Planning secretary Deborah Schembri admits: ‘Paceville masterplan a no-go’

The masterplan for Paceville as proposed is a “no-go”, because it was still in the planning stages and had not even been through the consultation process, Parliamentary Secretary for Planning Deborah Schembri acknowledged on Monday.

Schembri, who was appearing before parliament’s environment and development planning committee, said that if the proposal had been presented as a final document, she would not have signed off on it, because she recognised there were certain aspects that needed to be addressed.

She insisted however she did not agree with the opposition’s call to take the masterplan back to the drawing board since the plan was intrinsically ‘good’ but that the government was committed to listen to objections raised.

She asked the opposition members on the committee to list its objections clearly and that she would consider them once the committee submitted its final report to the parliamentary secretariat.

But opposition MP Marthese Portelli said the opposition had made its position clear on numerous occasions and that Schembri was simply refusing to listen.

She asked Schembri to explain why, for example, the developer of Mercury House had been granted a larger gross floor area (GFA) than other developments.

Parliamentary Secretary for Planning Deborah Schembri

Portelli raised the question of a number of residents that – contrary to what was advertised – had not been given an appointment for a one-to-one meeting with the Planning Authority.

PA executive chairman Johann Buttigieg denied that residents had been denied appointments, except in the case of developers who had also requested one-to-one meeting as residents.

Schembri explained the PA had also turned down residents that asked to meet the PA in groups.

Portelli said this was yet another exercise in the government’s divide-and-conquer way of doing business.

She complained that the committee had as yet not been provided with a list of public and private spaces affected by the development proposed in the Paceville masterplan and details of how they would be affected.

When asked by committee chairman Franco Mercieca if they agreed on the need of a plan for Paceville, Portelli said the opposition was in favour of a wholistic masterplan that did not feature any conflicts of interest and did not favour one developer over an other, a business over an other or a resident over an other.

She said the masterplan as presented did not make sense because it propsed that the government expropriate a number of private properties to develop into open space while it was giving away public property “for pennies”.

Deborah Schembri, parliamentary secretary for planning, said she could not understand how the opposition believed the development could be financed, but Portelli insisted it was Schembri’s responsibility, as the representative of the government, to provide the answers to the committee.

Government MP architect Charles Buhagiar recommended the setting up of  a third-party management company to administer the development in the masterplan and that fees paid by the company and through other planning gains could help finance the expropriation of property and other expenses in the plan.

Opposition MP Ryan Callus objected to a list of questions that Mercieca presented at the beginning of the committee session and which he had asked the committee members to answer for the record.

Callus said the questions – which he feared had been provided to the chairman by the government – should have been passed on to the committee members before the meeting and not “pulled out of a hat” during the meeting in an attempt “to make a show”.

“The government is once again going about things in completely the wrong way, even after just having mucked up the whole masterplan process,” he said.