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A more than two-year community effort to build a bike track primarily for children in Hall looks set to fail after the ACT Heritage Council decided not to approve construction despite heritage consultants assessing the proposal's impact as being minimal. The Hall community raised $10,000 for the bike track project at the 2016 Hall Ball, while Hall Rotary pledged $12,000. Residents of the heritage village approached the ACT government with the idea and the Transport Canberra and City Services directorate began assisting with the proposal, offering to chip in the final $2000 needed to fund the project. A report prepared by Michael Pilbrow, the co-owner of Yass consulting firm Strategic Development Group, reveals 57 of the 63 people who participated in community consultation on the project in December 2017 supported a bike track, with three against the idea and the other three not stating a view. Despite support from the majority of the Hall community, the ACT Heritage Council decided on October 17 not to approve the proposed bike track because of the impact it would have on the 'Aboriginal Sites Zone' defined in the ACT Heritage Register entry for the Hall Village Heritage Precinct. ACT Heritage Council chairman David Flannery wrote to Transport Canberra and City Services to explain the decision on December 11. "The council considers the preference to locate the recreational bike track wholly in the 'Aboriginal Sites Zone' as a convenience based choice and does not consider that to be adequate justification to permanently damage a heritage place," Mr Flannery said in the letter, seen by the Sunday Canberra Times. Mr Flannery wrote to Transport Canberra and City Services after a directorate staff member, who was working with Hall residents on the proposal, emailed ACT Heritage on October 30 seeking a copy of the minutes from the council meeting where the decision not to approve the bike track was made. The staffer received a response the following day saying the council's decision was made "via out-of sessions assessments" and that meeting minutes detailing the council's deliberations were therefore not available. The council made its decision to reject the bike track proposal despite Navin Officer Heritage Consultants preparing a statement of heritage effect that found the route would have minimal heritage impact. The statement of heritage effect, commissioned by Transport Canberra and City Services, also proposed measures to mitigate the heritage impacts of the bike track, including redesigning the track so it would avoid three sites where Aboriginal artefacts had been found. The Navin Officer report shows the firm consulted with representative Aboriginal organisations, with King Brown Tribal Group expressing support for the findings of the statement of heritage effect and the recommendations for mitigating cultural harm. The heritage consultancy also had contact with the Buru Ngunawal Aboriginal Corporation, and used the corporation's feedback to develop the recommended protocol for relocating any Aboriginal artefacts found during the scraping back of surface vegetation, which would have preceded construction of the track. While Navin Officer's report found the only remaining alternative to the proposed bike track route was not to proceed with track construction, the ACT Heritage Council's decision recommended that Transport Canberra and City Services consider building the track at an alternative location in Hall, singling out a proposed site referred to as "Site D". Only one participant in the December 2017 community consultation nominated "Site D" as their preferred location for the bike track while 32 members of the community said "Site E" - the proposed location rejected by the Heritage Council - was the best option. Transport Canberra and City Services described "Site D" as unsuitable in a November 30 email to the ACT Heritage Council, given its historical use as a playing surface for polocrosse. But Mr Flannery reiterated in his December 11 letter that the council believed the track could be built in a location other than the one put forward in the rejected proposal, leaving the proposed bike track in limbo. Canberra Liberals Indigenous affairs spokesman James Milligan questioned why the ACT Heritage Council had made its decision out of session and expressed concern that the input of the representative Aboriginal organisations seemed to have been ignored. "We've got these [organisations] for a reason and if we don't take their advice, what's the point?" Mr Milligan said.

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