Bunbury Herald’s top stories of the week

Bring the AFL to Bunbury

Bunbury City Mayor Gary Brennan has thrown his support behind a shock proposal for the regional location to be used as part of a potential AFL hub should all teams be rushed to WA to play this year’s finals series.

The league is working through options for allowing the season to resume as the growing COVID-19 crisis in the eastern states makes travel difficult and having supporters at games unthinkable in some cities.

Bunbury has been listed by Tourism WA as one of eight potential locations for a hub, should the four-week finals series be played in Perth — with a team based in Bunbury likely to stay and train in the region before travelling to Optus Stadium for games.

Smart parking is the ticket

Parking tickets will soon be a thing of the past for visitors to Bunbury’s CBD when a new “first-of-its-kind” digital system is installed in a bid to stop people taking advantage of the current system and make more parking available.

Set to be rolled out in six months, the “smart parking” initiative will mean people no longer need to display a ticket on their dashboard.

Currently the city offers free ticketed parking for two or three hours and paid parking to stay longer. The move will see the city’s on-street parking meters removed and replaced with in-ground sensors, which will be triggered when a driver pulls into a bay and will alert the rangers when the vehicle stays longer than the allowed time limit.

Rate freeze a hot topic

Shire of Capel president Michael Southwell has backed his council’s decision to freeze property rates for a second consecutive year.

Councillors recently voted not to increase rates for the 2021-22 financial year, a move that has been met with mixed reactions by residents and businesses.

It marks the second year in a row the shire has kept its rates the same, after local governments in WA last year froze all charges at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.