15 March 2022 - Ordinary

Looking, in case we missed that, we might just get it again on the record. I'm not sure what's happened there. So welcome everybody to tonight's extraordinary meeting. I'd like to start by paying respect to, by acknowledging the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury, and pay my respect to Elders past, present and emerging, and hand to the General Manager to run through the procedural items.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd also like to advise that in accordance with Clause 5.18 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council 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 to both your address to Council and in any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. I don't believe we have any apologies or requests for leave of absence. I'll just note that Councillor Wheeler has indicated that she is not able to appear on camera tonight but is present attending. Are there any declarations of interest?

Councillor Richards.

Item 52, 58 and 61. Thank you.

52, 58 and 61. Yes, please. Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Item, I think it's 51, the first one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Item 55.

Okay. We also have two sets of minutes to confirm. The first set is from the 17th of February. Mr, move that. Moved, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Seconded, Councillor Zempopno. All those in favour? Aye. Against? Declare it carried. Sorry, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Yeah, all good. And then the next set of minutes from the 22nd of February. Want to move those. Moved, Councillor Kotlash. Seconded, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. All those in favour? Against? Declare that carried.

Councillors, we do have one item subject to public address. However, I'd like to propose that we deal with the Mayoral Minute first, given that it's of significant interest to quite a number of people in our community, and we have just been through a natural disaster. I think it's appropriate to do that. So I'm going to go ahead with the Mayoral Minute unless anybody objects. No? Okay. So I'll put the Mayoral Minute, councillors. I just wanted to say—

Mr Mayor, may I declare my interest,

Sorry? Sorry, is that—

It's okay, thank you. I will be declaring a significant non-pecuniary interest and leaving the meeting as it talks about federal funding, and I'm currently a candidate. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you.

Councillor Richards out for a minute.

Okay. I wanted to start off, councillors, by saying on behalf of the whole of council, I'm sure, thank you so much to the SES for the efforts over the last couple of weeks. Another massive disaster to deal with in such a short span of time. Also many other agencies that have been working very hard altogether at the EOC at Windsor and across the state to keep us safe and to minimise the disruption to our lives and, in many cases, risking their lives as volunteers. So I want to say a big thank you to those people, and indeed to council staff that have been working around the clock. You know, there's some key staff in particular who have been on call 24/7 for a couple of weeks now. And as a community, I want to say thank you and that we appreciate all the work you've put in.

The other point I just make about the Mayoral Minute may not be obvious on first glance is that this was written last week, intended for a meeting last Tuesday, which we effectively postponed this evening. So there's a list of council activities to date. That's not up to date, obviously, and that list would be far longer if we include everything that's happened in the last week. But it did give a snapshot as to where things were up to at that point in time. And essentially, the point of the mayoral minute was just to clarify a few things, as well as give people a chance to ask any questions or get anything important on the record. But I did just want to clarify, with the state government working well at the moment, but I think there's a few things we need to bring to their attention.

One is that at the moment, that Public Works have indicated that they're going to be having the waste pickups, which are curbside collections and free tipping, for a period of 21 days at a minimum. Our experience in the 2021 flood was, of course, that we were still collecting waste in skip bins for months after the event. 21 days is not going to be long enough. My feeling is that they probably are aware of that. However, we did need to formally put that request in and make sure they're aware that they need to be intending on sticking around a lot longer than that. We want to get the cleanup done as efficiently as possible, and certainly I think lots of lessons have been learned. And this whole cleanup effort was kicked in a lot quicker than it was in the March '21.

A lot of learnings have been taken forward, but we do need to point out to them that we're going to need that service and that help for far more than three weeks.

Also, the application fee waivers, which we instigated in March 2021 to assist people who had been impacted by floods, this is simply just extending that again to say that, of course, we would want those application fee waivers to apply also to people impacted by this event. So that's hopefully a formality, that the council will extend that help, but we do need to formally resolve that.

Most importantly, in my opinion, is getting a position from council that we need to be advocating to the state government, in particular as well as the federal government, but in particular the state agencies, that we need help this time with our recovery. It's not sustainable for our small organisation to be handling this entire recovery on our own. Last year we were funded with natural disaster funding arrangements, which does pay for the replacement of infrastructure, but it left our council to deliver somewhere between 30 and 40 million dollars of capital works, which we hadn't planned on delivering. It stretches the capacity of our organisation. It calls on capabilities we may not always have, and it's just not fair and sustainable, in my opinion, that we lose another year of our capital works capability spent just on recovery when there's so many other things we have planned in our delivery program and that we should be focusing on, and our community has a right to expect.

So I'm seeking a position from council that we formally request that additional support. I've already started those conversations myself, and I have already started some public advocacy in my own role, but I think it's important we have a position from council to formally request that so that we can get that help, whether that be funding for designated project teams, or whether it's the state agencies taking some of the bigger projects off us and integrating it into work they're already doing, or a combination of the two. But I think we've got to point out now at the very start of this event, or the start of this recovery, I should say, that we can't just be a repeat of last year where we just had all the money thrown at us and left to deal with it ourselves.

And finally, there was some discussion around sandbags, and I think it's important that we take that learning from this event and clarify whose role that is and what the protocol is to get that to happen. I did speak to the local unit commander of the SES in the days leading up to this event, and he indicated at that point that the SES was able to provide sandbags, was monitoring the demand, and would instigate a central collection point at such a time as the demand was there. I think events moved much faster than people anticipated back at that point. And it did take, by the middle of the next day, it was quite clear people needed sandbags, and it took a couple of hours at that point to get that set up.

And so there was a feeling that people would have liked sandbags earlier in the day, and that would have helped them prepare far better. So what I'm suggesting is that we take that learning and we make sure that the local emergency management committee includes formal protocols around who sets that up and where. And I think Council would be in a position to offer some assistance with that, but we just need to have protocols around that so that we know exactly who's responsible for what, when that's going to happen. So I'll leave it there, Councillors, for your consideration. Councillor Lansbucket

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you. I'd like to echo your thanks to our emergency services personnel and, of course, to the many volunteers within the community, whether they were in organised groups or whether they were just people simply out and about helping out. That's been wonderful to see yet again. I fully endorse the extension of the feed waiver around that for DAs. I'd also like to thank the staff for all their efforts in keeping everything going in a very challenging time. I do think, however, that it did come to light that there are quite a few gaps in our planning and in us being prepared, and I think that preparedness is the fourth stage of emergency management in the four-stage process, and we really need to be moving on to that because that should coincide with the recovery being completed.

So I hope that we're going to have some planning around that. I think with the— oh, just a question. Who is overseeing the public works people doing the work, and are they the people already doing the cleanup in Windsor? I'll

Add that to the Director of Infrastructure Services.

Yes, through you, Mr. Mayor, if I understand the question correctly, public works are present in the emergency operations centre, and their operations are overseen by their hierarchy, their regional director.

So any questions around that should go directly to the Public Works Department. Is that correct from residents, or should they go through us?

Through you, Mr. Mayor, either or. We can take questions through, and often it's better that we apply our own local knowledge to those situations too, so it can be advantageous. But any specific questions around, for instance, timing of collections of solid waste, of flood waste, really are to be answered by Public Works. Okay,

Thank you. Just continuing on, I know that we did raise the issue around sandbags the other day in the briefing, and of course, as I said then, there is a provision for it in the Hawkesbury City Flood Plan, which outlines how it should be done, and I hope that we will be following what's in that plan and having a protocol built around that. I think the other things that we do have a number of things and a number of gaps that arose, and I'm just wondering, Mr. Mayor, what you've got proposed for how we will be addressing some very important issues which have arisen, particularly around issues that are sort of not ours, but they're our residents being impacted, around particularly the raw sewage that we hear is in Windsor and also in Pitt Town, which of course would be two, I think, possibly two different operating systems, and this is the issue with our sewer, of course, and then of course with the issues around electricity, which have been so detrimental to people.

So I hope that we're obviously going to have some sort of formal debrief, and I know that tonight, while everyone's still trying to recover and still doing work around that, this isn't necessarily the time, but I'm just wondering if you or if the staff have a plan for how we will be addressing those issues in the very near future.

That's a good question. Yeah, I might refer that to the general manager. I haven't got any plans at this point for that debrief. I'd also assume at some point very soon have a formal debrief to make sure we record all these learnings, but I'll refer that to the general manager. Yeah,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I would... the two matters raised there around raw sewage at Pitt Town and Windsor are matters that have been escalated through the EOC. Certainly they've come to my attention, and they've been funneled through those channels. I know it's certainly an issue that's causing quite a degree of distress amongst those affected residents, and we are, and it has been escalated through the EOC for investigation and action as quickly as possible. With respect to electricity, I sort of feel like, for the most part, that's a consequence of the circumstances that we're in, and I'm not sure that there's a great deal that can be taken in terms of the outages. Certainly early on in the incident, sort of a week ago or so, the power outages that were being suggested to Council at that particular point in time were far greater and more lengthy than what has eventuated for the most part, particularly for some of those communities in the McDonald Valley have principally been affected, and they've managed to restore power in a lot of those places a lot quicker than what they had have.

In terms of a formal debrief, absolutely. So a formal exercise was undertaken after last year's flood, and certainly the organisation took a great degree of learnings from that and have managed to, I think, pull together a much smoother and calm response to that, leaning on and working with, hand in glove with those state government agencies who have the lead on many of these matters.

Thank you

Thank you. Councillor Sheehan?

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just to commend your motion. Within the discussions, both with state bodies and our staff, with the availability of services that we provide, the pickups, I think we're not providing bins this side, but curbside cleanup and stuff like that. What's been brought to my attention is that some people are in a situation where what they want to do can't happen straight away. And it happened with the windstorm that went through Glossodia a couple of months ago. Through insurance assessment or illness in the family, whatever it is, they just can't get on top of it in the time limit that's been put in place. Is there an opportunity with your discussions that if people sort of book in, that their particular time may be extended because of circumstances?

Because the people who've got circumstances, they're probably in more dire straits than the ones that can jump straight in and do it. It could be finances, they can't arrange people to do it, and all those sorts of things. And then they run out of the time for services that can be provided. So are there a couple of things that we can look at, and if you're talking to government officials that might be able to be addressed? And the other comments were made, we can discuss those in the debrief, but I think we're all aware of them and the likes, and I look forward to that.

Thanks, Councillor. I think that's quite valid, and certainly make sure that gets communicated back. One comment I would make for anybody in that situation, though, is that the advice would be to book the cleanup anyway. And in the form, there is a provision to indicate that you're not able to get the rubbish to the curbside, and then that would prompt Public Works to give that person a call, work through what help there might be and what solutions there could be for them, and talk about timing as well if that's required. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I'm speaking in support of the motion, and I think it's good that we're acting early and starting to record some of this stuff through motions. A few points. We've talked in the briefing last week about provision of information to people who don't have reception for phones and the like. I've got a friend who's currently working with the SES in the Macdonald Valley, and she said there's real issues with people just not knowing what to do. So I floated the idea with her of putting flyers into the bags of food and things that were going out, and also having some notice boards and things. She said that there's sort of impromptu drop-off and collection points have developed in those communities, which would be the best place to have that information.

People... People are asking a lot of questions of just of the SES workers, and they really need to have that information at their fingertips that they can give to people. So if we could get onto that quickly, I think we would alleviate some of the anxiety that's beginning to develop in those very isolated communities. And again, we do need to flag this issue of telecommunications and reception. Could I then also ask that we direct our media attention and request that the ABC, which is the national broadcaster, in times of emergency, to start sharing our clean-up information and information about recovery hubs and about contacting the SES if you need food and fuel, for example, because in some instances people do have transistors, and that's the information that they have access to.

Similarly, the local radio station, the three local radio stations, if we can have that information on repeat, I think people might stumble across it just during the course of their day. Some people are relying on car radios to access information, so that needs to be readily available. There does seem to be quite a bit of angst around not using Skips this time, and a lot of anger on social media, and I don't know if that's because people are really— because the piling up and shifting with machinery genuinely isn't working as well, or that people used the skips last time and that worked for them after a fashion, and there's some security in doing the same thing again. And I certainly don't want to minimise their complaints, but there is quite a bit of— of anger around the system that Public Works have put in place.

My concern is that there's very little understanding that that's not Council's choice, and that Council isn't the lead on this, and that our workers are then copying it because people just genuinely aren't happy. Could we be really clear in our comms, excuse me, that Council is the lackey and not the lead here, so that our staff, who have worked really, really hard and should be commended for their hard work, when many of them are affected themselves, aren't the ones copying it when it isn't going as smoothly as people would necessarily like. The call centre, the additional call centre staff, has been commented on repeatedly to me over the weekend. People were really, really pleased that they could ring up and speak to a human, so that was excellent work from those staff.

One other thing on top of the sandbags was an issue. The other thing that was an issue, I think, was provisioning of the evacuation centres. So Maroo was easy; they've got beds, but the Richmond Club doesn't. Now, this is, we've used the Richmond Club several times for an evacuation centre. It should be no surprise that the Richmond Club doesn't have beds. We struck this problem in

The —

Yes, please. Tea, please. Just milk. Sorry to organise my supper arrangements. I'm in the hospital.

So, provisioning evacuation centres, I think, needs triggers as well. I don't know if you would be willing to add that to your third point, Mr Mayor, along with sandbags. I think we could adjust the wording slightly so that it both fitted, or if it's something that we just flag going forward. But we've flagged this three times now, and we're still relying on the same community organisation at midnight to sort this out, and it's really not good enough. Thanks.

And finally, the— I couldn't agree more with getting some help with recovery, and that's, you'll see that that's— we talked about this at the Local Government New South Wales conference as well, when we had various ministers and politicians in the room. And there was— and this was before the flood really hit. You know, we knew what the impacts were starting to look like in Lismore and Mullumbimby, but we didn't realise how bad they'd be down here at that stage. So we were still talking about last year. None of that's gone away, and in fact it's only got worse. We really genuinely need help.

Thanks. Thank you. I take your point about the evacuation centres. I'm a bit reluctant to change anything on the fly tonight, given the number of issues that are being brought up. But certainly, I think everything— and you raised a number of good points, and, you know, those things that need to be actioned immediately will, and the things like evacuation centres that need to form part of a debrief , we can include in debrief. It was an oversight. I should just say, though, as a bit of fairness to the Department of Justice and Attorney-General who end up organising those centres, I spent quite a bit of time at the evac centres, and people were coming in, being booked accommodation, and getting out very quickly.

So most people spent only a very, very short amount of time at the evacuation centres, so they did do a very good job there, but still quite valid people to be coming in at 2 a.m. and if they're only there for 45 minutes, you might like something comfortable to be. So I think that's a fair point, and we should include that in our debrief. Deputy Mayor. Yeah

Mr Mayor, I'm very happy to support the Mayoral Minute. I think it's very well timed. But I just wanted to add it's something that after the bushfires in 2019, we planned a public thank you parade for all the volunteers. It was planned to be in April 2020, but of course COVID started in March 2020 and it was postponed. And I'm just wondering whether any thought has been given to resurrecting that event and not having just the bushfires looked at, but all the volunteers for the floods and also all the health volunteers for the COVID pandemic, and having one big thank you parade in a couple of months' time. And we did have the governor booked to come in 2020, and I'm sure we could probably do that again and maybe some other dignitaries.

And I think it'd be really worthwhile us acknowledging the hard work that's been put in by all the volunteers in this area. So I don't want to make that a point in your motion unless you feel like it. I just wanted to put it out there and perhaps you and the staff could start looking at it and maybe considering a date to do it later this year.

Yeah, thanks, Deputy Mayor. It's certainly something we've discussed. I don't know if you've got anything to add, Stuart, around when that might be and what we could do.

Through you, Mr Mayor, we could consider running the same type of thing that we were proposing after the bushfire, which is a street parade and an official ceremony in the main street of Richmond. We could revisit those plans there and expand the scope to include all of the people who have been involved in this event. That could be our starting point, and then we could go from there.

Thank you

Councillor Zemprogna. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I share my admiration for all of our first responders and certainly extend my thanks to them. I also particularly want to single out Councillor Wheeler, who should be resting, and she really is going above and beyond to be present at tonight's meeting, and I think we all wish her a very speedy recovery. Now, as far as the response to the floods are concerned, I couldn't not let the moment pass without saying that, you know, the fact that we are still picking up from the last flood 12 months ago and had not completed some of the public works projects that we needed to in time for this flood has made matters worse. And certainly, I think the people at Lower Portland would feel that, and I think the people at Cornwallis would feel that.

And I wanted to ask a question of staff, depending on the answer, propose an additional point to the motion. It was my understanding after the floods 12 months ago that property owners in the Hills Shire Council area were allowed to perform emergency remedial works without a DA, and that that council advised those landowners that that was perfectly legal to do so because there was a clause in the relevant SEPP to permit it. They'd sought the appropriate legal advice, and that for emergency remedial flood works where people had banks that were subsiding into the river, they could do that. We did not take that approach, and I know many of the Hawkesbury landowners, and particularly at Cornwallis, remonstrated with Council that they were being asked to produce Reports that were more expensive than the works that were proposed.

I was also told that we were hamstrung by the lack of revised guidelines from the state government that would streamline this process and ensure us, in the sense that we weren't telling landowners that they couldn't do something that was perhaps in contravention to some planning code. Could I ask planning staff whether we are still waiting for those streamlined guidelines and whether we're in the same problem now?

And that to you, Dr. [unclear

Thank you through you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, so in comparison, the Hills had a very limited number of properties impacted compared to us. We had over 600 properties impacted, and they were, when I spoke to the Hills, they had just over, you know, 12 or 16 properties. The impact was fairly minor, and they took the decision to allow works to occur, which, under what basis they took that decision, that was up to them. However , the extent of damage that our properties... Experience , it wasn't deemed suitable to rectify those works under emergency orders within our MEP, and as such, it does require DA. And as such, based on all legislation, not just local environmental plan but under state legislation, there are any number of factors that would normally have to be considered when doing an application.

We are, and at that time still in regular discussion with both Department of Planning and also Local Land Services, we're dealing with the recovery from last year around the fast-track approval process, which will hopefully, the intent is to try and alleviate the extent of information, studies and cost that's required to submit an approval. In the meantime, for applicants that have approached Council, and I must say many haven't, which I understand why, there has been a one-on-one discussion with them to try and work out what we can do to help give them advice, that's I suppose trying to give them an approval that's meeting not just legislation but also requiring works that will be sustained in a future flood and not washed away.

And, you know, those people that we've worked with have been quite appreciative because they want to do the right thing, but they also understand that, you know, there is a process that we need to go through to address, to meet the requirements of legislation.

All right then. Thank you for the follow-up question just on that, just to maybe draw some information. I think the Director City Planning is reluctant to say anything that might be perceived negatively about another council, but just to help draw that out, I might just ask, you know, my understanding is we did, upon receiving some information about what the Hills are doing, seek legal advice as to whether there was any way we could give approval for those types of works without a DA. And our advice was that there was no way. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Thank you.

Well, I mean, I had contact with very senior people from Hills Council who cast doubt about the, you know, usefulness of our own legal advice, but I'm not getting into that debate. Ms Perrin, thank you for the thoroughness of your response, but you're still referring to these streamlined guidelines in the future tense. So I can only take that the answer to my question is that we were promised streamlined guidelines and have not yet received them, which then goes to my point. Mr Mayor, would you accept an additional point to your mayoral minute where we additionally ask the state government with more force to provide these streamlined guidelines so that those remedial works have the easiest path through our system as possible?

Yes, I'm happy with that, yeah. To add some, just to add some information, we did get a fact sheet from LLS about three weeks ago, which indicated they had case officers to work with every property owner and that there was a streamlined approvals group, which essentially meant that there was a representative of each of the relevant agencies going to meet and work on the applications together, but no actual change to any statute to allow things to be considered differently. And

That rather speaks to my point, Mr Mayor. I appreciate that that work is ongoing, but the thing is it's been 12 months since the last flood, and now another one that's worse has come along. So I think it would be remiss of us, if this represents our position moving forward, to not reiterate that point and to put a rocket under the state government.

Thank you. Did you have some words there, Councillor? Well

You know, point six that we request that the New South Wales government provide the streamlined process. That was promised a year ago for the approval of applications for riverbank restoration.

Yes.

Yes. Okay. I'm happy with that.

The other thing I've just had some indication that for a thank you event, because we haven't had one planned recently, we probably should include that in our resolution if that's what we intend to do. So I'm also proposing now 0.7 that Council hold a thank you event to thank the volunteers and emergency services personnel for their efforts in the bushfires and floods over the last, and COVID pandemic over the last two and a half years, three years, if everyone's okay with that. Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Yes, happy with that. I just was wondering about if in the last flood in March 2021 we had 600 properties that had damage, it seems to me that that is that sort of workload on our staff to be able to visit all of those properties and to make, and to give support and advice is just, that just seems unreasonable. And I was just wondering whether we had any numbers about how many more properties might have been impacted in this flood. And I think that that's something that when we're asking the state government for help, we have to point that out, that that is an enormous workload. It's not, it's, that would take probably the whole planning department out for a year or so.

I mean, that's the enormity of that, I think, has to be spelled out, and I'm sure you're doing that. But have we got any data on additional properties that have been impacted by this flood yet?

I don't think we've got that information at

This point.

We still need the rapid damage assessments.

Yeah. You sort of answered it a bit when you said that the local land services were offering caseworkers. So that is, I guess that answers that to an extent. But it just seems an overwhelming amount of work, and then the work has to be done. So, okay, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Yeah

That's a very good point, and I think, you know, not to pile on them, but the reality is that that event happened in March 2021, and they advised the community they had caseworkers, you know, a few weeks ago. So at least they should be set up for this one, but that wasn't a lot of help last year, obviously.

Well, we've learnt some things, haven't we? Thank you.

Okay. If there's no further speakers, is everybody clear on what the motion now is with points six and seven?

Yep.

In that case, we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Durick, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Dr Marchy, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgne, Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Richards' absence for the vote. Carried.

Councillor Richards back in. Our next item is Item 56, the Audit Committee, and we have one public speaker, Mr John Ross.

Mr Ross, we're ready for you when you're ready.

Thank you. Do you hear me, Mr Mayor?

You can.

Thank you.

Okay, I am speaking against the staff recommendations in plural on Item 56 regarding the Audit Committee

This is a great demonstration

Of a very poor set of decisions by staff who , in effect, are

Not permitting the elected body nor the community to fully appreciate what has been proposed by the Office of Local Government in regard to the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee. And

For that reason, I recommend to all thinking councillors that they not proceed with this set of recommendations.

In that regard. I'll give you some background. I've written to the General Manager prior to the cessation of the last term of Council in regard to this particular matter, I believe. Furthermore, when this report came to Council on the 8th of March, I did elect to speak, but of course the meeting was cancelled. On the 9th of March, I wrote to the General Manager, Mayor and Deputy Mayor on this subject, clearly outlining my particular objections.

I booked in to speak this evening at about 2.15 this afternoon. At 4.36 p.m., I received an email from the Governance Officer,

Which was, I would suggest, a response that was only forthcoming as a result of my request to speak at tonight's meeting, which itself is most unsatisfactory. The email from the Governance Officer is totally unsatisfactory and factually inaccurate,

And I find quite offensive. Now, what is being proposed, in effect, is that the existing Audit Committee, and I say existing because the last time it met was on the 24th of November 2021. Its term wasn't terminated on the 3rd of December 2021, as claimed by the report and the Governance Officer. It effectively was terminated on the 24th of November 21. In a most unseemly fashion in the audit committee meeting, which I attended, despite some objection from at least one independent voting member on the committee during the, on the day. Now, what we have is an existing committee which has, through the course of the last five years, conducted 16 individual audits in regard to various aspects of Council's operations and activities.

Those documents and reports, presumably if these sets of recommendations go through, will no longer be accessible by the so-called new ARIC, nor the members thereto, which means that all the valuable work there that has been done is going to go down the gurgler. Well, that'll write off about half a million. That's not bad, and we're going to start back at point zero, are we? I think that is entirely foolish and unprofessional. Furthermore, at the time of that last Audit Committee meeting on the 24th of November, the staff reported that they had not completed 40 different work assignments attached to the audit reports that had been done. Now, I put it to you that this set of recommendations will also result in those.

Work assignments, being just taken off the set of issues for staff to get hold of and resolve and bring some further improvement to the operations of this poorly administered council.

Sorry, Councillor Ross, your time has expired. Sorry, Mr Ross, I'll get you to finish up shortly

Thank you. Okay.

I would point out to you also that the report that OLG issued, the draft report, note the word draft, on the 14th of August 2021, has not been subject to proper debate in either the audit committee, nor has it been tabled before Council to debate or subject of a staff report in itself. That is a very unfortunate situation because apparently the staff now govern the council, and they decided that there was no response required. However , looking at the report and understanding the report, it was substantially different to its predecessor.

What's more, the report itself is only draft. It is not legislated. It is not in a final state. We don't know when that'll be. The response here suggested by staff is totally inappropriate to a draft report. Okay,

Mr Ross, I'll have to get you to stop there. I'll give you an extra couple of minutes.

Sorry, Mr Ross, I have to stop you there. Are there any questions for Mr Ross?

I have a question,

Mr Ross, which would be: I understand that most of all your correspondence and most of your address tonight was around the requirement to adopt. Whether or not the requirement to adopt this new committee structure does in fact exist. If we put that to the side for a moment, I would have still thought this structure represents a far better outcome and much more accountability, likely to attract much more highly skilled members of the committee and a lot more formality. So I would have thought, knowing your participation and contribution in the last term, this would have been something that you would have thought was a good idea, and I'm confused as to why you wouldn't want to go this way. Sorry, you are on mute, Mr Ross.

Sorry, you're still muted.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Well

My response to that simply is that this is a draft report. The first thing that needs to be done by this elected body, including your good self, sir, is to consider in detail, with the aid of a staff report in support, what the recommendations are that are being made in this draft report and the contradistinction and differences between this now August report of '21 versus what happened in 2018, and there are substantial differences. Now, furthermore

The Office of Local Government, even in the later report, is suggesting that all that has to happen by June this year is that there is an audit committee bearing the name of an audit risk and improvement committee. Now, very simply, all this council has to do is turn around and rename the committee, with all due respect, both in the June resolution of 2009 and the resolution in 2018, which supports the current charter. Very simple. Then this council is not dealing with a whole lot of hypotheticals, which this report from OLG is about.

Very little needs to be done as an immediate action, and it can only result if adopted, according to the staff, that a whole lot of corporate history and improvement that was occurring through the last term of council is going to be scrapped and scrubbed at great expense to the ratepayers and without their knowledge or the knowledge carrying forward into the new ARIC. I'm quite amenable to the new ARIC, having quite a number of the recommendations it contains adopted, but that comes in time, and only is it necessary to do anything when the Office of Local Government itself has made a final determination on which way it tends to legislate or does actually legislate. How we can be presumptive, I do not know.

It will have absolutely no bearing on the legality of the committee or the decisions of the committee in any way, and frankly is leaving council open to legal disputation. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Councillor. Did you have a question? Yes,

Mr Mayor, thank you. Mr Ross, the information you got this afternoon from the staff, can you forward that to the Mayor, please?

I'd be very grateful to do so, sir, and if other councillors would like it, I'm quite happy to circulate it to all councillors.

Yeah, that's fine, as long as it gets to the Mayor.

I'll certainly assure you of that, sir.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for your comment. I've got a question

To the General Manager, Mr Mayor. Just hold on until we've got a motion before us, I think, then. Thank you, Mr Ross. Did anybody wish to move something? I've circulated a suggested motion slightly different to what's in the business paper. Councillor Lantbucket?

Mr Mayor, I'm happy to move the one that you sent through with Ruthie. I just wondered if we already had an alternate for that committee anyway that would just step in for you.

I think we had appointed an alternate. Oh , okay. Is there a seconder for that? Yes. Councillor Kotlash? Yep. Okay. Councillor Sheed, you had a question? And sorry, can we have that motion brought up on the screen, because obviously, councillors have seen it.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor.

I'm a little bit in the dark with this. I've read all the information, and it is concerning. With some of the comments that were mentioned by Mr Ross, can we have the General Manager address those issues that I'm sure she took note of?

So, I think General Manager might want that referred to Mr McElroy. And so, did you have anything specific, Councillor Sheed, that you wanted to ask ?

No, there was quite a few things that I think needs probably clarification and—

Yeah, I guess one question then to Mr McElroy to start with would be, is it correct that we're not required to do anything other than change the name of the committee?

That'd be part of it. I'm sure there was quite a few things mentioned that the staff— Would have had issue with it if there was an indifference in the legalities of what we need to do.

Mr McElroy?

Through you, Mr Mayor. The legislation that's currently in force requires councils to have an audit risk and improvement committees in place by the 4th of June, and that's because the legislation requires councils to have an audit risk and improvement committee, but there's a particular provision in a schedule to the Act which says that that doesn't have to occur until within six months of an ordinary election. So that's the relevance of the 4th of June 2022 date. All of the other requirements that are referred to in the guidelines that have been spoken about are not yet in force legislatively, and we're awaiting on regulations to be enacted by the government to give effect to those other provisions referred to in the guidelines.

Having said that, the Office of Local Government has strongly urged councils to put things in place as a measure of best practice that fall into line with what it is anticipated the legislative provisions will require once those regulations are made. So what we don't have is a date when those regulations will be in effect, but it's always been anticipated even since the— Well. Last draft of the guidelines was issued in August, that those regulations would be in place by the 4th of June, and we're still anticipating that that will be the case. So, in terms of some of the requirements in the guidelines around the eligibility criteria for membership of the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee, Council is not legally obligated to put those in place now.

However, and there are indeed some staggered timelines in which councils are required to fall into line with the requirements when they're legislated, but because there's a program of a number of core things that need to happen between now and 2027, the Office of Local Government's advice is that councils should try to comply with the guidelines, albeit that they're in draft right now, so that they're in the best position to comply with what will be required later.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just another question. With the previous committee, there was abandoned last year, and the work that was spoke of by Mr. Ross, there was quite a few reports and stuff he talked about, the staff must have did a lot of work on. How are they going to be addressed? Are they left behind, or are they going to be re-addressed? What's happening there?

Mr. Mayor, I can answer that. The audits that were carried out on the previous term of the Audit Committee, and I think there were around about 16 audits, generated around over 200 management actions that council staff needed to action. There are a number of actions that have not been completed and will be completed in the coming 12 months. Those will not be lost. Those will continue to be actioned by council staff, and those will be reported to the new Audit Committee, and therefore none of that information or audits or management actions will be lost. It'll be carried over to the next Audit Committee.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for that. I think that's good clarification. That would be my expectation, and I think maybe the sticking point that Mr. Ross was indicating was that those management actions, the accountabilities for those might disappear, whereas we've heard that that's not the intention at all, that those will be referred to the first meeting of the new audit committee. So, councillors, the motion before us, the only difference between this and the recommendation that appeared in the business paper was that there was a suggestion by staff that we should endorse the draft terms of reference—sorry, with the draft guidelines, with the exception of the requirement that the mayor not be the councillor appointed to the committee.

I felt that if the draft guidelines suggested it's not appropriate for the mayor to be on there, we shouldn't be making an exception to that, and that we should select another councillor. So this is suggesting we adopt them, draft guidelines as they were issued by the Office of Local Government, and when this next comes back, we'll consider nominations for that councillor to take the place. Councillor

Dramatchi. Yes , I have only one question on item number three, when we say endorse the fees payable, and how many meetings are we going to have, and what time? Six months, a year, two years? And how much each meeting or each individual is going to receive? I'll refer that to Mr. McElroy.

Through you, Mr. Mayor. I'll just get my camera working. Apologies. Through you, Mr. Mayor. Generally, well, the draft guidelines require the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee to meet at least four times a year, and it may be that it meets four times plus an additional time, as sometimes the previous audit committee did in relation to things like the— Dealing with the council financial audited financial statements. So four, possibly five meetings a year at least, and the report makes reference to an estimate of costs for panel members. I'm just locating that, but on page 55 of the report, there's a section there in relation to fees, and the—I'm just trying to find the part in the report that deals with the recommendation as to an appropriate amount.

But in relation to paragraph 2 on page 55, there's a reference there to amounts of $1,200 for the chair and independent members, $1,000. So that would be the estimate of costs per member per meeting, and we'd be looking at having one independent chair and at least two independent members.

Dr . Machi, anything else?

Yes. I'm not asking, you know, what happened the year before, last year, last council term. Well, I am trying to find out the exact figure, not five or ten or whatever it is. When you said that it's four and maybe five, well, I would like to know the exact—if it's $1,500, $1,000 multiplied by how many? Five times, ten times? The total cost, I mean. If you want to know, I can do the calculation now, but I want the exact figures, and why do we have to pay this amount?

Well, I think, Councillor Dogramaci, we can't give the exact figure because it depends on how many members council chooses to select as independent members of the panel, and it depends on how many times the committee is required to meet based on its workload. I think, like you said, you can probably do an estimate yourself with somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 per year by looking at that that it's going to cost us. And I think, just my opinion now, you can certainly direct the question to staff if you prefer, but I think the reason we're paying is because in the past the audit committee members haven't had to have any particular qualifications, whereas we would like, the state government is indicating that we'd like qualified members on the audit committee who have the qualifications in finance to be able to actually test the figures and make sure that the staff and executive are acting in the interests of ratepayers and acting on the audit actions, and that requires a skill set, and people with that skill set are not likely to come and do it for free necessarily.

And if we want to attract quality candidates, we need to make sure they're actually being paid for their time.

Okay,

Thanks Thank you. Any further discussion?

If no further discussion, we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Jurek, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillors Improgno, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Wheeler. Against? Councillor Dogramaci

Declare it carried.

Next is items on block, which Councillor Richards, I think, has an interest in . So, Councillor Richards, did you want to read your interest, please? Sorry

Which items are on block, Mr Mayor? I don't have that sheet open at the moment.

Sorry. It would be item 50. So the items on block are items 57, 58. So it's item 50. Yeah,

So 58, I will declare an interest in, please . A significant non-pecuniary. It talks about the Livability Program and my partner's businesses in the main street of Richmond. Thank you

All right, you'll be leaving the room.

Yes, please.

Okay. Put the motion. All those in favour? Favour. Councillor Conolly, Councillor Feigl, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Jeric, Councillor Buckett, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Kotlasch, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Wheeler against ? Councillor Van Proogne and Dr. Marchi. I don't have you voting . Four. In favour, Councillors Van Proogne against Councillor Dr. Marchi. Yep. Okay. Declared carried.

Next item, so we'll bring Councillor Richards back in, please. And then the next item would therefore be item 51, which Councillor Richards is interested in, I think. I know Councillor Lyons-Buckett is interested in. Sorry, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I have a less than significant non-pecuniary interest. Well, I'm assuming the Carrajong Community Forum is the applicant for Music in the Park, but in fact I could not find who the applicants were, only the event names in the report. So I'm assuming it's them, and I am the public officer of the Carrajong Community Forum. But the reason for no further action is that I have no involvement in the general business, meetings, applications or decisions made or the activities of the forum. Thank you.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Any discussion? Oh, well, someone want to move something first, actually. Move the recommendation. Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Sheather. There's no discussion. We'll put the motion. Councillor Lyons-Buckett

Sorry, Mr Mayor. I just had a question, and I think I may have asked this before, and I think the answer—I did just want to draw attention to that because I couldn't find, maybe it is there somewhere, but I could not find the names of the applicants just of the events. And I think that does not enable us to see if we have some association with somebody if we don't know who the actual person is applying. I just wondered if the people that do miss out, do we give them a structured feedback around what was wrong with their application and work through with them maybe for the next time they apply?

For that to the Manager, Corporate Communications.

Through you, Mr Mayor, yes, we do. We do go back to them and we do work through the criteria with them and talk to them about that.

And we'll note the feedback about including the applicants in further reports.

Yep, we can do that next time.

It's a bit of a trap for us, that's all. Councillor Wheeler.

Sorry, pressing all the wrong buttons. Thanks, Mr Mayor. I'm just a little bit concerned that we are now increasingly getting events that come to us that are particularly commercialised, and I think we need to be mindful that one of our selection criteria, or one of our key criteria for this, is that we're providing opportunity for community groups. And I just worry about, I don't have a lot of information to go on, but things like the Hawkesbury Home Show, I'm a little bit concerned that we've funded that and not funded a musical theatre group, and yet the Home Show is very likely to be largely a commercial activity, with little guarantee that they are local businesses beyond us being told that they are. I think we need to be careful of this going forward, that we're not using council money to subsidise commercial events that don't confer the benefits on the community that we intended

Thanks, Councillor Wheeler. I think my response would be that the.. Who's not muted. My responsibility that we've , I think we deliberately set this up with eligibility criteria so that we could take ourselves out of having to make value-based decisions like that. So potentially, if we're not producing the outcome we want, we might need to look at the eligibility criteria again at some point.

Manager, Corporate Communications. So

If I could just add through you, Mr Mayor, that we have this time created two assessment criteria. So we have broken it down into a commercial event criteria and a community event criteria. So we have tried to segregate depending on what type of event that they are, and then we have assessed against that criteria.

Thank you. No further discussion. We'll put the motion. Councillor Dr Machi So Councillor Reardon, if you're not talking, that'd be good. Thank you.

Councillor Dr Machi. Yes, sir. I have no objection of any one of these items in here. I support them 100%. My question is that, you may find it funny, but is there a reason that, you know, all these writings are in 0.7 or 0.8, while we have, for example, in this area that whether , you know, these things align with the community strategic plans? We have space up and down in each one of those boxes. Could we not use, say, maybe 0.10 or 0.11? I mean, most of us, you know, wearing glasses. I don't know how good theirs are, but I'm having a little bit of problem, honestly. I mean, we have spaces in here, in each one of the squares. Could we not fit a bigger point?

Yeah, that's a good point, Councillor Dogramachi. We'll take that feedback on. Thanks.

Put the motion then. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Durey, Councillor Lainsbury, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Dogramachi, Councillor Zempovner, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Richards, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lainsbury. We's absent for the unopposed voted. Sorry. I think I read your name out too. I just thought you weren't there. Declare it carried.

Next item is item 52, and Councillor Richards is declaring an interest.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. This item discusses federal funding, and I'm a councillor. Thank you

So you're leaving ? Okay . Clarify the exact nature of that interest, but I think we've got that there. Councillor Wheeler, move the recommendation. Yes, please. Seconded. Okay. Did you want to speak to that, Councillor Wheeler?

Sure. So look, I'll speak regarding the motion that's in the business paper. So this is what we were discussing in your mayoral minute, Mr Mayor. I think we, and I prepared this before this latest flood. If we decide to take this to Canberra, I think we can add to it the information from the current flood. But clearly, when you look at this, this is a significant pool of money that council is expected to stump up, to forward fund, in order to get these works done. I would be happy if you wanted to amend this to also ask for, to use the words, say, from the mayoral minute, around personnel as well. But I think we probably all agree that this is far too big an impost for a small council to bear .

If we decide to, and then the next thing is, do we send somebody if we decide to do this? Sorry, I'm not very clear. Clearly, if we decide to send this on to Canberra, then I think we're going to need someone either in person or online to argue the case.

I would be in favour of the motion. I did actually want to discuss changing it slightly, though, if people are amenable, that I think we should be— I mean, it's not just the federal government is what I'd be getting at. You know, that would be helpful. And we should note too that, just for our own purposes, the federal government did give us a million dollars within a day or two into the bank account to help with emergency things, but a million dollars is probably not enough . But I think we need to be calling on the federal and state governments to establish disaster recovery funds and calling on the federal and state governments to update their natural disaster funding agreements to include the reimbursement of project costs, project management costs, to local councils . If that— is that appropriate for you, Councillor Wheeler? I'm

Quite happy with that, yes.

Yeah. Councillor Lyons-Buckett as a seconder, if we—

Yeah, I've got no problem with that,

Mr. Mayor.

So I think then, just looking for a suggestion from staff maybe on what exactly we're moving, whether we try and change those words or whether we can just have a resolution that says that motion to be amended with the additional points from discussion or something . And then,

So the recommendation says consideration be given to the participation of nominated councils and staff as considered by... Okay. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Mr Mayor, I was just going to point out, actually, that at the Local Government New South Wales conference a couple of weeks ago, it was a very strong push from across the entire state to be pushing for disaster recovery money in a big way. And I think that when we're asking for this, we really need to specify that this needs to be looking at the long term, because just getting short-term funding is not going to do anything for anyone. It means we roll from one disaster to the next, and the governments really need to be having a proper look at what the future may entail and going to that. What I was going to say about this motion, and something that I think is quite important, and it came from talking to a number of people from regional areas when I was at the last conference, I think that someone, I'd be happy to do it, but one person, it would be really good to have a representative at the Regional Forum, which is about dedicated to the various issues, particularly this year it is called Regions Rediscovered.

And I think that because we're not really metro, even though we are in a sense that we're designated a metro area, we actually have a lot to learn from what's happening in the regions, particularly around the main issues, the opportunities of rural and regional health and statistical trends of raising awareness of the importance in the regions. And I think that these are very valuable forums to hear the experiences of people who are essentially our neighbours on the other side, not the metropolitan side. But I think that that would be—Councillor Redmond's not on mute again—I think that would be a really good thing for one of us to attend, is what I wanted to point out. I thought I should do it now before we get to the end of the motion.

Thank you. Councillor

Sheehan? Yeah, thanks, Mayor. My comments are similar to Councillor Buck, Mayorlyne Buckett's . If we weren't proposing to send someone, and I don't have an issue if we do , that there's many councils in a similar situation to us, and whether or not we could make contact with them as a joint resolution to put to a forum like that . That way that it'll be heard and the like. But representation is really important, and as I said, I don't disagree with the councillor, so I just wanted to make those comments. There's lots of other councils in a similar situation to us, and there's very limited opportunity in forums like this. There'll be motions coming from everywhere, and we might be better off .

With another council.

Thank you. Thank you . So , just unclear reading the report what the process is here. Are we suggesting that we're not nominating councillors at this point, or is that required

General Manager

Through you, Mr Mayor, yes. Unless Mr McElroy is going to contradict me, no, we'd be seeking nominations at this point.

Okay. Councillor Dramaci?

Yes, Mayor. Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. What I would like to know is that do we have to follow the rules and regulations as set by the state and the federal government in order to send somebody to see whoever, whether it's the minister or someone who is in charge of allocating these funds? I'll be more than, well, if you can make the appointment, I'll be more than happy to travel. And if I am allowed to see the minister, finance minister or whoever is in charge, face to face, and for that reason, if I have to stay there day two, I don't want any money. I'll spend my own money. If it's possible, I don't know how it works, but I'm more than happy to travel to Canberra if, as a council, because I don't know whether we have to go through our state member or federal member. Is it possible that we could contact them directly and bypassing state and federal members?

Yeah, so generally when we're seeking meetings with state and federal ministers, it's done by the mayor on behalf of the council, or unless there's a resolution for a delegation or there's some other specific reason to include a committee member or something. But generally that's the protocol, is that when we request those meetings, the request would come from myself to that minister, letting the local member know as well . Certainly have had some discussions with state ministers over the last couple of weeks just on an ad hoc basis as they've called to check in, but we will be seeking formal meetings to discuss these things following that resolution we just made in the mayoral minute

Could we do that as soon as possible? Yes, absolutely. All right. Thanks. Deputy Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, I was just wondering whether we could send a copy of this to WesROC as well. The CEO of WesROC is currently canvassing local, canvassing the member councils about this matter, about the size and timing of disaster recovery funding, so it would just be another thing they can add to the research.

Okay. Do we need to put that in the, I don't know if we need that in the resolution. We can send that to WesROC. Yep, we'll do. Thank you . Okay, so, I guess we'll call for nominations of people who are interested in attending. Given the importance of the motion we're putting forward, I would be happy to attend. Is anybody else wishing to attend?

Councillor [unclear] and Councillor [unclear]

Mr Mayor, I would like to do the online regional. I don't necessarily have to go to Canberra. I can just do that. It's just a one-day one. I can do it online. Okay

And are we—do we have to indicate now whether we're doing it virtually or in person, General Manager? No. Okay . Yeah. Yep , we'll work that

Out. No, Mr Mayor, we can sort that out. So

We've got a motion that— we're putting this motion—and that myself and Councillor Zemprogne would be attending the conference, and Councillor Lansbucket would be attending the regional session. Any no right of reply required, I don't think. I don't remember who moved it. So, seeing it now, no. So we'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Varg, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Jerrick, Councillor Lansbucket, Councillor Dobromarchi, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zemprogne, Councillor Wheeler.

Next item is—

Therefore, item 53, we just need to get Councillor Richards back.

I've just had a message through regarding some procedures we might have missed. So , just for clarity, the point four that we just voted on was that we made changes to the motion to incorporate the sentiments that were just included in the mayoral minute to tonight's meeting regarding disaster recovery staff. And the mover and seconder for the items on block, I believe, was Councillor Kotlash as the mover and Councillor Livesbucket as seconder, just to get that all on the record if that wasn't clear.

53.

For that one.

Councillor Kotlash, which option were you moving?

Yes, and you would think I would have figured that out before I put my hand up. I will just skip down to

Option one is to continue as our current cycle, and option two is to move to one meeting per month.

Option two, please. Okay.

Is there a seconder for that? Seconder for that, Councillor Calvert. Discussion, Councillor Kotlash?

Not necessarily. I think it's fairly straightforward. I guess the take-home message of this option is that staff are needlessly doing administrative duties instead of really being freed up to do more, I guess, analytical and policy development. So that in itself makes me think that we should give this a go. And even if we do go to monthly meetings, which I understand is in line with most other councils, there's nothing stopping us having extraordinary meetings if and when we think it's necessary. So it's a kind of a bit of a win-win situation. We give this a try, and if we find we're having lots of extraordinary meetings, I expect we can move on from there. So, yeah, I think this is a good option and will save us some time, save the staff some time.

I mean, we're probably going to have to do the same amount of work, but in a different setting . Yeah, I think that's a good move. Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Sheather.

On mute, Councillor Sheather.

Is it working? Yeah. No, you've just muted yourself again.

Okay. Excuse me. I speak against the motion and foreshadow a motion, if that's, would you be that we stay with what we've got. The last, I remember leading to these elections, where councils were complaining that the meetings were going to all sorts of hours and the like, and we're talking about going back to one meeting a month. On top of that, we've got a new council that we haven't sat down around and had face-to-face discussions amongst ourselves and staff, and we're talking about reducing that less.

We're elected to look after our community, and we seek professional advice on how that might happen with direction from the staff. And to minimise that contact and relationship, I just can't believe it. I really can't. Mr Mayor, I can't express strong enough that our role is to service our community, and we can only do it by having a good approach with the staff and understanding and liaison with them on a regular basis. And if it needs direction and follow-up and the likes, that's what we're there for. And I certainly don't support what's been proposed.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I agree with Councillor Sheather. I think moving to once a month would be a retrograde step. And in fact, Shoalhaven, equally hit by natural—well, far worse hit by the Black Summer bushfires, have just shifted from meeting once a month to meeting twice a month because they can't get through the volume of work that's required to help their community recover. I don't want to see us in that sort of position. I don't think the community expects us to meet less. I think they expect us to be making these decisions and showing leadership, and that doesn't come from us not being in the chamber. I also agree with Councillor Sheather that we've got this new group of councillors who really need to feel that they're part of this organisation and have some capacity and some role in the governance of the organisation.

This meeting once a month, I think, is pushing us further away from that point, not closer to it. I'm quite disappointed to see this reduced to such simplistic financial terms. This is a matter of governance and leadership. Reasonable that the governance of this organisation comes at a cost, and I think the cost savings are potentially overstated. So whilst actually putting on a meeting contributes to the cost, reports and business paper preparation will still be the same unless what is really being proposed here is that the elected body of council will be given less information and make fewer decisions, and that more will be determined by delegation, and that is certainly not acceptable to me, and it's not acceptable to any of the people that I've canvassed within the community.

I certainly don't think it's acceptable to the people who voted for me on a platform of grassroots democracy, and I don't think it's acceptable to many of us in the chamber. As Councillor Sheather has stated, the people who elect us rightly expect us to deal with issues when they're current, not four weeks later. They expect to be able to speak at the time that the issue is relevant. And I think we also need to be concerned that at a time when the state government has eroded the powers of local government, this would seem to erode them further, and it would seem quite foolish of us to push those powers, to hand over more powers and say that we simply have so little to do that we could turn up once a month and call the job done.

It feels like we're being turned into a rubber stamp. I'm not content with that, and I don't think any of us should be. Thanks.

Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Zamprogna.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm also speaking against the motion. I agree with both Councillor Sheather and Councillor Wheeler. I think that the community expect us to turn up and do the work. A point that I was making recently when I put my notice of motion forward about report card concerning councillor attendance. I think the optics of this, as they were before, are potentially dreadful. Imagine, you know, something that effectively means that we're turning up half as often, being presented with half as much information, and making half the decisions. Are councillors that are in support of this motion prepared to take half the stipend that they are currently being paid? I suspect not. That's not on the table.

You know, the quality of our democracy locally has already been terribly affected over the last several years. Our inability to meet in person means that we have forgone things that we used to take for granted. The fact that we would meet before a council meeting and that we would break bread with each other and that we would talk in a general sense about all of the things that might be coming up on the business paper and coming to some kind of an accord. Instead, we lob into a Zoom meeting two minutes before it starts, and only one person is allowed to speak at a time. At this point, in the council— Cycle . After I was elected for the first time five years ago, we were already engaged in a weekend-long workshop to try and establish what our community strategic plan would be.

There's no workshop in prospect that I am aware of to rejig our community strategic plan, which I remember as a wonderful opportunity for new councillors to kind of come together, and the walls were an absolute cyclone of Post-it notes and butcher's paper and maps and ideas, and that ferment stimulated me. I think what we've been reduced to by Zoom has greatly disserviced the community, and to then suggest on top of that that we should not ask council staff to do the thing that we've paid them to do, which is to prepare minutes and agendas and business papers and reports for our consideration so that we, as members of the public, can make our contribution in a substantive way to the shape of the Hawkesbury community, I cannot support that.

I don't care what other councils do. In fact, the example that was shown simply proves that we're better than those other councils, and we should stay that way. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm also speaking against the motion. I think that to the flip side of saying that we could go ahead and have extraordinary meetings, to the same point, we could schedule our meetings, and there's nothing to stop us either having a very short meeting to having a meeting that specifically addresses one particular area of business. That we could just have one item on there that we could address, and it would be a shorter meeting. We don't have to have everything there all the time. I'm a little bit perplexed about why this is so difficult to get these meetings done. We don't have DAs anymore. We used to have six to eight DAs on a night that we had to be dealing with, that reports were written for.

We don't have any committee meetings aside from the statutory committee minutes. We're not having minutes that are coming to Council from committees. I'm just not sure why it is so much more work. I really am quite perplexed. Back in the day, we had, you know, sometimes 40, 50 items on our business paper, and the meetings did go late, and we don't have to deal with that many things now. But I would be happy to go if this motion is defeated and to support what I expect Councillor Sheehan would bring forward, which was to keep it as it is and work around that the best that we could do. As I said, there's nothing to stop us having a shorter or a specifically targeted meeting around something. And I think if the issue is with staff not being able to have things ready, then when we ask for a report or something, I think it's really important that the staff tell us if the turnaround time is unachievable or, you know, unreasonable to them.

Then I think if we're told that, I think everyone's accepting that, you know, that that can be an issue and that we can set it for a different time. I just don't understand why we would have less. meetings, and I think in some of those other councils that have a monthly meeting, they have other delegated functions to other committees of all the council and so on, where decisions are being made. And I just think that we don't want any reduction in our level of accountability and our level of showing our community what we're doing, because it's very clear that people, as Councillor St. Bronio said, people have felt a bit disconnected because we've had to go into the online forum. And I just think that I would rather not see it move to monthly before we see if we can look around having it as is and perhaps adjusting that a little when there are big time pressures.

Okay . Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. I support the motion that's before us, and I'm just to respond to a couple of those things. I mean, the reason that I would support this motion that's before us is because it is bringing us back in line with any other governance body that I can think of. It's, you know, any other organisation where I've ever been on a board, I've never had meetings more than once per month. And it's precisely because it does create an administrative burden on staff. We've got entire teams that are working on, you know, little else other than turning around minutes, business papers, motions, reports between every meeting that happens every two weeks. And for that, are we achieving anything great that couldn't, you know,

That

We couldn't achieve at a monthly meeting cycle? I think that Council's NP program, to say that we're doing half the work, is just not correct. There's no suggestion here that we're going to delegate any functions to the general manager that aren't already delegated, or anyone else. Every report that has to come to Council will continue to have to come to Council. There's no way, it's not statutorily possible, that there'll be fewer reports if we change our meeting cycle. That's just not how it works. And I think Council's NP program is very aware of that. So it can't possibly be half the work. It's just a more efficient way of working. And as Councillor Kotlash said, you know, it's not permanent.

There's no reason that if this isn't working in two months, we can't change back, or if this isn't working next week, we can't call an extraordinary meeting. I'd also just point out that the suggestion in the business paper is that Tuesday that we were having a meeting, we would still be having briefings and workshops. So we would still be having the same amount of engagement and touch points with staff and each other. It's just the only difference would be: are we requiring staff to have all the formality prepared of a formal Council meeting, or are we doing that in a more informal way that saves the admin burden of that? So I think we should be giving this a go. I also don't think it's fair to say that nobody has suggested that it's too difficult for us.

That's not what the report says. The report doesn't say that we can't do it because it's too difficult. The report that we've got from the staff here says that it's currently placing a considerable administrative burden, and that we would save money and time if we didn't have to have so many meetings, and we could still achieve the same thing. So I think it's important to reflect, just to clarify those two points, that nobody's suggesting we're going to be dealing with less reports. Nobody was suggesting that we didn't have the internal capacity to produce the business paper. The suggestion was that we could do this more efficiently and allow our staff more time to work on key things like flood recovery and other general business as usual, if they weren't focusing on producing so many business papers and minute sets of minutes and so on.

Councillor Dogramaci? Yes,

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I'm against it on the basis that the work will be piled up. I don't know how many motions have been moved in the previous council, how many per week, per month, or, you know, every second Tuesday or whatever. I don't know how many years, but I think, you know, we should rely on the experiences of the seven previous councillors, that if we start meeting once a month, which will suit me personally on my business, but I think, you know, we should have the responsibility to address to the motions and the problems that we have, regardless of comparing us to the other councils. We cannot compare our council to the other. Our area is different than theirs. They don't have the river.

They didn't suffer the disaster as much as we did. So I think that, you know, we should just keep meeting twice a month. So for that reason, I think that it would be appropriate that, you know, to stick what we already have now. Thank you.

Councillor Kotlash.

Can I address the amendment?

We don't have an amendment yet. We've got a foreshadowed motion if this was to fail, so—

Oh, okay.

If there's no further discussion, we can have right of reply.

Sorry. Okay, that's fine. I do my right of reply now.

No further discussion, councillors? No, right of reply.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. It's interesting that the discussion has gone along the lines of we don't have time to do our community justice, when actually, if we met once a month, we would have more opportunity to have briefings, to have workshops. Councillors actually made mention of a workshop that we had one weekend. That wasn't a council meeting. That was a workshop, and— Councillor Shevis, it was talking about us getting together and talking. The appropriate place to have those sorts of discussions are council briefings. Council meetings are not places. It is not a time to make campaign speeches or grandstand. And it seems like the people that want to keep doing fortnightly meetings are the people that spend time, you know, promoting themselves and not actually talking about the business of council.

We should have all of our— the debate side of decision-making goes , you know, goes before a meeting. A meeting isn't really the place where you make up your mind. It's where you might sort of hear last-minute things and refine what you think. But there is a lot of work that goes into decision-making that happens way, way before a meeting. So I was really excited by the prospect that we would actually have more time to spend tackling the really complex issues that we have, and I was really hoping that this would give us an opportunity to start making our new committee structure really work for us. And that is a way that we could have democracy. I mean, I don't know what this has got to do with local democracy.

You know, I was elected on a platform of grassroots democracy as well, and fairness and, you know, having as many voices in decision-making as possible. So. Those of you that think if we meet less, we're going to be doing less for our community , that's just a furphy. That's wrong. We should be able to, we should be getting to a point where we have different systems and more voices and better decision making. And if we can free up staff to be able to concentrate on getting us better reports and more, you know, more information about the actual decisions we make, well, that is going to improve what we do for our community. And I'm really disappointed to hear that there's an assertion that going to monthly meetings means I'm, you know, I don't want to work as hard.

I'm actually wanting to work twice as hard, but I just want to do it in a smarter way. And I think this was the smarter way. So please, let's give this a go. I think our community actually expects us to change and to be flexible about how we do our job. Thanks.

Thank you. We put the motion. I'll just wait for it to come down off the screen so I can see everybody. Put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Favour: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert. Against:

Councillor Sheather, Councillor Jarrett, Councillor Lynes-Buckett, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor St Progne, Councillor Wheeler. I'll declare that carried on the casting vote of the Mayor.

Our next item is item 54,

Council Kotlash.

You've got your hand up still. Was that just from last time?

It was from last time.

Somebody wish to move the recommendation or something?

I think that was Danielle's called that up.

Councillor Wheeler.

I had a series of questions, Mr Mayor, but unfortunately I've left them at home. I can forward those to the Director of Infrastructure Services. So I'll move the recommendation in the business paper, and I've just got one question.

A seconder for that? Councillor Sheather. Your question, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I think we saw, we've seen significant issues with progress due to last year's flood, and I'm wondering what the impact of this year's flood is now going to have on our progress with the operational plan.

Sorry, General Manager.

Through you, Mr Mayor. Look, clearly the impacts of the 2021 flood had impacted on our ability to deliver a number of actions within the operational plan, but particularly a significant rephase of our capital works program was necessary as a result of that flood. And I would expect, we are developing the 22-23 budget and capital works program now, trying to set a realistic program for that financial year, and I would expect that a similar rephasing and reprioritisation of our capital works will be necessary having to account for the current and most recent flood.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reid, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lindsbarker, Councillor Dobromarchi, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert, Councillors Improgno, Councillor Wheeler. Declare it carried.

Next item is item 55, which I think someone had an interest in. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

I've got a less than significant non-transferary interest. I live on King Road, Wilberforce, one of the roads detailed in the item. My reason for no further action is that I obtain no benefit from the actions arising from the resolution.

Thank you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move the motion.

Moved recommendation. A seconder for that? Seconded, Councillor Sheather. Discussion? Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Look, this is a long time coming, and I think in the delay of it coming forward, we've sort of lost the meaning of what it was about. I'm happy to receive the report, but I think it came from a resolution from a mayoral minute that I brought in 2018, and it really was asking to look at the potential costs of the heavy vehicle usage and the maintenance around heavy vehicles using non-main roads as a thoroughfare in our area. And I don't know that this report addresses that. I think it also ties in with another outstanding resolution that I moved, a motion that I moved a couple of years ago, which was about investigating the impacts on our local roads from our adjoining areas where we have construction going on in a neighbouring LGA, but the construction vehicles are actually travelling on our local roads.

And I haven't heard back on that one, but I know that the former Director of Infrastructure said that he was speaking to the Hills Council about the issues on Boundary Road and that there was some work being done around that. This is quite an impost on some of our local roads, and we see that in the Oakville and Maraylya area where the deterioration of the roads from the very heavy usage of vehicles. And in fact, in those statistics, we see that there's 20% of the vehicles on Saunders Road are heavy vehicles, which is a lot, I would expect, on a road going through Oakville. I think that, I'm not sure when these figures have actually been taken, but I gather they are reasonably recent. And so I think we've lost what we were actually looking around, which was when we had these situations and when we have diversions off our main roads and we have a lot of heavy vehicles travelling on Kermond Road.

We saw the impact when the Windsor Bridge was closed or being constructed, when we had a lot of heavy vehicles going around that way and the impact that had on our roads and how we had to repair the roads, the sides of the roads and the various things that happened on the roads. I'm guessing really, I think into the future we will have to look at this sort of thing again because the other area where it occurs, and we know it occurs, is along Innes Lane and Yarramundi Lane, where the RMS has put a right turn directional sign that you would use that road, and we have various heavy vehicles travel along that road. I know that there can't be a limit put on there because there are farms down there and, of course, we have farm vehicles that use it.

But there are also a lot of other heavy vehicles use it, and I think this is an impost on our ratepayers. And I gather the conclusion from this report is that it is just normal, that what we're seeing is normal, and that we will just bear that cost. But I just wanted to flag that, first of all, it had lost some relevance because it was six years ago that it was brought forward. And the second point is that I think that we still do have these issues around the impacts on our roads from heavy vehicles that do have a choice to use the main road but choose to travel on what some people would call rat runs around the Hawkesbury .

We've had one speaker in favour of the motion. Was anyone speaking against the motion?

No, the other speakers still wish to speak in favour. If everyone's in favour, yeah, we'll keep arguing in favour, Councillor Zanprokner.

Thank you. Look, I'm not particularly in favour. It's just that I feel like I'm in a situation where there's nothing to be done. This kind of report is emblematic, I think, of a problem. The report was asked for over three years ago. The committee to which the answer was delegated to be received no longer exists. And what we've been presented with is a report that's sterilised in terms of any ability to make good use of the information that's now been painstakingly put together. It does not surprise me at all that there are certain parts of the Hawkesbury that are enduring two or three times the heavy vehicular traffic of other areas. That's what this report tells us. And the thing is, we endure a great deal of traffic that's not generated in our area and yet we're just expected to cop it.

So those areas that are adjacent to the growth precincts in the southeast around Oakville and Vineyard and Moraylya and so forth, those roads are like a lunar landscape. And I strongly suspect that that additional heavy vehicular traffic has contributed to that situation. Recently I went to the meeting of the Pitt Town Progress Association, where it was a source of significant concern that it had been reported in the Hills media that there was the proposal for a crushed sandstone plant out at Maroota. Now, what that means is that crushed sandstone in heavy trucks will make their way through Pitt Town. And of course, the thing that makes that issue even more acute is the delay of the Pitt Town bypass.

That traffic ends up coming directly through Pitt Town. And the question, the very reasonable question that that community group had, well, in what way does increased heavy vehicular traffic... Enter our radar, so that if there is a DA for something like that that's out of area, or a housing development that's over the boundary, nothing that we can control, but nevertheless we have some input into that DA when it's being considered by a council or a state agency, so we can say, look, hang on, this is going to generate an enormous amount of traffic. We don't get any benefit from it. All we cop is the extra traffic. And I don't see anything in this report or the suggestion that we should merely receive and note it that moves the needle.

I would prefer that we had some kind of a protocol. Now that we know what this report says, that there is some protocol that says if a DA for a crushed sandstone plant at Maroota means that there's going to be more heavy vehicular traffic going through Pitt Town and Oakville, is that that prompts council to make the appropriate submission to say, well look, this has an effect on us. Are we going to get more road funding to fix all the extra potholes? It does nothing of the sort. And I don't know how to fix this motion, but I'm bringing that issue to light and asking for my colleagues' wisdom. Thank you.

Thank you. Further speakers in favour? Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. Councillor Marylands-Bucket answered some of the questions in relation to how this come about. I looked at it in dismay. I don't know what was trying to be achieved here, and we spoke about $75,000 a few minutes ago. When you look at this document, the amount of work that went into this, $ 75,000 probably peels into very , very— Very minor. And when you look at it, and I only, I know a lot of the roads and I looked at them briefly, there's certain projects that are happening that, where these numbers—I don't know how, it doesn't say how long it was over, so I don't know, but I assume probably a month or something like that. And some of the figures are high. The Putty Road, Castle Ray Road, there's another one, Dozano Road and the like. It's up around 20%.

But just disagreeing with some of the comments that Councillors [unclear] made. If we've got—and we talk about it all the time, helping businesses and all the rest of it— what do we call these trucks if they're not businesses? We've got turf farmers, we've got industrial area at Woolloford, we've got two quarries up at East Kurrajong. They travel through our city and then leave it and go into some other local government area. What, are we going to put boundary fences up or something? And so the people going out of ours get charged by a neighbour, and we charge the ones coming in. This is crazy. And to say we don't have a say in it, if we had the opportunity to speak to our planners and the like when these things were approved, you will see that they pay a bill to fix the roads and things like that in their proximity.

And if you go up to East Kurrajong quarries, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. It's the best part of our roads in our city. They do pay, and there's a limit to how much they can pay.

And we sit here about trying to improve our city, and the comments I hear tonight about restriction on business. You know, you can't build a house without a truck,

And you don't get groceries at Woolworths without a truck. And we're worried about them breaking up our roads.

If the roads are the problem, that's what we should be discussing, not who's driving the truck. And if we need to shop at McGrath's Hill, then that's what we talk about, not, Oh, we'll go to Woolworths and let them deal with it. It's our responsibility. And, yeah, I'll leave it there, Mr Mayor.

Thank you .

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. There's a few bits of information, I think, that would make this report potentially more useful for us. One of the things that I'd really like to know is which of these roads are currently built to carry this level of traffic, because I think that's where we see problems on roads like Kermond Road, for example, which I remember when I was first elected in 2016, Mr Organ described as being a thin smear of bitumen over alluvial soil. And it's these roads that we really see this impact on. And then it's our budget when we amend these roads so that they can carry this traffic. And I think that's perhaps the missing piece of this jigsaw, is knowing what we've got now that can cope, and just how much we have to put in place to get to the position where all of these roads can cope.

I think some of these roads that are copping these higher levels of traffic are residential streets, and we need to be really mindful of that. There are implications here for planning and for financing, I think, where we—and I know when we were looking at the LEP, for example, and looking at employment, the employment land strategy, and we talked about increasing the footprint of Woodlands. And yet we see King Road, where I live, already carrying 16% of heavy vehicle traffic, repaired to a standard at a huge cost for the first kilometre of that road so that it can now carry that vehicle traffic. And it sat underwater for the better part of a week now and seems to have survived fairly well. But if we look at that road, it's also got no footpath.

It's residential for more than the first kilometre, and people walk on the road with 16% of the vehicle traffic there, which is—and there's a lot of traffic that hammers through that road, not always at the speed limit— and people are walking on the street to get up and down it. So there are implications, I think, from this report about where we direct our funding. And I'm talking about King Road because I know it well, but there are many more of these roads that are similar, and where there is a similar impact on residents. I think we need—the other piece of information that I think would be useful would be to know how many of these are transient and how many are permanent. So the increased traffic in Oakville on Old Pitt Town Road, for example, and Saunders Road, 19% heavy vehicle traffic on Saunders Road.

That is a lot of truck movement. No wonder the locals are up in arms about the impacts there. So will that go away when we've finished developing every square inch of that area, or will this be an ongoing thing for those residents? And if it's permanent, can we apply to reclassify some of these roads for funding purposes? Because what I think we have to talk about here is mitigation. No one's proposing that we necessarily stop truck movements. What we're talking about is how we handle this better. We're not the body that collects truck registration, nor are we the body that collects fuel excise. So I think we need to be asking for a greater share of the funding pie from the state and federal government who do collect that money.

We also need signage , better signage, I think, on some of these roads, particularly around speed limits. And I think we need to consider load limits on some of them where the carrying capacity just isn't good enough. And, sorry, the lights have just gone out where I am. And I think we need to ensure that when we do put in, that when we do look at developments, we look at how much those developers will pay for road remediation, because a lot of the time it's their vehicles in those transient situations that have done the damage to the roads. But we also— We also need to ensure that when we consider these things, we consider public safety, particularly in residential areas. Thanks .

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This report is, like many others I've seen over the years, they come in with this information and we decide to receive and note them. And to me, we may as well not have had the report if we're just going to receive and note it. I think the important thing is what do we do with this information? Some of the councillors who spoke on this have suggested some ideas, but most of the councillors who have spoken so far have basically just helped describe the problem. What we need is, I think, to send this to a committee, and I believe the Innovation and Partnerships Committee would be the right one to send it to, and ask them to build on this report and make some recommendations back to Council.

Some of those recommendations, I mean, Councillor Wheeler just touched on what they might be. There might be load limits, for example, and looking to get the state government to target funding for certain roads. But to just let this go now and receive and note it, I think would be a total waste of everyone's time. So I'm asking the mover, and I don't know who the mover was, whether we can add a point to the recommendation saying that this be sent to the Innovations and Partnerships Committee to bring back a further report on what action can be taken on this matter.

That's fine by me, so long as it's sort of, you know, done within the year or something.

Well, we can put a time on it if you like.

Well, I'm not sure when this committee will

Meet. It'll meet when we have business for it to conduct, and this is business for it to conduct, and therefore it could meet in the next couple of weeks. And it might decide to build on that and set up a working group or call for public consultation on the matter. And there's a lot of ways the committee could go with it, but the point is, I think we need to take this further and get more community involvement and more discussion.

So, Councillor Buckett, did you want to change the motion to that?

That's fine, Mr Mayor.

Who is the seconder? Sorry, I didn't note that down. Councillor Sheather. Councillor Sheather, did you want to second the motion to send to a committee?

Sorry, you're muted. Oh

No.

No. Okay. In which case, you really need an amendment to keep this done properly. So move that amendment, Councillor Calvert.

I will move that amendment, Mr Mayor. Seconded,

Councillor Kotlash. I might—

I don't know if I'm speaking against the amendment. I think one thing we have to point out that unless I'm totally missing something is that the report says that this level of heavy vehicle traffic is in keeping with general patterns of road use and, you know, nothing remarkable. So I'm not sure, you know, on that basis, how would we go back to the state government and say we need extra funding? And the state government will say, well, yeah, but you've got the same heavy vehicle pivots as everybody else does. Why would we give you extra funding for that? You know, it's not surprising to me that in the Hawkesbury, I would have expected we would have had higher heavy vehicle pivots given the jobs that our people do.

You know, we have agriculture, we have a lot of construction businesses compared to some areas. I'm not surprised there's heavy vehicle traffic, and I don't think we can say that— Yeah, the heavy vehicle traffic is coming from somewhere else all the time. I mean, in some cases, it clearly is. But again, that's not to say that there's heavy vehicle traffic in other local government areas that services people in the Hawkesbury. So, whilst, I mean, I don't think it's the worst thing. If it goes to committee and the committee looks at it, I would also question what we're really trying to achieve here. Because, you know, if the reports come back to us and said, yes , some roads have heavy vehicle traffic, but in general it's in keeping with what's experienced in general road use, then I'm not sure what the committee is going to do about that.

That's just my opinion. Any other discussion on the amendment , Councillor Kotlash?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I think it's because we have this information, I think it's incumbent on us to actually do something with it. Whilst I agree with you that we might not have, you know, our vehicle movements might not be remarkable, that still shouldn't stop us trying to get a better outcome for our community, which might be speed limit restrictions, that might be load limits. I think Councillor Weller had some good points about those things, and we could ask for it to be considered for funding for particular things. We might have some areas that are particularly residential as opposed to industrial, and they might take a bigger share of the burden. So I think there's plenty of things to look at, and we have this information now.

I agree with the Deputy Mayor. If we don't look at it, well, why do we bother? I think it doesn't have to be exhaustive. I mean, the committee doesn't have to meet incessantly. We just have to look at it from a problem-solving point of view. You know, can we do anything? And if we can, you know, we should go for it. So, I mean, I agree with you that we're not extraordinary in that, but that shouldn't stop us trying to— Get the very best for those people that live and drive on these roads. Thanks.

Councillor Sheather. Yeah, thanks, Mr. Mayor. Speaking against the amendment, we've got a new director who's welcome us with roads and the like. I expect his main function since he's been here is to look at a road program and the likes. We haven't even asked him what his opinion is on this, and we're going to sit around and talk about it. And it's obvious what we'd like to achieve. And you can put load limits on road. What you do then is load up another road down the road somewhere, because they've got to go somewhere, and they've got a destination. And if they have got a destination in that particular road, even with a load limit, they can still go down the damn thing like concrete trucks or delivery trucks or the like.

And we know the roads are bad and the likes, but for us to be directing traffic because they're going past a mate's place or whatever reason it is, and I say that lightly, it's a joke, that we're after advice from our staff. And this information, and that's why I asked originally when I seen this, and Councillor Mary-Lynne Spuckett clarified that it wasn't exactly what she asked for, because what's in here isn't very productive at all in the sense of usefulness. It doesn't say when it was done. It doesn't say whether it was summer or winter, whether it was 40 degrees or minus 3. And there's a whole heap of things. It doesn't say whether, you know, that half the roads were closed because a road works at the time.

It doesn't say whether Richards being built. None of that information is available. But we've got a bloke on this panel here looking at us tonight that knows a bit about that, and I suggest we leave it. And if this information is good to anybody, it'll be to him, and that he'll come back with a report saying we need to talk about these things. It's costing enough money for this detail to be in our document tonight. I don't see any point at all in spending. We talked about the staff's time and energy, and now we're talking about roads when there's a bloke sitting amongst us that's probably got all the information required, and when he wants something, then he will ask us what direction we go.

To receive this and move on.

Thanks , Mr Mayor. Thank you. Councillor Lyons.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I will speak against the amendment, and I was prepared to put it there. But, I mean, hearing the discussion about why it would go to a committee doesn't really give me any confidence in anything that would be achieved by that. I tend to agree. I've got a few issues around it, of course, but I do tend to agree with what Councillor Sheather just said, that if we've got this information, it can be drawn upon in the future if we need to. And, I mean, we will have a lot more infrastructure issues that arise that we will have to have information around. And when I speak in my right of reply about the motion, I'll touch more on some of the points that people have raised. But I don't think that the committee—I can't really see what the committee would be looking at, given from what I've heard.

Thank you. Councillor Zamprogno.

Just briefly to speak in favour of the amendment. What I was lamenting in my primary address was that we'd received this information that had taken some time to compile, and we weren't going to do anything with it. I think Councillor Calvert's suggestion is perfectly sensible. It's a starting point. And the kinds of issues that I raised could be addressed in that committee with this information. So, for example, if there are things that are going to greatly increase heavy vehicular traffic that originate from outside the LGA, and it means that our council, on behalf of our residents, should take a view, that we can develop those protocols. That's one of the things that that committee might consider.

That and other things. But for us to simply take this information three years after it had been asked for and to just leave it sitting there, I think is a neglect. I don't think it would be drawn upon unless we act upon this now while it's in front of us, and that's why I support the amendment. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion on the amendment? If not, we'll put the amendment. I'll just ask for it to come down off the screen. So, in those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Durek, Councillor Kotlash, Councillors Improgno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Richards. Against are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Dobramachi, so declare it carried. Is there...

Any further discussion before we put the motion? I'll go right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I mean, I'm happy. I have no problem with it going to a committee. I just can't really see it's in the form where the committee would know what to do with it, partly because the question was around costing and we still didn't clarify whether. I think it was misunderstood. I think, Councillor Sheefer, it was not about anything to do with the individual trucks or their drivers. It was really about, as Councillor Wheeler raised, identifying really where our roads could cope with it and where we might need more funding to come from that. But I think also, Mr Mayor, just to take a point with you when we were speaking before and people were wanting to speak, I don't think that it's an issue to have people speaking for.

I know that technically it's two for and two against, but I think especially in situations like this, we didn't have a briefing on this. This is an area to have this clarity around a situation where we can have our different perspectives, particularly on issues like this, where we come from different areas of the Hawkesbury and people can put forward and ask the questions around it so that the public then get an understanding of what this report was either about or intending to do or what it may not have addressed. And I think that that's a beneficial democratic part of the process. I don't think that trying to stymie more people speaking for is necessarily a good thing. I think that was very helpful to have people, including yourself, raising and putting in, you know, comments about what would happen with this.

I just know that we have the limitations around load limiting when we have agricultural activities and where we have extractive industries in our area. I understand that we're quite limited with what, of course, we could suggest because we're local government and these things are state government. Controlled issues that we have to get permission for certain things like that. But, I mean, I'll be happy to see what comes of it from a committee. I thank the staff or whoever did prepare it. I just think that because it was so delayed, it had lost the initial context in which it was put forward. But I thank you anyway, and thank you.

Thank you. Just to clarify, the code of meeting practice does indicate we should be having speakers for followed by speakers against, rather than just hearing all of one side. It's a good point to clarify, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Certainly, if you've got questions and you want your hand up, indicate you've got a question. I guess what I was trying to protect against is a situation where we have four or five speakers in favour when everybody was in favour at the outset and we've just wasted a lot of time and not changed the outcome, because of course the outcome should be the most important thing from these meetings rather than just how much we all get to speak. So we'll put the motion. All those in favour?

Favourer: Councillor Conolly, Councillor Virgil, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Durick, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Wheeler. Declare it carried.

Next item is item— sorry, where are we up to? Item 59

59. Oh, so it's got, on the sheet it's got mural in it, that's what's with me, but it's a notice of motion. 59.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, to move that.

I'll move that,

Mr Mayor. Seconder?

Seconder, Mr Mayor.

Discussion? Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

This is another call, yet another call to try and have a committee working group, call it whatever you like to call it, call it anything, but it is something that I believe that we need to have. And I would really want councillors to support it as a working group to be put together in accordance with what the draft flood risk management manual says. I submitted this motion before we had the flood, as it happens, but it's taken on much more relevance just in the last week, of course, obviously. And now we've got another round of important experiences and information to feed into how we approach floodplain management. We simply must understand the floodplains that we are dealing with. Essentially, local government is responsible for floodplain management, and so we have to understand the sub-plans and the plans, the state, the regional, and the local plans that exist.

And I think it's really important, as part of all of those plans say, that the SES will be a part of any floodplain risk management committee that councils are to have, and the draft manual , of course, sets out the composition of that particular working group, as well as suggesting a technical working group as well. So the reason I brought this forward was that I had raised on a number of other occasions that there was a review being done, and the consultation, the review has been done and the consultation period has ended, although I believe we've requested an extension. However, that means we haven't done any of the consultation, which is part of that process, and we haven't had a discussion around it as councillors.

The disaster and management committee hasn't met aside from two times, and we haven't addressed what we really need to address, and it's— And it's really important that we do address that. So we need to be aware of all these things, and we need to be being updated from the bodies that oversee the regional flooding, the regional and state-level flood planning. And I just think that we can't ignore the significant issues that are arising around flooding. We've seen how important it is, and we simply, we have just seen in this past week the capacity of our evacuation routes, the condition of the evacuation routes. This was something that our floodplain committee was working on. We had planned with the SES to go over all these evacuation routes, to look at the condition of them, to go out there with them and see.

And that hasn't happened. And we know we had a big issue around the one at Pitt Town, which will be raised and dealt with, I assume, in the debriefing stage. There was the uncertainty around the evacuation centres, the fact that we saw areas that were inundated this time that were never, that in the past have not been inundated. We saw, you know, areas that just simply aren't normally flooding. And of course, we had roads closed and we had issues occurring before the river was even starting to rise. So we had the issues associated with overland flooding, we had flash flooding, we had a lot of things going on that confused people because it wasn't a traditional flood. It was quite problematic that people were caught out because they didn't know what to do.

We had the issue around the Redbank issue with the dam. We had people who were told to evacuate; they didn't know where to go and they didn't know what to do. And we know that we have unprecedented events occurring all the time because this is what's happened with climate change. We have got things that are occurring that haven't occurred before. So we have to simply have prepared for any possible scenario. Or a number of scenarios that may confront us. Last year, after the previous flood, we had a meeting at the disaster management, and I raised then the possibility of having a working group to work through these things that are contained within the floodplain management manual. And at the time, we were told there are no issues with electricity.

Nobody gets cut off. They've never been cut off. But we had major issues around electricity, and we need to deal with these. We need to push the authorities to have these done, because we shouldn't have people going out risking their life in a boat, taking fuel to people on generators, because those people aren't aware that they might lose their electricity. We have a lot of advocacy to do. We have a lot of pushing to do. We had previously been pushing to look at the electricity issue. We had meetings ready to go. We've had wanting to follow up on community battery storage, and we were told last April there's no issue around electricity by a councillor in here. We were also told that to have such a working group would be undemocratic because not everyone would be involved.

But as we've seen, the floodplain manual, as it's now called — I've given you a name — the management manual, it outlines who we should have on committees. And today I've received requests from the McDonald Valley and from the Upper Colo that they want to have a representative on a working group to bring on behalf of their communities. Not everybody wants to come. They have really tight communities where they want a representative to come to a working group and to discuss the issues that confront them. And we know that they still didn't have the various things occurring. Their flood study hasn't been done, completed. We know at Yarramundi the gauges still weren't working. These are all things we were advocating for before, which haven't been done.

So our isolated communities would welcome this sort of involvement. We know that it's something that the other councils all across the floodplain have. They all have that. But one of the major things we're missing out on is having the regular updates from the people who are running the regional task force. We're not hearing from DPI. We're not hearing from Infrastructure New South Wales. We're not hearing from Water New South Wales. Now, had we been having that engagement, we would have known that we should have been doing the consultation for all of this, and I think that we would have been much better off. We need to be pushing for the outstanding reports, the regional flood study and the cumulative overland study.

That's really, really, really important, and we need to ramp up pushing for those studies so that we can make our people safe. That's my five minutes gone.

Thank you. I had a question, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, just about what you said there about the Disaster and Emergency Management Committee. I think you made a comment that somebody at that committee, the information that was provided to the committee was that there was no issue with electricity and nobody gets cut off. Given that there's very well documented issues with electricity, and I think all those outages were anticipated, I'm just not sure which agency you're suggesting told us that.

It was a councillor, not an agency. I know it gets cut off. It was a councillor said there's no issues around electricity because part of the motion at that particular meeting was to continue liaising with Endeavour Energy around the issues around electricity, and that was removed from the motion.

And my other question was just around that issue. I think you mentioned that the committee had been working on that for quite some time. Do you know when that committee started working on the electricity issue?

I'm not exactly sure, but it was some time ago, and it was both the Infrastructure Committee, where we were briefed by Endeavour Energy, and it was also the Floodplain Committee as well. So we both were raising it. It had been raised in resolutions in the minutes of the Floodplain Committee. It was an action for the Infrastructure Committee to be following up on. It would all be documented in the minutes of those particular committees, I would think.

I believe, I think I'd be correct in saying it was for some years before the committees were disbanded.

Yes. Yeah.

Thank you. Definitely . Councillor Dramachi.

Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. Councillor Buckett took it out of my mouth. Most of the things that, you know, she was talking about, I agree 100%. Being new in this council, I personally contacted a couple of committees, contacted— well, of course you know where I live, and I suffered. Well, I'm one of the worst affected areas, as you know, which we didn't have any access for certain reasons, and we tried to— well, we didn't have electricity, and we had two generators. We couldn't get any petrol. So, so many days that, you know, we just passed, you know, without electricity, without power, no internet. But I, in the meantime, somehow managed to contact two committees, one of them, I think, related with the floods, and the other one was the energy company.

And none of them, as a matter of fact, none of them had any kind of information that they could supply me. Being new in this council, I didn't know what to do, so I just left it like that. I don't know whether all these committees or subcommittees really work, or do they do anything? Do they feedback? I don't know. I leave it up to you, but I agree 90% of what Councillor Buckett just put before us. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Cutlash

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

I think that we're facing a problem with the way we deal with the processes of our decisions and the processes of committees. I don't disagree with really anything that's been said, other than the fact that some of our old committee structure didn't get things done. And I'm sorry to be the one to say that. And I mean no disrespect to the committee members, but really, no

I won't start on that. I'll start by saying I have put forward an amendment, if I can, Mr Mayor. I sent it to staff last week, so I hope they've still got it.

And while that's being brought up on the screen, I'd just like to say that I think this amendment, I think it captures the essence of what the mover of the notice of motion had in mind, but I think it puts it back into the new committee structure and the process. So basically what I'm saying, and will I get a seconder before I go on, Mr Mayor? Yes

Please. Is there a seconder for that? Councillor Calvert. Go ahead.

Thank you, Councillor Calvert . Basically, I'm asking for the disaster and emergency committee to meet as soon as we can, as soon as practical after this disaster. The meeting be solely about this flood, and it involves all of the stakeholders and staff and agencies, the agencies that Councillor Lyons-Buckett said, the SES, Infrastructure New South Wales, Resilience New South Wales, all of the players. The second is that we involve all of the community. We get the community to this meeting. At this meeting, if we need to solve particular issues, then we go to possibly forming working groups.

Now, the current notice of motion doesn't acknowledge or follow the changes that we made to the committee system, and this needs to be given more time to work. The points in the motion seem to be designed to get us back to where we were with the old committee structure. As I've said on many occasions, I think that all councillors need to be involved in these sorts of meetings, and we need to have specific issues that impact our community. We have to have them solved. I'm sick of this talking, talking, talking. We need to get some structure and some good decision making.

In the old committees, there are a number of very important presentations from the SES about evacuations, from Infrastructure New South Wales, from the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, and the Insurance Council. And that should have been given to all councillors, but it wasn't. It was given to a few of us and a few members of the public and a few other agency staff. That was it. That's just the wrong way to tackle such a significant issue as emergency and disaster.

As we know, there are a number of stages before, during and after a flood emergency, and it is not appropriate that we set up working groups or subcommittees without having the benefits of hearing from the people who need to be involved. For example, the list in point two of the notice of motion: elected councillors, council staff, representatives from the local community, other key stakeholders, specialist consultants, etc. So that's all the same. We agree on that. They all should be involved. I think there's little point in forming working groups or subcommittees without having a specific question to be addressed. And I think this is why I don't think that the old committee system was working properly.

The current notice of motion just asks for a working group to be formed. It calls for who should be on the working group and when it should report back to council without actually outlining what it actually will do. Please don't let us go down this receiver note rabbit hole again. The old floodplain risk management committee met 21 times during 2016-2020. About 62 items of business were discussed, and a third of that was received and noted. So what happened was most of the items were about advising the advisory committee. Many of the updates, many were updating the committee on previous advice. A lot of the time was spent discussing grant projects and their applications. Some issues raised by committee members were dealt with repeatedly, and we touched on this before, without much progress, I add.

Power west of the river. Who closes the bridges? South Creek gauging. Technical information was often requested by the committee without any apparent use for it. For instance, a committee member asked for gauging data for Yarramundi. Without structure, we can't really solve these problems. We need to set up—

Time has expired, so if you could finish up on this. Sorry,

Yeah. I think we really need to get together and work out the problems that we're going to solve. Get the people, like the people from McDonald Valley, sure, get them all on. Their working group can be in their neck of the woods. You know, get somebody to look at the gauging data. That could be a working group. We could have — it's limitless what we can do, but we have to get the structure. And organised. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Collash. I'll speak briefly in favour of the amendment. I think you probably hit the nail on the head when you said, pointed out exactly what I was going to say as well, that we've got a motion before us to set up a group with no purpose. It doesn't say anywhere in the motion what we've asked this group to do, what the questions are for this group, what it's going to report back, but it doesn't say what it's going to report back on. And I think this is not the first time that we've had this group try to be recreated again since it was restructured. The reality is that we want these committees to have purpose, not just to be points of discussion. And I've actually seen a few, a couple of councillors make comments, and public comments in fact, about the fact that Disaster and Emergency Management Committee has not met recently.

But those councillors have never referred anything to it. So our committees are set up now so that if we have a question that we think that committee should be looking at, a councillor brings a motion to say this committee should be looking at this thing and providing council the advice on that. Committees are not there to receive advice or to receive briefings. That's not the purpose of a committee. A committee is a subgroup of the elected group generally. In this case, it includes all of us as well as agencies, and it's done to break out of the formality to get work done. It's not done, a committee's purpose is not to receive briefings and talk about things. And it's also not correct to say we haven't heard from those agencies.

We've had briefings, a recent briefing in fact, from Infrastructure New South Wales on their progress. And as other agencies need to brief us, they'll be able to brief us, and that's not the work of a committee to brief us, to provide a briefing. That's just something we should be getting from those agencies as a governance body in the area. So whilst I think the intention of the notice of motion is good, I agree with what we're trying to achieve, which is making sure we're talking about the issues. But again, instead of actually asking a committee to look at any issues, we've just got a motion to set up a group without giving that group any direction on what they would be reporting back to us on, which leads to that group being completely self-directed, providing advice on an ad hoc basis as that committee sees fit, rather than actually addressing the things that we need addressed for our community, which is the whole point of doing exactly what's being discussed here, but in a new structure that requires purpose and requires the committee to report back on specific items.

So I'm in favour of the amendment on that basis. Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. For someone's been around a bit, the frustration that Councillor Mary-Lynne's bucket has indicated, I've only been in that situation for about 35, 40 years.

And I understand your comments, and I don't disagree with the amendment either, but I do disagree that such a working group, that the council doesn't have one, where the biggest floodplain disaster in Australia that can happen here, and we haven't got a floodplain management committee? Yeah , right.

It sounds as though people can, that, you know, that council can deal with things and get it done, and there's a few small things that we can do. But most of it relies on authorities outside our control. With powers up in '97, I was on the state committee, and we come up with this evacuation stuff, and all that's fine, and we increases the gauges. I'm not sure how many there is now, but last time I had the count, it was 56. We've had two one-in-100-year flood events at St Albans, and one year after the other, 12 months apart. We had someone from the Weather Bureau that come and address the Floodplain Committee of Council, saying, you know, we never had a one-in-100-year event in the Hawkesbury.

Rubbish. But there's a gauge at St Albans, and another one up at Howes Valley. Neither of them working. We tried to get the SES to have control. There's three different authorities. You've got Sydney Water, you've got the SES, and the SES, Sydney Water, I forget who the third one is. But three different people feeding information to the Weather Bureau. That makes sense too. We want the SES to do it. They work Saturday night at eleven o'clock. Guess where the Weather Bureau is at eleven o'clock Saturday night? At some club somewhere. There's heaps of things. The frustrating part of it is that all those things, and I'm sure Councillor Buckett over more recent years has been through it as well.

I'd sat on Council's floodplain committee right up until probably eight years ago, I guess. And it wasn't my doing that I wasn't still on it. Council choose to put some other people on it, and that's fine. But nothing much changed in relation to what Council can do. And our community,

There's things. If we get a flood, Councillor Lyons Buckett said we hadn't seen stuff like this before. Well, if you'd been around in '61 and '64, Councillor Mary Lyons Buckett, you would have seen it. These floods, we had floods, 156 of them. So, you know, new people on committees, people that haven't been there before. The information that we get from SES is pretty spot on these days, and the Weather Bureau. Twenty years ago, that wasn't the case. It was, you know, the SES used to have bets on when Yarramundi was going over and stuff like that. But in relation to physical things that we can do to minimise flooding. It's very, very limited. But there's certainly things we can do that impact people to make it a bit easier for them.

And I think that's where Mary Lyons-Buckup was coming from, Councillor Buckup. But, you know, the comments that the mayor made about a committee sitting there doing nothing, I assure you that they didn't do nothing. They worked hard at it. It was really frustrating in relation to the result we got from it. But that doesn't mean to say we chuck the towel in. And either one, either one, I know what will come out of this amendment, the same as what Councillor Buckup is trying to do, because we deserve it. So, you know, when we talk about briefings and stuff, this is the sort of stuff we should be talking about, and perhaps not at a council meeting or over a notice of motion, that we can't sit around and hear comments from one another and the community.

Thanks, Councillor. Just to clarify, I didn't say that they were sitting around doing nothing. What I said was that the motion before us doesn't require them, doesn't ask them any questions. It just leaves it open for that committee to decide what they would like to talk about, which might not be what our committee, which might not be what us as the elected body of this community. Yeah,

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. I didn't mean to infer that that's what you said. It was a comment that I made. There was no intention of having a go at you.

Councillor Deputy Mayor? Yeah

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank Councillor Kotlash for her amendment. I think what's being misunderstood here is that — The disaster and emergency committee includes the floodplain management committee. Floodplain management committee still exists. It hasn't been eradicated . It's just been moved within the disaster and emergency committee. Now, what that means is that the way that the new committee structure is supposed to work is that we give the committee things to look into and to investigate and to give us advice on. And the committee could then set up working groups, as many working groups as it likes, but it's the committee that makes that decision. And that's what Councillor Kotlash is pointing out here, that it's not council that sets up the working group, it's the committee.

So that's what she said in her point three, that these subgroups or working groups that Councillor Lyons-Buckett is talking about can still exist, but the way they come about is by the committee setting a goal for the working group, saying, Working group, we want to set you up and this is what we want you to do, and we want to report back in two months, three months, whatever. And that could be quite a wide-ranging brief. It doesn't have to be just one point; it could be a series of points. And I would suspect that when this committee meets, that's probably what it's going to do. And what Councillor Lyons-Buckett has suggested or mentioned a few minutes ago, all that could happen. It can happen through this process.

So the amendment, all it does is— Make sure we go through the correct process. The amendment does not say we will not have working groups or subcommittees. In fact, it says just the opposite. It just says we will do it properly, do it according to the structure that we've set up. I looked through the notice of motion very carefully, and I couldn't find any reasons why this subcommittee was being put forward. There was basically just a whole lot of cut and paste from the management, from the floodplain development manual, and it wasn't really related to what that subcommittee could do. It was talking about other things. And if you look at the floodplain development manual on page seven, it says there quite clearly about the role of the Floodplain Management Committee, that once the committee has completed the prime task of developing the management plan, including the implementation strategy, and council has adopted these, it is suggested that a limited group remain to oversee implementation.

Now, as far as I know, the implementation strategy and the management plan were adopted in 2012. So according to that development manual, we no longer need that committee. But I think we do need subcommittees, and we do need working groups to continue some of the things that might have been left over and not finished. And those things we need to target and we need to finish them, and that's the way we should go about it, not have a committee that sits around and meets just for the benefit of meeting. That's what this whole restructure process was about, and I urge people to support the— Amendment because it allows us to set up, allows the committee to set up working groups if it wants to, and allows us to say what they have to look at and when they have to deliver it.

It's a much better process than just setting up a committee which apparently has no aims, it has no reason for existing, just that it needs to exist. And so I urge you to follow the amendment rather than the notice of motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Carbett. Just before I move on, I just wanted to remind councillors that just because we're on Zoom doesn't mean that the public can't see you. And so, in particular, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, if you're laughing over the top or talking or visibly reacting, it might lead to people in the public feeling that you don't value the contribution of other councillors, which is probably not what we want to project as our image. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I'm really dismayed at— I'm speaking against the amendment. I'm really dismayed at the direction this discussion has taken. We are still in the middle of a flood emergency. This motion calls on us to activate a working group that deals with flood emergencies while we can see exactly what is required, using the people who have the expertise to tell us what is required. We've got members of our community who are currently literally shoveling the contents of their lives out onto their front nature strips. And we're arguing over what a committee should look like and whether a previous extremely valuable committee did enough work. I'm really dismayed that we are bound up now in some sort of bizarre political discussion when what we should be dealing with is how we move forward to get so that we have a safer, more resilient, better prepared community.

Because Councillor Sheather is right . This stuff doesn't have a start and end date, and neither should any working group that's developed have a start and end date. This is a statutory responsibility for council laid out in the floodplain management manual. With watching this flood unfold has been like watching the predictions of the previous Floodplain Risk Management Committee all come to fruition at once. The stuff around

Power,

Sewer, sullage, waste, evacuations, safety, provision of food and fuel, telecommunications, the lack of evacuation routes, all of this stuff. But what we've had this time is now we had a direct line to the Department of Planning and Environment and also to the SES, where the staff involved in flood risk management and emergency management came and sat with councillors, including the mayor at the time, and we all got to discuss, including impacted members of the community who know really well what this looks like on the ground and what's required, were able to have around-the-table discussion, really open lines of communication. About what could and couldn't be done, and what we really required to get done.

What we've had, though, is two years where we've lost those lines of communication. That's a real loss for both us as a governing body and for the community who relies on them. We urgently need, if we're going to cling desperately to these committee structures then —and I will remind you that we've now had twice as many disasters and emergencies as we have had meetings of the Disaster and Emergency Committee. And one of those meetings occurred because I used an extraordinary meeting to call for one, and I did put items to it. Now, if that's what it takes to get this committee functioning in an area that is as impacted as we are, that frankly is extraordinary that people are satisfied with that.

We need a meeting trigger. We need a mechanism where both the community and the staff, as well as the councillors, can put items onto that agenda so that we can discuss these matters. And we need a two-way communication process, not popping in for their five-minute speaking slot, but a proper two-way, equal means of communication with the agencies that are involved. This isn't working. You've been presented with a way forward. Please don't dig in because you hope that your committee structure will be proven correct. Take this way forward so that we can actually do what we're supposed to do: represent and advocate for our community and help them be better prepared and more resilient into the future

Councillors then.

Thank you, Mr Mayor . I confess to being on the fence, in the sense that I could see both the amendment and the original motion. Fulfilling a purpose. I think that this debate could have been simplified if earlier in the conversation we had asked for some clarification from staff. Being, if there is a manual and that councils are under some statutory obligation to have something like a flood risk advisory committee, is it the opinion of staff that we have disbanded a committee that was compliant and that the emergency committee that we currently have is, in some sense, inferior or not compliant, and that we ought to bring back some dedicated committee for this purpose? If it's a statutory question, it should have an exact and legal answer. May I put that?

Yeah, refer that to the general manager.

And I might refer that to the director city planning, Mr Mayor

Thank you, through you, Mr Mayor. It's— you're asking if it's a statutory requirement. It's a strong recommendation that councils have a floodplain management committee, is my understanding , and they assist councils with flood planning that we undertake, and we were undertaking flood planning as we speak for, you know, the Macdonald River and Wards Creek, et cetera. And they also assist with the overview of implementation of actions and have been identified in relevant plans. It also does provide councils the opportunity to have access with technical experts from state agencies who the information that they provide in a committee setting allows full and frank conversation, which—

And that would be, you know, able to be achieved through a working group, which may not necessarily be achieved through an open forum meeting where they may not be permitted to be as open and frank.

All right, thank you. So that answer is illuminating, and I'd encourage my colleagues to heed it . The kind of committee that meets our either our statutory obligation or a very strong recommendation is that we have a committee with a particular composition, with particular subject expertise. And I must confess, I'm not convinced that the disaster and emergency committee, as it's currently constituted, is capable of functioning in that way, even if we were to charge it and devolve to it in the way that Councillor Calvert would prefer the specific task of deliberating on these issues. I'm not convinced that it has the ability to operate in the same way that a dedicated flood risk advisory committee could . And on that basis, you know, I'm on the fence, but I'm tending towards this . I'm tending towards Councillor Lyons-Buckett's motion. Thank you

Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Mr Mayor. And I'm sorry if you could see my reaction before, but it's from sheer frustration that some comments being made are just so ill-informed . I'll speak against the amendment because for a number of reasons. First of all, there's two issues here. The disaster and emergency management meeting having a briefing around the flooding is completely different to this committee, which clearly states that it's to do with the flood risk management manual. Now, if anyone read past page seven and read the whole thing, you would see the reasons. It has the things we have to deal with. It has the framework for the committee, and it ties in with the specific flood plans.

Now, this isn't about the other things that the disaster and emergency management committee will look at, and they're more specific things. The reason I brought this forward was that this— This document, this manual, which is the fundamental document that guides floodplain management in New South Wales, has been reviewed. There's a consultation period that is ended, and we have an extension. We have to put in a submission around this if we care to be a part of floodplain management in New South Wales. Now, for people to dismiss it, you have to understand it, and I'm tired of saying it over and over again because I have read it all. I've done the training, I've done the Resilience New South Wales training, and I know the importance of it.

I was virtually laughed at at the floodplain management conference last year because when I asked about this committee, people could not believe that the Hawkesbury-Nepean did not have a dedicated floodplain management committee to deal with what the manual dictates we should be dealing with. We have an outstanding flood study for the Macdonald Valley. That is what this committee looks at. This committee looks at specific things. They're listed in the manual, and this is what this committee is for. It's a work, and I'm calling it a working group because we can't call it a committee because that upsets people. What I would like to see is that we are 12 people in the disaster committee. We could commit tonight to having a working group, then we can work through what that working group will do, and it then, when we have the disaster and management committee, we can bring back something for that to be considered so that we can make a submission about probably the most important flooding document that we're meant to be guided by in our floodplain land use and management.

So I'm very disappointed that there are the Labor councillors in here are so hell-bent on proving something about their committees. I don't care what you call it. I don't care if you call this just a group of people that happen to meet. But this is what we need. This is what we need for our community, because I will not see them sidelined. It's not to do with the old committee. It's not a reinvigoration of the old committee. It is a committee to do, to fulfil an obligation that we have to our people who are out there suffering now from flooding because we haven't addressed certain things. And Councillor Kotlash is shaking her head, but this is just something that we can do, and we can do it now.

I don't understand why you can't commit to having a working group of that composition inform our committee, our bigger committee that looks at broader things, why we can't do it that way. I just think that I didn't even have time in the start to get to my additional point, which I sent around to everyone today, which was to investigate having a flood officer or sharing a flood officer with Penrith, which I think is a really important point. But if the amendment fails and my motion stands, I foreshadow an amendment to my original motion. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Councillor Kotlash, you have spoken on the amendment. Did you want to— I just

Wanted to ask a question. Sure . Possibly to the Director of City Planning when she was talking about the need for this particular committee. I just wanted to, and that was in response to Councillor Zanprogno's question about what the statutory

Situation was with this committee. Now it says clearly in Appendix D of the Floodplain Management, and just for the record, I have read extensively on this, and I am a bit offended by the accusations that I haven't read past— Page one, because I've put a lot of time and thought into this, and quite frankly, it offends me to be treated like I don't care about our community. I understand what our community is going through, and

I'll digress. I

Do apologise, Councillor Colly. I have pulled up people many times in the past and tried to encourage councillors to focus on the matters before us instead of making personal attacks, but there are some councillors who persist, and it's got to the point where there's no point interrupting everyone, but you're quite right, that should have been pulled up, so I apologise

Sorry, it's quite upsetting to have that accusation, but anyway, I'll keep going. In Appendix D, Floodplain Risk Management Committee, it says, and I just want to clarify, I just want the Director of City Planning to clarify

The committee may be formulated as a new committee or its role be incorporated within an existing council committee. My understanding is that we still have the functions of a Floodplain Risk Management Committee; we just happen to call it the Disaster and Emergency Committee. There is no— that's what my understanding was. Now, to say that we don't have one is just not true. So can I just get some clarification on that, please?

That's to you, Director City Planning

So when this new committee, the Disaster and Emergency Management Committee, yes, its terms of reference does cover floodplain management . The challenge, I think, for— and I can only talk about, you know, the feedback we've had from state agencies— the challenge is getting their technical upfront, frank advice is much easier. Through a closed session, our current committee structure, which is open to, you know, the community, and there's nothing wrong with transparency, does not enable that free and frank advice being provided. So my understanding through this notice of motion, and again, I could be wrong, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, but my understanding is

Generally all councils agree we want to do floodplain risk management planning, and we are doing that. We would be seeking technical input in that floodplain planning, management and risk assessment. My understanding of the working group is it would be part of this broader, you know, the existing Disaster and Emergency Committee, but it would not necessarily be an open session. to the public, necessarily, but it does allow technical expertise to be provided in a closed forum and then it will provide its findings through the Disaster and Emergency Committee, which then is open to the public.

Can I just ask a further question? Why, I have never heard that feedback before, and if that's the case, surely the Disaster and Emergency Management Committee could just call for the committee meeting to be done in confidential. There was no written thing that everything we ever did and said had to be made public. In fact, some of the briefings that we got from the SES about evacuations was quite confidential. So I'm not sure that that's even an issue. I mean, that's—

We're probably entering into debate, and we probably don't want to try and debate with the planning. I think it's a valid point that if the staff have that view, that that could be reported to Council at some point would have been helpful, but it's good to have that information now. Councillor Richards.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before I make some further or additional remarks, I just wanted to start by asking if Councillor Kotlash might amend her point one. In the first line of point one, it says, to meet as soon as practical after this current flood event, but I think we know, as we are in the third flood in three years, there is no after, and I know that you'll agree with me, Councillor Kotlash, there is no after. It just keeps going on. So I was wondering if you would mind amending that first line to say, within a fortnight. I think that if we are serious as representatives of our community that we need to hold this committee meeting almost as a matter of urgency. Would you be okay to change it to that, and your seconder?

Can I actually just totally agree with the sentiment. Can we just, can we maybe just change it to as soon as practical?

Yeah. And

I can give you my absolute assurance that I'll do, I will work with the general manager to do absolute best to quality and then fortnight, but I'd hate to have a resolution that requires us to not have certain agencies or something.

Yeah. Can I just quickly say, absolutely agree, Councillor Richards. And at first I did actually, I was typing away thinking, yes, this needs to be done. But really, in reality, I think we need to, we need, we need to

Not put possibly an unrealistic time on that, other than to say we need to get it done. And I think if the mayor reassures us that it will happen as soon as possible, well, I'm happy to go with that. But yeah, we can tweak it so it's as soon as practical. Possible?

As soon as possible.

As soon as possible, full stop. Yeah, if everyone's happy with that.

That would be great. I just think that it does need to happen as soon as possible. And yeah, there is no after. We know that this will be going on, and we have so much important work to attend to , and I agree wholeheartedly with what's on the floor before us. So thank you very much for taking that on board.

Thanks. No further discussion on the amendment, so we'll put— Councillor Sheather, I think you've spoke on the amendment. Do you have a question? Yes, Mr. Mayor.

The floodplain manual, can I get a copy of that?

Yep.

Before the meeting. No worries. We'll make that down.

No further discussion on the amendment. We'll put the amendment. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. Favourer, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Richards, Councillor Calvert. Against. Councillor Duke, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillors [unclear], Councillor Wheeler, Councillor [unclear] against. Yep , declare it carried. Now it becomes the motion. Is there any further discussion before we put the motion?

No, we're going to right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Mr Mayor, I'm quite disappointed at a lot of things around this discussion, but what I will just say is that I will bring this back at the committee and ask yet again if we can comply with what's expected of us to fulfil our obligations on floodplain management. I'm not talking about the flood event. I was talking about we have an obligation. Ms Corrine outlined it, how it's involved with the planning and the land use. We have outstanding flood studies that we are required to have a committee for. We have a number of—we have, even though Councillor Calvert said our floodplain plan was from 2012, if you were keeping up with what we were doing, those are under review, our floodplain management plan, and also the regional plans are also under review.

So I think it's very pertinent that we receive the expert advice in the proper forum, in line with what the development manual sets out. I think that the—when we have a floodplain and emergency management meeting, there will be so much to go over, and much of that will be what's happened in this event, and we have much to learn from that. But that's actually an entirely separate thing from what I was asking for. So from my perspective, I can see that we will not have the expertise or the time to put a submission in about the manual, so we will have to accept it as is, which is very unfortunate. And I will make my own submission, which you're welcome to read if you wish, because I think it's a really, really important document, and I think it's very, very, very bad that we have not moved forward tonight so that we could get on with the consultation to do that, unless the government's going to give us a massive extension of months so that we can do the proper process, then we are not going to comply with that.

However , I think that I look forward to the emergency management— Meeting because I think that that is somewhere where we will hear and go over the experiences and hear from our people about what they have experienced and feed into another whole round of things that we can improve on. And I know there will be a lot of emotion around that from our community because of what they've gone through, and I do look forward to that meeting. And of course, I shall re-ask yet again if we can have a working group too, so that we can comply with our obligations in the format that doesn't fit the current structure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, and I'll just remind again, if we can please try to avoid the personal reflections, talking about which people have kept up with what, and so on and so forth. It's quite possible—I can sense the frustration because most of the councillors have disagreed with you—but it's perfectly possible for us to...

Mr. Mayor, excuse me you are doing that yourself by saying that.

Excuse me, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, I'm calling you to order because your behaviour is out of order. It was a breach of the Code of Meeting Practice, and I'm calling it to order . We're not here to reflect on other councillors. We can disagree, but respectfully, without making personal reflections, and that's what we need to do going forward. Do you have a point of order? Thank you,

Mr. Mayor. Would you like to apply that consistently then? Because there are a number of comments made about me that you just let go in those

Conversations. I didn't hear a single comment. No,

Selective hearing. Thank you very

Much. Quite disrespectful again, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. It's disappointing. Is there a point of order, Councillor Wheeler?

No. Could we see the amendment on the screen again, please, Mr. Mayor, just briefly?

Can we bring the motion up again, please, so we know what we're voting on?

I'll just leave it there for... A few seconds, and then we'll call it down if that's okay so I can see everyone as we're voting.

Okay, the motion with that. Yep. Sorry

Sorry, Mr Mayor, could I move a procedural motion that we take this motion in seriatim?

Yes, we need a seconder. Seconded, Councillor Zamprogno. All those in favour ? I'm not sure if I'm recording, so yeah, raise your hand.

Mr

Mayor.

Yes, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

I'm sorry, could I just, because of the expediency of this and because we'll be coming back to a meeting, I had sent through with a point four with a question around potentially getting a flood officer. Would you allow me to just put that on the public record, and perhaps the staff, without it being part of the motion, could bring us back that detail to that meeting, or would you rather I just do that some other way?

Yeah, I mean, that's been received by staff. I can't— I can't know how we get on the record now because we've called for a motion, so we've got to vote first on this procedural motion. So all those in favour of the procedural motion, if you could raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Against? Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Viney, Councillor Jeric, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Calvert. Declare it lost. So we'll put the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Favour are Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Jeric, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Viney, Councillor Richards, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Calvert.

Against ? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, declare it carried.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, I don't. I'm not entirely sure how to get that into the committee now. It wasn't moved during the item, so take some advice. Maybe we could take that as a question on notice and work out a way to consider that. Okay. I was just

Trying to save some time because it's all so slow.

That was our final item in open session, so we need to go into confidential. Someone wants to move that way. Moved, Councillor Richards, seconded Councillor Sheather. All those in favour? Against? Declare it carried. We go into confidential.

Okay, we’re back in open session. I’ll hand over to the General Manager.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. In regards to item 60, regarding licence agreements, Old Hawkesbury Hospital, 6 Christie Street, Windsor. Whilst in closed session, the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Cloutlash, seconded by Councillor Sheather. One, that Council agree to enter into new licence agreements with existing tenants of the property known as the Old Hawkesbury Hospital, 6 Christie Street, Windsor, as outlined in this report, as well as any new tenants that are secured. Two, that General Manager be authorised to approve minor amendments to the licence agreements if necessary. Three, authority be given for the licence agreements and any other relevant documentation in association with this matter to be executed under the seal of Council.

Four, details of Council’s resolution be conveyed to the proposed tenants together with the advice that Council is not, will not be bound by the terms of its resolution until such time as appropriate legal documentation to put such resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties. For the motion were Councillors Conolly, Calvert, Djuric, Cloutlash, Lyons, Bucker, Veigal, Reardon, Richards, Sheather, Wheeler and Zampronio. Against the motion was Councillor Dogramaci. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you. As our final item of business, so I’ll declare the meeting closed at 9:41. Thanks everyone for your attendance.