A Mosman Council Report last week claims that public feedback “largely support” the conversion of Middle Head Oval into an artificial playing field (synthetic turf).
We have serious concerns about Council’s conclusion, for the following reasons.
In addition to identifiable written submissions, Council staff have also included a flawed, anonymous on-line survey (using “SurveyMonkey” software), giving each equal weight.
HPG has investigated SurveyMonkey thoroughly and believe that it is impossible to verify that respondents correspond to unique real people. Last August, jointly with Mosman Parks and Bushland Inc., HPG wrote to Council’s General Manager asking that SurveyMonkey be thrown out, but this did not happen.
On the other hand, of the 251 written submissions (non-anonymous), only 52% supported synthetic turf. But adding in SurveyMonkey skews the results to 66% support overall.
We have this week again written to Council’s General Manager requesting the SurveyMonkey methodology used to tabulate results. HPG does not support the construction of a synthetic oval on Middle Head, replacing the natural grass parkland, see submission here.
On November 10, Council will vote whether to proceed with the synthetic proposal.