv. Tourist drives have the effect of encouraging motorists off the State road system onto drives that are mostly on Council roads. TASAC is obliged to consider the need to remove signs for tourist drives from State roads where drives cannot be safely followed due to the poor condition of their signage.