26 March 2019 - Ordinary

Ordinary meeting of Hawkesbury City Council for 26th of March 2019. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land and pay my respects to Elders both past and present. I'll call on the General Manager to go through some procedural matters, please.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would also like to advise members of the public that in accordance with clause 6.3.1 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. Council meetings are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings.

The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, and the recordings are stored on Council's record management system. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates both to your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from councillors. Finally, it is also requested that if any person in the Council chambers has a mobile phone, they either turn it off or turn it to silent.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Conroy. Do we have any

Apologies, please? Oh

Mr Mayor,

I do have advice from Councillor Tree. I have a request for leave of absence from Council from Monday the 25th of March 2019 to Tuesday 9th of April 2019 inclusive. So that includes the Council meeting on the 26th of March, the 8th of April and the 9th of April 2019.

So that's a request from Councillor Tree. Would someone like to move we accept that request? Councillor Richards, seconded Councillor Zamprogno. Anyone wish to speak against it? All those in favour say aye. Declare it carried. Do you have any other apologies? I think I saw Councillor Ross in the building a minute ago. Give apologies for Councillor Rasmussen in the meantime, I suppose

Does he? Okay .

Are there any declarations of interest, please?

No. The

Confirmation of the minutes from the last meeting. Would someone like to move that? Moved Councillor Zamprogno, seconded Councillor Kotlash. All those in favour say aye. Declare it carried.

Items on block. There are several items on block

49, 51 and 52, moved by the Deputy Mayor, seconded by Councillor Kotlash. All those in favour say aye. Declare it carried.

Reports for determination. The first item that is to be discussed is item 48, and I think Ms Perin is going to give us an introduction to that.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. The Liveability Program is part of the Western Sydney City Deal and is a program being funded by all three levels of government, with $15 million jointly being provided by State and Federal Government and $3.75 million from each council within the City Deal's program. Each council has developed their own program. We submitted an application at the end of last year, essentially focusing on undertaking town centre improvements within Windsor, South Windsor and Richmond. The key objective is being to provide well-designed, well-managed places that deliver economic, social and environmental benefits, but all centred around approach placemaking. We are essentially, the report is essentially saying the money's been approved.

Essentially the report is saying we just need approval from Council to apply the Council seal under delegation, and then we can proceed with the program.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

I'll move the motion, Mr Mayor.

Second.

Do we have a seconder? Councillor Wheeler. Mr Mayor

I did actually have called it up. Other people may have too, but I did mainly so that that explanation could be given. There's not a huge amount of detail in what's said here, so I thought it was good for the public record that it could be just clarified a little bit more. I just did have a question, which was about— Over what period of time in our operational plan or in our budget is the $3.75 million allocated? Over how many years is it? One sum set aside or multiple sums set aside?

It's one sum to be applied over three years. So you've got three years in which to have that money and spend that money, from Council's point of view. Okay,

Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that. I think that was all, of course. It will be wonderful to see it get underway. It's going to be a great project, so I support it, and I just wanted to seek that clarification on those couple of things. So thank you.

Any further discussion?

I believe the funding was

Held up a while because of the election, but because of the result of the election on the weekend, I expect it should all flow again in the near future. The advice I was given that it'll be a matter of weeks after that election that the money will start to come through. So that'll be good news. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I just at this point want to thank the staff for their efforts here. It's been a lot of work to get this to this stage. It's taken lengthy discussions to get the city deals program to this point. The Deputy Mayor and the General Manager were involved in lengthy discussions for almost weekly for about 18 months, and then Andrew Kearns and Charles Liggett have also worked very hard to get this to this stage where we're now at the point of receiving expressions of interest from place makers for the Town Centre Master Plans. So that's really exciting, and I think it's going to be terrific when we can actually start saying to the community, this is what Council's doing for these three major town centres.

So I think— It's going to be a really good news story for Council and for the community, and something that is going to well and truly outlast us, which is great. Any further discussion? No. Deputy Mayor, would you require a right of reply? Not necessary, thank

You

In that case, I'll put the motion. All those in favour say aye. Those against, declare it carried.

The next item for discussion is item 50, which is Floodplain Risk Management Advisory Committee, and Deputy Mayor, I think you wanted to speak on this. Yes,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll move the motion as it is in the business paper.

Do we have a seconder? Councillor Wheeler.

Mr Mayor, I'll just briefly go over what occurred at that committee. As you know, at our last meeting we already dealt with a notice of motion, which was relating to the Richmond Bridge duplication bypass position that Council put forward, and that was part of our meeting, but we brought that forward. Secondly, there was the OEH Floodplain Management Grants, which forms part of the recommendation that's there tonight that Council proceed, and I imagine by now have already proceeded, with submissions seeking funding for the preparation of floodplain management plans for the McDonald River, the Colo River and the Webbs Creek area, and also for overland flooding studies for overland flooding in urban areas.

So, as that is an aspect which isn't included in the floodplain task force, so it's a necessary thing to gain some information on, as well as the third priority, I think, is amending our existing 2012 floodplain management plan study once the regional flood study is released. We had an update at that meeting from Infrastructure New South Wales on the mapping, and we were able to have a look at some of the interactive mapping and to look at the various flood levels. And I'm not sure whether that flood mapping has actually come to Council yet. Maybe not quite, but it's due to come soon, and that will be a very useful tool for planning and for people to be able to see the impacts of flood on specific properties.

Again, we had a request for clarification of information from Water New South Wales and the Department of Planning to clarify about the actual purpose of the dam wall raising. That may have been confirmed during the lead-up into the election, where the Premier did actually say that it was for water storage as well as floodplain mitigation. So that was a change from the original intention. We've also decided for, at the next floodplain, or at an upcoming floodplain management committee, to have to look at the impacts and the problems and the outcomes from the Townsville flooding. So that's something we'll be looking at because there's many lessons to be learned, I would imagine, from what happened there and their process and their recovery process in particular.

So that's at the upcoming floodplain meeting in the future. So I think that was basically covered everything we did at that committee, but yeah, I think that was it. Thank you.

Thank you very much for that. Any further discussion?

I assume you don't want right of reply. Councillor Ross, sorry. Thank you.

I'm just a little puzzled as to why some consideration might not have been given to the influence of South Creek in this matrix, please. Is there any way of clarifying? I'm just not sure. Is it going to be tangled up with the city's deal, or is there some other point about which I'm missing?

Mr. Conroy

Mr. Mayor, the city deal is dealing with the South Creek catchment in terms of water cycle management and the opportunities to use water more effectively as part of an integrated planning approach to the catchment. So it's about larger areas of pervious landscape where water can be absorbed. It's also about a more, I suppose, discreet form of waste management where water is put into swales and things like that rather than into heavily engineered drains. And it's also about using water as a cooling agent as part of urban heat island effect. So the South Creek considerations are a much broader consideration than just floodplain management. Certainly the— Floodplain management considerations are there, and South Creek is an element of the state government's own floodplain strategy for the Hawkesbury-Nepean.

But the two matters are travelling somewhat separately at the moment. So the work of this committee is primarily about floodplain management. The work of the city deal is more about incorporating water cycle management into the design of the future development in the western city. I hope that sheds some light on things.

Councillor Ross. Thank you, General Manager.

I am somewhat of the opinion that South Creek itself flows through a floodplain. As we local residents know, in the last two and a half, three years, I think it is, we have had two

Rises through rain, and the banks of the South Creek have overflown. And in those cases also blocked the passage of traffic through from Pitt Town Road to Fitzroy Bridge in Windsor itself. Would it be not in order that the South Creek be included amongst those river networks as well? Because it does naturally overflow. And the difficulty I have is that we have further... Residential development heading a pace in Schofields to the south of the railway line, which must put it more closely in greater proximity to waterways, and that would seem to me to be an inherently risky matter as well, adding to the existing risk, that is. Thank you.

Is that a question, Mr Councillor Ross? Was that a question or a statement?

I have a response to some of it.

It's a question. Would it be appropriate to include South Creek along with the river systems mentioned? I'll ask Mr Conlon. Thank you.

South Creek's already included in the study that's been prepared for the Hawkesbury-Nepean as part of the state government's Resilient Valleys, Resilient Communities study. We're still waiting on the data for that study to be released, but the Deputy Mayor, who's on that floodplain committee, may have some additional information.

Thank you. That was the clarification. Deputy Mayor, do you have any additional clarification?

I think that perhaps we could add one item, if everyone were happy to do that, in that perhaps we ask Penrith for the studies that they've done because I believe that they did a flood study of South Creek in recent times, or of that catchment area there, because of predominantly a lot of South Creek being the catchment area being in their area. So would we be able to just add a point to the recommendation that we request .. . Perhaps we could call it any relevant flood studies that may complement our information from neighbouring councils or councils within the Hawkesbury River catchment.

I don't see any problem with that. Do we have a seconder for that, Councillor Wheeler? Can you speak any more about that?

No, that's all. Councillor

Wheeler.

Just to clarify, Mr Mayor, it's my understanding that Penrith holds the South Creek flood data and that the surface or overland flooding data from the South Creek area will be available within the next two years, but isn't included in the current modelling for the dam wall raising proposals and the like. So it's not included in the mapping that will be made available to Council shortly. It will be with us within two years, according to Infrastructure New South Wales.

Any further speakers? No. Deputy Mayor, do you want right of reply? No,

Thank you.

Okay, then I'll move the recommendation, which now has a point four added to it, which hopefully everyone's aware of.

Do we need to see that written down? Are we happy to proceed? Happy to proceed. Good. Yep. So we'll move that recommendation. All those in favour say aye. Those against, declare it carried.

We now move to responses to questions from previous meeting.

Are there any questions on the questions? Which

Are on page 90 in your book.

I saw some serious shuffling going on.

No questions on questions? Councillor Ross. Thank you. In regard to question 15,

It's—

I'm just concerned about all of those particular questions in regard to the lighting. There seems to be some interpretive difference between a tender and

A quotation. I would have thought that in view of the size of the proposed works, a tender would be obligatory rather than simply a quotation. And I'd be very grateful to understand

Why the word quotation has been injected into the matter.

Thank you. Mr Conroy. Mr Mayor, I met with some constituents today and we had this exact same discussion, and we agreed that it probably would have been better to use the word cost estimate rather than quotation. Quotation gives a more… Serious tone. We've got cost estimates. We haven't been out to any procurement process to get firm quotations.

Councillor Ross.

Does not a cost estimate indicate some formality in the matter? It is not just simply done, I would assume, on the back of a stamp. I failed to see the attempted splitting hairs, frankly.

Mr Conroy. So a cost estimate is based on our own investigations. We speak to people, we get information. They're the best available indicators without actually going to a formal procurement process. But as councillors will recall, there have been times in the past where tenders have come in well below the cost estimate and at times they've come in well above the cost estimate. It just depends on the current market conditions at the time.

Any further questions? Councillor Gurr.

Regarding question number 6.6, where Council can make an application to the Federal Health Department for voluntary blood testing, can we please be advised as to when that application will be processed?

Mr Conroy.

If there are no issues raised with the answers that are provided, our intention would be to follow all these matters up based on the answers that's been provided at this stage.

Any further questions? No.

If not, we move on to questions for the next meeting. Councillor Richards, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Several months ago, I made an inquiry about the removal of seating at Clarendon Station, and the response that I received in the subsequent business paper indicated that a request had been made. A follow-up request was made, I think, in the first week of February. As another six weeks or more have elapsed since then, I'd like to chase that. Secondly, on the 26th of June last year, we here in this chamber passed a notice of motion, 11 votes to 1, to write variously to the Greater Sydney Commission, the Minister for Planning, and the State Member to seek greater clarity on the future of development in the southeastern part of our LGA. Considering that an election has just been held, I'd like to ask whether any responses to that notice of motion have been received in the nine months that have elapsed, and for those responses that have not come through, to suggest that it's a timely juncture for us to remind those entities that we were expecting an answer.

Thank you. Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Wheeler.

Just one. There's a pothole that's been filled once. I know it's not our road and it's not our responsibility, but they are our residents who are driving through it, just before the entrance to the Giorgio compound heading into Windsor on Wilberforce Road. It's quite substantial. It's been filled once. It's opening up again after the rain. Could we contact either the RMS or Giorgio to have that filled, please?

Thank you. Councillor Reynolds, Councillor Garrow, Councillor Ross.

Thank you. I'd like to ask some questions in regard to the inclusive play space about which there was a press release yesterday, I believe.

The first question is in regard to the works that are now in progress at the site, I'm led to believe.

Is it likely that the heavy vehicles entering the site off

Church Street will inflict damage on a drainage, a subterranean, shall we say, drainage line that I believe is located in that area?

The ground is currently very wet, as I understand it, and I've had adverse comment from local people that because the heavy vehicles are having to enter with the aid of reinforcing steel mesh laid on the ground to enable traction, that they are also picking up

Considerable amounts of, if you like, topsoil on the wheels of their vehicles, and that that is impacting the street. I'm just wondering if something could be done about that.

I'd also like to inquire as to

The tendering process used and when that might be brought to Council, because I would assume that with the size of the project that there would have been some tendering involved.

Thank you.

And I'd also wish to inquire in another matter in regard to the Richmond Preschool as to the level of works there, and I understand from earlier information that those particular works were due to be completed by 30 June this year.

Have tenders been let in regard to that refurbishment work, please?

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor, did you have any questions? No,

Thank you.

Well, that ends that section of the meeting. We now have to go into confidential. Even though both confidential items appear to be on block, I have been advised that we still must go into confidential.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. In regard to Item 55, whilst in closed session Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Richards, seconded by Councillor Conolly, that:

1. Council publicly exhibit and notify adjoining owners of the proposed easement to Endeavour Energy in regard to the creation of an easement of an area in the order of 697 square metres within 96 Rifle Range Road, Bligh Park, Lot 1251 in DP 800323, and the Berger Road drainage reserve, 43 Berger Road, South Windsor, Lot 20 in DP 27136, as shown in Attachment 1 to this report and compensation in the amount detailed in the report be accepted by Council. 2. At the expiration of the public notification period, in Part 1 above, the following action be taken: a. Should any submissions be received regarding the proposed easement with Endeavour Energy, a further report be submitted to Council; or b.

Should no submissions be received: i. Council agree to the proposed easement through 96 Rifle Range Road, Bligh Park, Lot 1251 in DP 800323, and the Berger Road drainage reserve, 43 Berger Road, South Windsor, Lot 20 in DP 27136, as outlined in this report; ii. The applicant ensure that no trees are removed and that the site is restored to its original condition after the works have been completed; iii. The applicant reimburse Council for all legal costs incurred by Council in relation to the easement authority be given for any plans and other documentation in association with this matter to be executed under the seal of Council; v. Details of the resolution be conveyed to the applicant together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of its resolution until such time as the appropriate legal documentation puts such resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties.

In regard to Item 56, whilst in closed session Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Richards, seconded by Councillor Conolly, that: 1. Council agree to enter into a new lease with Johnny Odesho and William Koro for the property known as 37 Macquarie Street, Windsor. 2. Authority be given for the lease and any other relevant documentation in association with this matter to be executed under the seal of Council. 3. Details of Council’s resolution be conveyed to the proposed lessees together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of the resolution until such time as the appropriate legal documentation puts such resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties.

Thank you, Mr. Mifsud. Would someone like to move to accept the report of the confidential? Councillor Garrow, Councillor Wheeler. All those in favour say aye. Before I close the meeting, Mrs. Perrin would like a quick word with us before you go home about the weekend’s conference. I’ll close the meeting at 7.02 p. m.

Thank you.