THE council’s outgoing chief planner says the push to accelerate the population towards 100,000 people will lift the region’s quality of life.
Tamworth Regional Council will vote on the first draft of Blueprint 100 at Tuesday night’s meeting.
The document maps out the services and developments needed to speed up population growth.
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But planning director Brent McAlister said growing to 100,000 people by 2041 was not the primary goal.
“The target of 100,000 isn’t the main objective,” he said.
“It is to lift the prosperity and the quality of life for the region.
“We believe the best to do that is to head to 100,000 because cities of 100,000 have key things that we need, like really good public transport, diversity of housing.”
Mr McAlister said the council compared Tamworth to other Australian cities which already had a population of more than 100,000 people and tried to “spot the difference”.
He said there would be a need for more one-or-two bedroom housing, but there were other gaps highlighted, like the need for a year-round aquatic centre and a university.
“We have one of the lowest tertiary-educated populations and it’s well known those other cities like Ballarat and Toowoomba have a university and have the tertiary qualified people to support the industry,” he said.
Water security is a looming concern presently, and while the city faces immediate pressures, Mr McAlister said the plan to rapidly grow was planning beyond the current drought.
He was also buoyed by the $480 million commitment to build a new Dungowan Dam which he saw as a “game-changer”.
“If we can sell that to the community and sell the lifestyle benefits and the fact we will become a target for funding from the state and federal government,” he said.
“We are one of the only councils that have blueprint: Wagga hasn’t got blueprint and neither has Dubbo.
“Councils are well regarded if they have documents like this.”
The council will vote to put the document out for community consultation in February.
It is bracing for a number of submissions of the dwindling water supply.
“There’s no doubt if the drought continues into next year, when we go out to consultation, we will get a lot of submissions around water,” he said.
“No one is fooling themselves to think it is going to be easy if the drought continues.”