This transcript and its speaker attributions were generated with AI assistance and may contain errors. Speaker names may be corrected in later releases. It is provided for search and accessibility; the official Council minutes remain authoritative.
Thank you, everybody. I'll just confirm that we're live streaming. Yes, good to go. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, everybody, attending tonight's Council meeting on the 13th of September 2022. I call the meeting open at 6.31. To start with, we will do our welcome and our acknowledgements. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of the country. I will now hand over to the General Manager. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Members
Of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, they are asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would also like to advise that in accordance with Clause 5.33 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this means the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist the 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. Meetings of the Council may be separately recorded with the prior authority of the Council. 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 unfavourable personal remarks about any person present or not at this meeting. This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. For the benefit of all other persons who are attending as part of the public gallery, it is expected that you'll refrain from making any insult, allegation or unfavourable personal remarks about any person present or not during the meeting.
In accordance with the Local Government Act and regulations, a person who engages in disorderly conduct may be expelled from the meeting. Finally, it is also requested that any person participating in or attending the meeting has a mobile phone that they turn it off or switch it to silent.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, General Manager. Now, I'll ask if there's any apologies, leave of absence or attendance of councillors via audio visual link, and looking around the room, we are all here, which is lovely to see. Now, I will move on to the declaration of interest. Does anyone want to declare any interest in any items on tonight's agenda? Councillor Sheather.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. It's in relation to item 166, the traffic committee, local traffic committee. It's the bridge to bridge. I've been the finish coordinator for the Bridge to Bridge committee for some years, and I declare less than significant pecuniary interest. Thank you, Councillor Sheather.
Thank you very much. Now, that item was supposed to be on block tonight. All items on block need to be unanimous to be on block, so we will pull that item out, just alerting the staff that that will no longer be on block, and we will discuss that one separately. Thank you, Councillor Sheather. I will also declare a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in item 167, restoration of Windsor Mall gas lamps. So we will come to that then as well.
Okay, confirmation of minutes. Can I have a mover that the minutes are correct, please? Deputy Mayor Thank you, Councillor Veigel. All in favour? Anyone against? Carried unanimously.
Procedural Motion, Condolences and One Minutes Silence - Queen Elizabeth II
Sarah McMahon
Okay, there's no acknowledgement of official visitors to Council. What I'd like to do next, if that's okay, is move a procedural motion to switch the condolences and the agenda item subject to public address. Can I have a seconder for that, please? Thank you, Councillor Reardon. All those in favour? Anyone against? Thank you, that's carried. So we'll move on to the condolences. Now, unless you were living under a rock this week, you would have known that we have unfortunately had the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. So as the Mayor and on behalf of Hawkesbury City Council and our residents, I would like to offer the following condolences. On behalf of the residents of the Hawkesbury, we wish to offer our deepest condolences regarding the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, aged 96.
We also offer our sincere sympathies to the members of the Royal Family, who have lost their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, aunt and friend, who was also a much-loved spouse, and who must face this monumental grief in front of the entire world, whilst they continue with the traditions and customs that come with the changing of a monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II is warmly regarded for her fair leadership, her diligent manner, and her devoted loyalty to her role. Whilst it was a role she was born into, it was also one that she took exceptionally seriously, never expecting to become the sovereign of the Commonwealth at the youthful age of 25. This reign ended up spanning 70 years, culminating in her platinum jubilee earlier this year.
Here in the Hawkesbury, many held fond memories of the Queen's visit to the area, when she attended St Matthew's Anglican Church with the Duke of Edinburgh on the 29th of May, 1970. Photos of this occasion are held at the Hawkesbury Regional Museum and have been showcased on Hawkesbury City Council's Facebook page. Council has established two locations for condolences to be expressed by our residents. These pages are located at both of our libraries, the first one in Windsor at 300 George Street and the second one in Richmond at 29 West Market Street. Opening times vary, so please check before making your way there. These pages will then be bound and sent to the Royal Family on behalf of the Hawkesbury.
Now, as you can see behind me, Council is still displaying the image of the Queen, and we have a citizenship ceremony scheduled for Saturday. In this regard, we have received advice from the Federal Government stating that Australian citizenship ceremonies should continue to take place and the Queen's portrait should continue to be displayed in line with the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code. Formal advice from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet states that the Queen's portrait should continue to be displayed throughout a period of mourning. As such, the portrait will remain in situ for this evening's meeting and for Saturday's event, and will be changed to that of our new King, King Charles III, when we are informed to do so.
The Queen embodies grace, devotion and wisdom. She will be remembered around the world for her service above self, her courage and her steadfast commitment to her civic duties. Now, before we pay our respects, would any other councillors wish to do so?
Okay, we will now move on to agenda items subject to public address. And the first item tonight with a public speaker is item 151 at the Mayoral Minute, Hawkesbury Local Government Area Roads. Our first speaker against is Michael Want.
When I read the Mayoral Minute, immediately it came to my mind the outrage expressed by mostly Liberal councillors, the need to have an extra income via a special rate variation about six years ago to address the then backlog identified when a progressive council was elected by Councillor Lyons-Buckett and Calvert. It was like Armageddon was about to strike at midnight. If you want good roads, councillors, you need dollars and cents. Councillors, I think six years of the last decades the Liberals had a majority on this council. They did not support the special rate variation, which was designed to address the backlogs from the previous decades when the Liberal-controlled council had failed to maintain and upgrade infrastructure, mainly roads.
Council staff identified a comprehensive work program, and the community supported that program. The Mayoral Minute refers to several reasons for the conditions of our roads. For example, dot point three, a backlog of maintenance and repairs that has not been kept up to date over the last decade. Fourth, poor systems to record track and report on road defects. Fifth, a network of deterioration from previous poor quality past works. And lastly, a small number of available road staff due to the undersupply of available road base and skilled workers across New South Wales. Councillors, I'm not sure how the small number of staff equate to the undersupply of road base, but maybe it will be explained.
The recommendation has five points. I would be very surprised if the General Manager and senior staff do not have this in hand. If we go to the headings, additional information heading, no doubt the additional information was supplied by staff. They indicate their endeavours, that is, to keep the community well informed of the day-to-day work of our limited road crews. It is not written, but the Council has not provided enough funding for staff. The information I looked at on the Council website was a daily road report. You can't get much better than that. The two big issues identified by the Mayor are lack of trained staff, and I remind councillors, Liberal governments have closed TAFE colleges and courses, replacing them with for-profit trainers.
That experiment has failed miserably. A third issue is, does Council collect enough to do what needs to be done? Obviously not. The state Liberals have failed miserably to fund local government, and the local Liberal councils run a mile away from special rate variations. Rate pegging should be reviewed. It's about time the Council asked the Local Government Association to approach the Productivity Commission to examine the social and financial pluses and minuses of removing one level of government. We do need to retain local and regional government if it pleases. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Councillors. There's no hiding from the fact that we do need to address the road situation. And as highlighted in the Mayoral Minute, which I propose to alter tonight that I move, is that we are privy to information about what's happening with our roads program from our staff in our briefings. The aim of this Mayoral Minute is to get that information out there for the public. Now I deliberately included the additional information section of this report by my own accord because I believed it was very important to put on the public record that a lot of the information or the questions I know that we get as councillors, whether it's out in the street or on our Facebook page or wherever we are in the community, a lot of the information is actually listed by council staff, and I wanted to put those links there very deliberately so people know where to look.
I'm also very aware that not everyone's an online tech whiz or can look up things on our Facebook page or our website. So what I wanted is to, as one of the very first things I get to do as mayor, with one of the biggest items that people come to me in the community about being roads and where are we up to, I wanted to set a very clear agenda and let it be known to the staff that at the very next meeting of council, I would like a report tabled that outlines the roads that need to be done, what we're doing to those roads and when that will take place, and of course which pool of funding is associated with that. I don't think it's a very positive thing moving forward for our workplace if we continue to throw mud in the past.
What we need to do is work with what we've got today and hope that we can get the answers out there for the public for tomorrow. Now it's very obvious that the funding will need to fall into two categories, and I want the community to be really across all of this information, and it says it here in the Mayoral Minute. You have the business as usual. Which is the standard operational plan funding, which we all sit here and approve leading up to every budget, and the list of works that goes with that, as well as the list of works that we have fallen behind in the SRV. Whether you voted for the SRV or not, as we all know, when a vote is approved in this chamber, then the staff have to act on that resolution.
So we need to see where we're up to with all of that. Secondly, there's of course the disaster recovery funding arrangements, a pool of funds in direct reference to the natural disasters that we've been under and the damage that has done to our road network. Now, I think I can't continue talking about this without mentioning the dreaded word potholes, which is obviously the one that we get the most in our community. We can't shy away from the fact that they're everywhere. The 12 of us live in this area and drive on the same roads, and we know they need serious addressing. I'm hoping that by next month's meeting, this report will come back to address the schedule of how the staff are going to address that, outlining any shortages in staff available, any shortages in resourcing, but make sure that we get it done.
I therefore put my mayoral minute forward, and I invite any other councillors to speak on the mayoral minute.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. It's not just about what you've got written here. We very seldom get a chance to discuss a whole heap of issues that we would like to discuss from time to time. When we address these points you're talking about, it gives us an opportunity to do quite a few things. One is that we're all informed and on the same page. The other is the money's got to come from somewhere, and we talk about how we might achieve that. And it brings us up to date with what's happening around the place. While potholes are really bad, and those of you that live probably southwest of Wilberforce don't see the roads out past [unclear]. We've got sections, and it's not weeks and it's months and months and months, and the roads failed miserably.
And it's not just a matter of patching. There's major roadworks to do. And I know our staff are working to achieve just that. But in the meantime, people like myself end up with a bent rim. Not very good, eight o'clock at night in the rain trying to fix that. So we're all aware of the situation, but it's prudent that we discuss these things together and with the staff and look at the options of how we're going to move forward, because there's a lot more to do than just potholes and road fixing, and the sort of things that we don't get to address. It's no point fixing the roads up unless the drains are fixed. Water running across the roads continually are causing the problem. Those that aren't that low that they're in a water table anyway.
Benson's Lane's a good example. We've got water laying in the gutters, six inches below the road surface. Well, how are you going to fix that? So there's heaps of issues, and the more that we talk about it and discuss it amongst ourselves and with the staff, the better outcome we're going to have. And not only that, as you indicated, the community can be better informed, because when we do get a phone call, which is often, that we've got something that we can relate and have an understanding of what we're talking about.
From the day that I was elected as a councillor last year in December, most people know that whatever I say, it comes out of my heart. And my knowledge in council is maybe less than every single one of the councillors. I have been driving around, and no doubt that, you know, I've been told indirectly not to do it again, or not to carry on with what I am doing. I can give a couple of names, like close to where I live, Schofield Road and surrounding areas, Old Pitt Town Road, a disaster. I myself hit a big pothole, and I'm still thinking that whether I should sue the council or not. Grono Farm Road, Ebenezer, I went as far as to Mogo, and I've spoken with some people. So what I'm reiterating in here, finding the money is none of my business.
Maybe this council should look at areas where they could stop wasting money. One of the big areas that, you know, I am now known that I've been telling people wherever I go regarding the sewage matter, which I understand, if they could correct me, it's well over six million dollars unnecessarily . So I've been distributing these leaflets, these flyers, getting people to complain, and I'm not going to stop. And I will push even harder, regardless of code of conduct or whatever. Council has to find the money. Like I said, has to stop wasting money. Maybe they should become, whoever is in charge of that department, should become a bit more professional, and instead of throwing money, dead money, they should maybe invest that money.
But I didn't mention any name. I didn't mention any name. It's just like when I asked a question to our then acting chief financial officer about the full spending details.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm just wondering if you would add a sixth point to your minute, which would be to outline our strategy to increase our capacity to deliver into the future. I think I raise that because there's a lot of references within the report, and we also heard the speaker say about our limited road crew. And I think for the public, for them to understand that we're trying to do the best we can do, we do have to have a strategy for how we're going to go forward. So I would ask if you would agree to add that.
Okay. Thank you. I don't know if they got that written down, but I can give that to the minute secretary. I think that this is good. I'm always a supporter of giving information to the public, particularly around the works that's going on, and I thank our infrastructure staff for the wonderful job they're doing in very trying circumstances. It's very, very challenging, and it's also very easy to understand the frustrations of our community when they do approach us and they are critical of us. But it's good to have systems in place where people can access the information. One thing I would raise about when we're delivering this information is the necessity, I guess, to have a mechanism for if the scheduled repairs that we're telling people, if they're not going to go ahead, we need to be quick in getting to them and telling them.
So I had somebody say to me that they saw on the page that says the daily update that it was going to happen. They saw a crew come, but the crew didn't do that. They did something else. And so I think that if we're going to—I know that's additional work for the staff who are doing that—but I think... If we want to be seen as acting in good faith in getting all this information out, that's something that we may have to address. And I guess that once we get a bit more on top of the damage that we've had since we've had all these disasters, I think that that would be an easier thing to do into the future. But I'm happy to support that, particularly with that additional clause, because the ongoing financial sustainability of councils is a problem.
You know, if we're going to keep having these repeated disasters, it's going to become a bigger and bigger bill for all levels of government. So we have to be addressing that. We have to. We cannot operate on a limited crew and not have the capacity to fix our roads beyond this point. We have to start. It's our duty to look at how we resource that, how we find more people to be able to get the job done. And I understand there is a shortage of staff in that area, but maybe we need to start training people. But we've got to do something. We've got to move it on. And I think if we improve the system, that would be really good. Of course, our challenge as councillors is that we always have to manage the community's expectations with what we have the capacity to deliver.
And clearly at the moment, we're below capacity in being able to deliver what our community expects. So I hope that we can work. This is a minor part of working through that. I think our bigger issue is around the resourcing into the future of how we can do that. But I'm happy to support the mayor on that.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, for bringing your mayoral minute, and thanks also to Councillor Lyons-Buckett for adding point six, because I've just recently been thinking about this very issue about how we
Get to a place where we're able to call on people to help us to deliver this monumental lot of infrastructure work that we need. And I'm mindful of discussions with the Director of Infrastructure about how there is a lack of people who can actually sign off on work. So I would like us to also start a dialogue with the state government to try and get to a point where Public Works or some department within state government has people that we can, you know, have people that are experienced and are ready to hit the ground running when we are put in these situations. Because it's not just our council, it's, I mean, how many councils up and down the east coast of Australia, for that matter, have been put into these situations where they really need skilled staff.
And we can't wait months and months or years to get these staff up and ready. We need to have some sort of strategy to get people to help us in the immediate term. So thanks for your minute and thanks for point six. I'm happy to support it. Thank you.
Thanks, Madam Mayor. Just a couple of questions, if I may. I just want— Some indication whether the timeframe for this, so this is to come back to us next month, is feasible is probably my major question.
Through you, Madam Mayor, yes, certainly the mayor had consulted staff before presenting the motion, and we're comfortable with certainly outlining those key challenges and some of those timeframes around the current pipeline of work.
Thanks. I guess my major concern is whether this will make a difference on the ground or whether it will just allow better public tracking. And I concede that there's merit to better public tracking and hopefully then better expectation management, better communication, and a better relationship, I suppose, with the public who are very frustrated at the moment. I guess
I am weighing up whether this is one of those high effort, low impact things or whether it's a high impact, low effort. I don't think it's low effort, but I presume that the Director of Infrastructure is keeping much of this information just not in a form that's easily currently shared. So hopefully it will yield, it'll be a reasonable pain-for-gain equation. Councillor Sheather's point that this isn't just about potholes, that we've got whole areas that are requiring complete road rebuilds. Grono Farm Road is really bad. It's got a significant ridge on it. I drove it last week. I was the only person on the right side of that road for the entire trip, up and back. Fortunately, I don't mind a bit of a bush bash, but that's where I was driving.
Most of it was off the road because no one else was on their side. They were just going right up the middle. Kermond Road is particularly difficult, and really, I came back along Kermond Road a couple of weeks ago. Behind, what I realised at the end of it was an elderly woman who could not drive faster than 40 along the entire length of Kermond Road from Kermond to Wilberforce, which is really troubling, I think, that people feel that they either have to go so slowly or that it's really affecting their confidence to drive. This isn't a problem that is just besetting this council. I think if you've driven anywhere in regional New South Wales in the last six months, you can see that this is a backlog that every council is really struggling to get on top of.
Shoalhaven Council has a nice model for communication with their community where you can basically see where your road is up to on the list of repairs. I think that while that might be quite difficult for us to achieve where we are now, I think that would be a lovely place to get to eventually. It could cut down on some of the frustration or at least manage expectations a little bit better. They're also running pothole blitzes on the weekend. I guess that signals a couple of things. Firstly, that they're going above and beyond, so they're working on a Saturday and Sunday. Now that is really expensive, and you've got to have the crews available to do that, and that's difficult and it's hard on our staff.
But it does signal to the community that we're doing more than business as usual in an effort to catch up. I don't know how possible that is with our current constraints, but they're things that I hope that we can look at once we've got a better indication of what we've got ahead of us. At the moment, it all, I think for everybody, particularly in the public, in the general public, it feels quite overwhelming. And I think that's not what we wanted out of the SRV. I know we went into the SRV very hopeful that we would get to a much better place with infrastructure. That's why we supported it. That didn't happen. And then we've been hit by five natural disasters in two years that have had big impacts on our capacity to get the road network up to scratch and constraints on staffing and resources.
So I think we've found ourselves in a perfect storm, and that's left us with a mess, but it's also left us with a really angry public. And part of our role, I think, is to manage that going, moving ahead, because that's having a big impact on our staff, who are quite dispirited and are being openly abused by people, and that's not on either. Thanks.
Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. And yes, thank you for raising that point about our staff, because at the end of the day, they're all human beings too, and they are trying to do their utmost best. And I know that we all bother them probably multiple times a day with our councillor requests and add it to the list, add another road to the list. But I do hope that this report will be able to answer a lot of questions. Any other speakers? No? Okay. So what I will do is then I will put my Mayoral minute. All those in favour, please raise your hands.
In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, and Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor McMahon. Thank you very much, everyone, for your unanimous support of that very important Mayoral minute.
Okay, thank you. We now move on to the second item under public address. That is item 152, Draft Amended Redbank Voluntary Planning Agreement, Proposed Grose River Bridge Post Exhibition Report. We have four speakers registered for that item. The first speaker registered for the recommendation is Peter Reynolds. Yes
Thanks, Madam Mayor, councillors and gallery, and I'd like to acknowledge the Wilcox family who are really feeling it at the moment. I speak in favour of the item, that is the construction of a bridge over the Grose River. We all know that traffic at North Richmond is a nightmare, and Transport for New South Wales has confirmed that their modelling for all options for a duplicate North Richmond bridge rely on there being a bridge over the Grose River. Traffic studies and modelling by Transport for New South Wales and consultants for this council in the last term show that without a bridge over the Grose, all options for a new bridge at North Richmond fail to deliver the traffic improvements required.
Now, and again, we all know there has to be an end to the diabolical traffic nightmare people west of the river face on a daily basis. For any of the current options for a duplicate North Richmond bridge, regardless of the colour, for any of it to work, there has to be a bridge over the Grose.
However, please don't adopt the proposed VPA as it stands. Please amend it. There are two reasons. The first reason shouldn't be a hard one. Transport for New South Wales has stated that it is you, councillors, that are the determining body for this bridge road project. It's not the Department of Planning, as it normally would be. It's you guys. You guys are going to wear whatever happens after you make the decision. It's quite strange. The government won't let you determine a DA for a house extension, but they'll give you the hospital pass when it comes to determining this project. Anyway, as decision makers, the law states that you must take into consideration all matters relevant to the issue being decided. Now, tonight you can't do that
Because you don't have all the information. For some reason, important and relevant information regarding an extensive Pryor Bridge and Road investigation has not been given to you, and I find it of great concern that there's been some documents released under Freedom of Information, or GIPA, and I've seen some of them, and it's of great concern that there's a 2017 email between senior staff in Council's infrastructure department that says this relevant information is confidential. We never got to see it as councillors.
Now, that report, that study was carried out in 1986 by Maunsell, which is now AECOM, one of the largest engineering consultants in the world. The bridge that they designed and the road begins and ends at exactly the same points as the proposal before you tonight.
The number of property acquisitions are the same, corner radius are the same and the roads are the same. Importantly, the only acquisition strips for land are basically strips of land along boundaries. There's no demolition of family homes, no demolition of sheds, no destruction of a working farm, no loss of employment for local workers, no loss of livelihood for the farm and the homeowners. The corridor determined by Mornsel is just over the fence from the Wilcox house. It's literally less than a stone's throw.
As the ones making the decision, you guys need to look at this before you decide. And you need to understand why you weren't told this information, for one, and why this wasn't provided as an option. The second reason to amend, and this is concerning,
The vacant land just across the fence, just across the boundary from the Wilcox home, was quarantined by the developer in their design brief. Arup, who were the consultants for the developer, were told not to include that land in any of their options. They were told to stay away from it. Now this design brief was drawn up by the developer. I understand the developer has been telling people the council drew up the design brief, but Freedom of Information shows that it was drawn up by the developer. Now you must know, as decision makers, you must know why the developer has protected a small strip of vacant land running along a fence belonging to a third party and instead wants you to approve the demolition of a home, shedding, working farm and livelihoods. And why acquiring 15 acres and destroying a family is better value than acquiring a 1.5 hectare strip of vacant paddock.
Just by coincidence, the strip of vacant land secretly isolated by the developer was used in the 1986 corridor plan, and that's the plan the council staff didn't tell you about. That's something you should think about, because I know a court's going to think about that. You might also want to ask the developer why they've been telling people that council came up with the proposed corridor, and in conjunction with SMEC, who did council's traffic study. So please amend to adopt this VPA, pending investigation and consideration of the 1986 Hawkesbury Shire Council Grose River bridge investigation, and as to why the developer said to avoid a strip of vacant land on the horse stud opposite the Wilcoxes, or just across the boundary. Thanks.
Good to see you. Why there hasn't been information in some of the documents, councillors were made aware of the land you're talking about in a briefing, and that information was provided by the staff.
I'm saying is that the actual report is 29 pages. It includes extensive technical drawings. It includes an initial design of a bridge, and it shows everything required. It's basically the same as the Arup report, just on the other side of the Wilcox farm, and it meets all the standards. Admittedly, some of the standards have changed since then, but the laws of physics haven't changed. So I think you need to consider a briefing from staff, and without any trying to cast any aspersions against the current staff, but staff didn't tell you about the full report, and that's something you need to—it's now available. People have found it online.
That's okay. Mr. Reynolds, welcome back to the chamber. Thank you. I want to pick up on one of the points that you made, and that relates to information that we haven't received. And one of the concerns I had related to the assertion that a particular road alignment was non-compliant or could not be compliant per the appropriate standard, which I believe is the Austroads standard, and that relates to things like road curvature and so forth. But could you just unpack a little more what you mean by appropriate?
Austroads is a guide. It's not a fixed standard as such. It's a guide, and it varies from major roads to urban roads to local roads. Now, for example— In the, oh, it's disappeared from my iPad. I had it here somewhere.
Oh, there we go. Okay. For, now from memory, the design of this bridge, the Arup Bridge, is designed for, its design speed is 70 kilometres an hour for a posted speed limit of 60 kilometres an hour. Okay, and they're saying it needs a 500 metre radius. Now, according to Austroads,
70 kilometres an hour, a horizontal radius with a 3% adverse crossfall, that's an off-camber, you need somewhere around 400 metre radius. If you have a 3% super elevation, that's positive camber, you can come down to 100 metre radius. It's a movable feast. Austroads said they need a 500 metre radius. I have the Austroads thing here. Austroads design speed for 500 metres, possible speeds vary between 30 and 100 kilometres an hour. So, saying that there's a fixed thing, speed for that, a fixed radius for that speed, if that was the case, then every kilometre or every five kilometres you dropped or increased, the radius would have to change, and that's not the case. It doesn't happen. As I said, it's a guide. But I can understand, you know, Arup saying that because their design brief was to,
More, more maybe. And don't take it personally, please, were you, well, how many years were you involved with the council knowing, you know, this matter was going on? I was here for five years. Five years. And I don't know who else was in this council for the last, or before the five years. With your knowledge and council matters, is there any reason that nothing has happened? I mean, it's been costing everybody time and money. And can you give me some idea, you know, what's been happening? I mean, is this the reason that, and I'm not referring to anyone, but people keep coming back and telling me that it's a Matilda circus?
I think there's a number of different issues at play. Originally the road line was to go through the Nevauva Reserve, and then I understand an application was put in to run it through there, but then the application was incorrect. There were public
Could have been. It was going to be determined by someone else other than council, and it was a bit of a mess, from what I understand. I mean, other councils here, like Barry and maybe Les and Mary will be able to tell you more about it. And then there was a lot of public outcry about it going through Nevauva because it was a much loved place, and there was some outrage from residents, particularly the Horse Stud place. And so the idea came to look for another alignment, and so there was much searching done, and then this new proposal came up. But all the way along, all the way along, that plan from 1986 was sitting there. Nobody brought it up. The whole thing could have been done 12 years ago.
Thanks. Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. Firstly, I'd like to pay my respects to the custodians of the land, that is the Darug and the Darkinjung community. So thank you again for allowing me to speak. Firstly, I'd just like to add some notes that have been passed on to me by somebody living directly in the area where this proposed bridge is to go. So what they say is that members of the council are elected to serve their constituents, and the rules governing projects such as this clearly prioritise the impact and community feedback. That said, this person has a few simple questions that demand answers from council. Firstly, they ask council why it has totally ignored the 1986 Monsell design.
That work has already been done, presumably at significant cost. It is a sound plan which minimises the impact to surrounding properties and the environment. They ask, is Council trying to avoid the Star property as documented, and if so, why? Or is it because it believes that it would be more costly to meet the one in 100 year flood levels? If so, this cost is entirely borne by Redbank and not the ratepayers, totally negating this argument. They also add, this project will be put to a vote, and it's clear that Council will vote in favour of the current routing regardless of impact. Can Council answer how it can possibly vote in favour of the current proposed route when two thirds of the majority of respondents prefer a route that's more in line with the Monsell design, and that they call on Council to answer these questions, given the fact that with regard to this VPA amendment and the Part 5, that over two thirds of the people do not want this to occur in its current proposed route.
I'd also like to add my concerns that I've spoken to a member of the team earlier today about. I'm really concerned about the ongoing issues where Council are deliberately redacting information from planning documentation. Now , some of us wrote submissions deliberately because this VPA goes right back to 2014. In that year of 2014, there was a clear indication through the Corruption Commission that findings have been found where the developer firstly handed the Mayor at the time a resident survey that was used with regard to garnishing more people for this development. Ms
Item at hand. It is, it's the VPA. So what I'm arguing is this VPA has processes in place and processes that have occurred that jeopardise seriously the validity of this planning arrangement between a developer and between the current Mayor at the time. I argue that with regard to planning matters, there needs to be transparency. I argue that Mr and Mrs Wilcox's lawyer has previously sent a letter to Council stating that you need to be transparent. And I'm questioning how many more times Council can think that they can redact information and not be transparent with regard to matters of planning and this amended VPA. There's a couple of other things that I'd like to add. Recently, Hawkesbury City Council allowed a private meeting with one of the developers listed on this planning agreement.
Matters such as this, and matters that have gone on for years, could be so more easily resolved if there is a briefing with all impacted residents. Have a briefing, get it out of the way, get it resolved. At the end of the briefing, if more people at that briefing don't want something or want something, there are reasons for it. This is going to create such less hardship on this Hawkesbury community, who already, with people that I've spoken to, have very little faith in the processes that are occurring. I think it's very wrong that this particular developer can turn up to the home of the Wilcoxes along with a previous planning director, and it doesn't matter if it was a previous planning director they were at the time, yet the same respect is not paid to this family when it comes to private briefings with developers.
I do not think it's right. I think this directly applies to the VPA, and I think it directly applies to the processes which Hawkesbury Council will go to with developers rather than listen to what's going on in the community. This developer has not given one single community project for the community. The Council has allowed the developer to keep adding on and adding on more and more developments.
Madam Mayor and Councillors, the proposed timing amendments to the voluntary planning agreement relate to the constructions of the Grose River Bridge linking Grose River Road through to Springwood, and on the way through demolishing a precious family home and income for family members on prime agricultural land. The most recent Council meeting at which this item had been discussed revealed minutes discuss at meetings between Redbank Communities, the Hawkesbury City Council and others, dated the 12th of November 2018 at 3:11, and it says in part, A, to adjust when necessary, considering minimal impact on the staff property and rationalise alignments accordingly.
On the 30th of January 2019 at point 3.06, the minute says, which is to avoid the private land housing the horse stud, and at 3.07, road designed to avoid the staff property as per design brief. To outline the meaning of the minutes have never been explained. Will we hear that tonight, the explanation of those minutes, Councillors, before any decisions are made? At the same Council meeting, Council resolved to hold a briefing session for Councillors on the subject matter. The NRDCW or the community, as far as I know, are not aware of the outcome of that briefing session, except to say social media revealed a Redbank representative was present to answer questions. The Wilcoxes were not invited. We understand the Redbank representative was Mark Regent. His evidence was believed over Mr Bassett's in the finding of operations spicer regarding the seat of Londonderry.
Meeting. It's very relevant, Madam Chair. Until the residents and ratepayers are made aware of the questions, answers and documents that were discussed at the council briefing session, the NRDC, WA and residents can only conclude secrecy between the developer and council. Keeping permanent information from residents is not transparent, councillors. Accordingly, this application must not proceed. Regarding flood immunity, at the committee meeting organised by council in North Richmond several years ago, which was chaired by Councillor Barry Calvert, the then general manager emphasised the need to move the bridge upstream to improve flood immunity, amongst other things. There is no evidence in the business papers that flood immunity will be improved between Grose Vale Road and Springwood, except for the bridge, so residents and ratepayers have access to work, healthcare and other services via Springwood Road to the Great Western Highway at Springwood.
The general manager at the July 22 council meeting told the meeting, in a question from Councillor Simbrogno, as we understand it, that the best option for the entrance onto Springwood Road to obtain the maximum benefit for flood immunity was the Grose River Bridge and the proposed road, that is in the current position in the plan before council. Yet council is turning left or right off the proposed road onto Springwood Road, there is neither access to Springwood or Castle Ray Road in times of flood when the bridge is on Springwood Road are underwater. So there is no flood immunity improvement here. What's the point of building a bridge to nowhere? I note at page 22, Council, in its principal support for the proposal alternative route, based on a number of points, and at four, and I quote, Council staff initiate discussions with the RMS and other state agencies to establish a process ensuring that the balance of the route between, the route, I should say, between Grose Vale Road and Springwood is above the one in 100 flood level.
Where is the outcome from those investigations, Councillors? Where is it? It's not in the briefings, not in the Council minutes, so I'd ask that information be made available tonight. Peter Reynolds, he mentioned about the bridge and the alternative. Well, there is another alternative as well. The alternative that I'm putting forward, the NRDCA is canvassing, is that we could protect the Grose River precinct from more environmental vandalism. We should seriously consider the construction of a third crossing of the Hawkesbury River, promised by state and federal governments, to be located where it will serve the Redbank communities and others. The logical location is on the eastern side of St John of God healthcare facility, a Jim Anderson viaduct on Crowley's Lane and then onto Castle Ray Road and then it's about 100 metres to the driftway.
In relation to local roads, the current condition of Grose Vale Road and Grose Vale Road are not fit for purpose. There is a serious safety question about Grose View School and the dangers to parents, children and staff. The VPA does not exactly tell us what the developer is proposing for local roads.
Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I wish to speak about why my family and many other people in the Hawkesbury community believe that this amendment to the VPA should not be allowed. As most people know, we are the owners of 1 Ashton's Road. If this amendment to the VPA is approved, it will allow for the developer to proceed with the unnecessary destruction of our family home and my son's farming business, supporting his family with two young children and also his employees who rely on income produced from farming our 15 acres of agricultural land. We are a fifth generation farming family, and my husband has roots back to the First Fleet, being a descendant of William Forster, who is buried at St Matthew's at Windsor.
This has been our family home for over 20 years, and our lives have been disrupted and filled with uncertainty for the past four years. Consider how you would feel if that was happening to your family or your parents. The detrimental impact this will have on our family will be enormous,
The process in selecting our property for this road has been extremely unfair, and we have been discriminated against. And not been properly consulted with during the past four years, which has been extremely distressing for all members of our family. What makes this even more distressing is that our property is surrounded by a huge amount of vacant acres that this road could be designed to run through, so the route is not constrained by a limit of suitable options. Also, it is normal practice when designing roads and infrastructure to minimise the impact on existing residential dwellings wherever possible. That practice has not been adopted here, and to the contrary, a road alignment supported by Council has been chosen which favours
The owner of the vacant land, as noted in the minutes of meeting held by the project team. For example, quote: To facilitate the alignment with the new extension of Grose River Road link, which is to avoid the private land housing the stud farm. Unquote. And quote: Road designed to avoid the star property as per design brief. Unquote. The land referred to is vacant horse paddocks, and no one, despite my request, has provided me with any evidence that this road cannot be built on that land. There has been no analysis explaining why the alignment cannot be relocated some 30 metres to the east of our property on vacant land. Why is this landowner being given preferential treatment and this land quarantined from consideration for this project?
Options of designing a route that will not destroy our family home and farm have not been properly investigated, and the developer has in fact provided drawings of a few ridiculous options, full well knowing that they would not meet the desired outcome. We believe that this has been deliberate, and though proper investigations are not being carried out on the obvious option known by Council. And Transport New South Wales reintroduced in May 2017 as evidenced by Council's own records. Why is it that the 1986 Mansell Road and Bridge, for which Council had fully engineered plans designed and which was ready to go, but wasn't built back then due to lack of funds, why was this not the first option considered?
Is this because it ran on the vacant horse paddocks question? That design shows the new road to the east of our property and had minimal impact on our land. This design is as evidence that it can be built on the vacant land. And why wasn't a comparison between this route and that on our property ever carried out? Why has the original 1986 route, which was supposed to run alongside the left side of our property, been changed by veering the new route towards the right-hand boundary of our property? Is this so that it can be designed to have, quote, minimal impact on the star property, unquote? Also, why was ARRB instructed to reduce the road corridor from 35 metres to 21 metres wide for, quote, considering minimal impact on the star property and rationalise alignment accordingly, unquote?
These are quotes out of the minutes of project meetings. There are so many unanswered questions and misinformation about this project. I've been told so many different things by Council employees and different councillors that I no longer know what is the truth. The ongoing failure to be transparent is not helping us have any trust in this local council. I have been told that it was Transport's decision to select our property for this project and design the road. To clarify this, yesterday I spoke with the contact that I had been given to deal with at Transport, and she confirmed to me that the decision to go through our property was made by the developer, and maybe the council, and the design would be approved by council, as it is a local government project.
She advised that Transport are only being involved to do the compulsory acquisition, if it is approved, and that we will not be consulted with until after that happens.
I've got just another page. I won't be long. She also confirmed that the reason Transport are involved in this project is because Ringwood Road is a state road. However, that is not the case on our side of the river, so they are not involved there. She has also today emailed me written confirmation of this. The original VPA entered into by council was flawed and should have never proceeded due to the findings of the ICAC investigations. Why is our family being made to pay the price for this poor agreement entered into by incompetent council? It appears clear that the council has agreed to or been complicit in permitting private landholding interests to directly influence the alignment of the extension of the Grose River Road to our detriment.
As I was only informed about this matter would be coming up at the meeting last Friday, and when I tried to contact my lawyer that day, I was advised he was away on holidays, I request that this decision be deferred until my lawyer can assist me with this. I would also like to be advised as to whether council has taken legal advice on the issue and the matters raised in my lawyer's correspondence. I do not object to the road and bridge if it is aligned as per the council's 1986 design, which also means the flood resilience of a 1 in 100 year flood event. This proposed variation of the VPA should not proceed without a proper investigation of a better route that does not destroy a family home and an agricultural business run by my son.
It should be redesigned to go through vacant land and it shouldn't have been put there in the first place. Surely there is a moral obligation by the council to do this.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Mrs Wilcox, thank you for your address. You would be aware that councillors were given a private briefing relating to the various options. And afterwards, well, at that briefing, I said, look, surely the Wilcox family have the greatest of all rights to be apprised with the same information as that we're now receiving, because there are many claims that I'm sure only you are in a position to refute.
When I came to you afterwards and trying to preserve the confidentiality of that briefing process, nevertheless I described some of the things that we were being told . It was very clear to me that this was new information or that information that had not been communicated to you. So my question to you is: did council staff or a representative of the developer ever come to you and give you the same kind of information that I was describing in our council briefing?
No. Just a point of order, Madam Mayor. None of the rest of us know what information Councillor Zamprogno is referring to, so it's not very helpful for us in our decision-making unless he can elaborate.
Thank you. I'll uphold that, Councillor Conolly. Is there any further questions, Councillor Zamprogno? Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mrs Wilcox. I'll ask someone to move the recommendation, the business paper please. Councillor Conolly . Seconder for that please? Councillor Sheather.
As indicated by some of the speakers, this has been going on. This matter has been going on for a ridiculous amount of time. This has been— the Redbank development came to Council in 2012 for the first time. That wasn't even the first time, actually. It was the first time it came to the Council when I was on it, was in 2012. We agreed a VPA in the couple of years after that, and it was my expectation at the time that if we had approved the Redbank development , we would be driving on that bridge right now, that that bridge would be open for traffic by now. It wasn't an assumption, absolutely, and that was our genuine belief, and that's what helped the case for the development in the first place, is that this infrastructure was going to be provided.
The infrastructure has not been provided, and it's been due to a number of factors, but primarily it's due to the fact that this Council changed its mind about the location of the bridge after signing an agreement with the developer and the RMS. Council decided, signed an agreement with the RMS and with the developer to build the bridge in a particular location, and then a new Council was elected, which had a different mind as to the location, and spent several years working out where that should be before it was finally resolved, I believe, not formally until 2020. We're now in 2022, and we're coming to the formal part of that decision, which is actually amending the VPA after we've already indicated publicly we've changed our mind, and what is being suggested by some is that we should change our mind again and start that process again.
And that to me would be unconscionable. I cannot sit here and say I'm doing my job as a Councillor if I'm going to send this back to the drawing board again . Potentially delaying this project by years, and I think that's the best case scenario if we do do that tonight. I think the best case scenario is we delay this project by years. I think what's far more likely is that the developer says, actually, Council, you've changed your mind twice now. You've signed two agreements with us and broken both of them. We're going to elect to give you the cash as they can under the agreement, and say we're not going to invest any more time and energy into building yet another location, designing yet another location, and submitting another application and spending a few more years on this.
I think the far most likely outcome would be that they pull out and we do not get a bridge. I understand that this is incredibly difficult, and I wish there was a way that this bridge could be built without any private property acquisition. There isn't a way, and it is not appropriate. I firmly believe it's not appropriate for me as a councillor to be presented with—
I call the chamber to order, please. The councillors deserve the right, you're democratically elected councillors, to have their say in silence, so please observe the rules.
I don't believe it's appropriate for me as a councillor to be presented with an option that's been designed through a process that's taken place with public servants who are experts in this field, developers and RMS as well, to be presented with a process and for me to pick and choose which landowners should have their property acquired. I feel like that's how we end up in ICAC if we start going down that track of picking and choosing which landholders' land we should acquire. We actually are not even meant to be—we are not the determining authority for the application, the Part 5 application for the bridge. Councillors are not allowed to do that. That's not in our power. We are determining whether or not we should agree to this VPA, which sets the general location for the bridge.
The Part 5 application, which looks at whether or not the road and bridge design is meeting all the standards and is suitable, that is not for us. And I just—I firmly believe it would be inappropriate for me, despite the fact that I can understand the temptation of some councillors to do so, I think it would be very inappropriate for us to pick and choose which landowners had their land acquired through a process like this. I can't— I can't sit here and let this go by and just kick this can down the road again and be sitting here in another five years having a similar conversation with a different landowner. We need to make a decision, and this bridge needs to get built.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to propose an amendment, and I've provided a form of words to staff. I'll just wait for it to be brought up onto the screen, and I'll seek a seconder
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to start by saying that I want to see the Grose River bridge built. I agree with Councillor Conolly that the delays that we've experienced are unconscionable, but we have a real obligation to get this right, and it falls to us. I endorse the thrust of the new VPA that seeks to formalise the new location, which offers better flood protection, and the overall route required to deliver that outcome. But it has become clear during the public consultation process that many, many people have concerns. And if there's something that we can fix and we don't bother, then I'd like to ask why we even bothered to ask the public for their feedback in the first place. As Councillor Conolly suggests, it is not a fait accompli.
It is an entirely appropriate juncture to address shortcomings in a VPA after a process of public consultation, and when it comes back to the Chamber. Otherwise, why did we bother? I know that this revised VPA has been vastly too long in the offering. My own public comment on this issue, I've spared neither Council nor the developer for so many delays that it mocks the fact that under the original VPA, the bridge should have been completed and opened by now as a function of the number of lots sold at Redbank. But if we get something wrong, as I believe that we do with this proposed VPA, I want to defend this as absolutely the appropriate juncture to fix it. What it gets wrong is that we as councillors asked for some analysis to fix the problem of the proposed alignment going straight through a particular family's home.
Now, apart from our ethical duty to do the right thing by the community, this is, in my opinion, something that will make the compensation required to be paid by taxpayers to be higher. It's not merely an ethical decision; it's a pragmatic no-brainer in terms of what the best outcome is for the community and for Council. Far better to slightly alter the route and use vacant flat land nearby at likely lower cost. But now it turns out that we were not presented with that option. The options report that we were presented with had two kinds of solution, neither of which we were told were viable. One swept wide of the entire Wilcox property and delivered poor flood immunity and a more expensive bridge.
I am not suggesting that we go that way. The other option, the so-called minimalist option that just misses the house, but is otherwise close to what we are being invited to adopt here tonight, was hobbled in its ability to deliver a standards-compliant road because, inexplicably, the edge vacant land to the east of the Wilcox's house was off the table. I am not suggesting a conspiracy. Most governmental ineptitude is the result of stuff-ups rather than grand plots. But we in this chamber simply cannot be satisfied that the options to find an alignment that meets the design criteria and avoids the Wilcox house have been put before us, and that's what this motion, this amendment seeks to fix.
I receive confirmation today that Transport for New South Wales will acquire whatever land they need to as a result of the process that we're engaged in. Their agnosticism is quite welcome, and it means that we don't need to worry about that part. I don't believe that the developers will walk away if we take the time to get this right. It is true that they have asked for repeated delay after delay after delay relating to extending various milestones on no fewer than four occasions over the years, and in fact request to do so again tonight. They will bear this brief additional delay just fine. I do not believe, as Councillor Conolly says, that it will delay this process interminably or for years and years, just long enough to draw up another alignment that is compliant with the appropriate standards, confers the appropriate flood immunity.
And which contemplates all available land for acquisition. I also believe that we will be litigated into oblivion if we pass a flawed VPA tonight, because this claim that certain land was taken off the table in a private document smells bad to me. I recognise that this VPA is about more than just the fate of one house. All the parties deserve the certainty of their obligations by having a new VPA approved. But it is absolutely clear that the community has delivered us an overwhelming mandate to readdress this issue, and they support us if we choose, as this amendment seeks to do, to readdress the issue of the route in a way that makes us confident that we've actually had all of the appropriate options placed before us, and at the moment we do not.
Thanks, Madam Mayor. I agree with Councillor Zamprogno that this is probably the last opportunity for us to act. Consistent with the wishes of the community, we've heard from the submissions that two-thirds prefer us to not take a route through the Wilcox's house. The community is clearly uncomfortable with this as a way forward. They don't trust the council and they don't trust the developer, and that really should be a matter of real concern to this council. We say in our Community Strategic Plan that we want to be a consistent, transparent and engaged decision maker that the community can understand. And yet we hear from them tonight and on social media and in response to the last few months of this application that the community doesn't understand and that they don't trust us in our decision-making to get this right.
So we have very few options to unpick what has now become an increasingly large mess. Council did decide to move the bridge, and we did that in response to community requests to get it out of a really well-loved community swimming hole on both sides of the river. We didn't do it because we felt like shifting it, or because it was good fun, or we thought that Ashton's Road was an interesting spot to investigate. We did it in response to the community's wishes, and it's lucky we did. If you think that Nevoa and Yarramundi was a top spot for a bridge, you best pop down there after five floods in less than two years and see what has happened with that river, because that site certainly doesn't look like it did in 2012.
We are beholden to the community that elects us. Our responsibility is to the community that we represent, and getting the best outcome for the community should be our main requirement.
It is inconceivable to me that what is effectively a small road on land not heavily constrained by development should go through the only house there, the only house and the only working farm. I get that there are requirements for the way roads are designed. I have spoken to senior road engineers about the ability to modify this route so that it gives the same outcomes that council desires: high flood immunity, some traffic access across to Springwood, and some benefits for Bells Line of Road. And this is never going to be a panacea, and we shouldn't be pretending that it is.
It will be more expensive to build a bridge that doesn't go through the Wilcox's kitchen. We're not paying that money. I don't really mind if it's a bit more expensive if it gets a better outcome and the only people living in that path get to stay there. This isn't WestConnex where everyone is living cheek by jowl along the route. It's one house surrounded by paddocks. I'm not quite sure why we are dying in a ditch over keeping the same route when we've heard from Transport for New South Wales that they are willing to vary. We have heard from engineers that it's possible to vary. Surely we can be smarter about how we do this, what the intersection looks like at the other end, the way that we construct the bridge, something so that there is a better outcome for all concerned here.
Because at the moment, this punch through to keep the developer happy attitude is not what we should be doing as a representative of the people of the Hawkesbury, including the Wilcox family.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. This has been going on for a long time, as several councillors have indicated, and you would think with all that time at our disposal, we would have got it right. But it appears that we haven't.
Going through this report, I'm actually quite disappointed at the quality of the information provided in this report. I can see why residents are not happy with the situation, and I don't agree that there's any conspiracy going on between the council and the developer. There's a whole lot of people suggesting all kinds of things. Well, I don't think those things are correct, but I do suspect there's been a lot of incompetence and stalling done at various stages, which have made this stretch on and become quite difficult to get through. As I went through the report, I kept stumbling over the idea of a design brief. Now, it says in the report that the design brief didn't exist. But then it says in the meeting minutes of January 2019 that the road should be designed to avoid the star property as per the design brief.
So the project group obviously thought there was a design brief, and the project group says also that they created a design parameters. What it doesn't say is whether the design parameters are the same thing as the design brief. The design parameters are things like the radius of the curves and the getting to the Springwood Road at a certain height. But nowhere in the design parameters does it mention avoiding the star property. Yet the minutes of the other meeting say we should avoid the star property, as in the design brief. So there's a conflict there and a confusion which doesn't answer itself. I don't know what the answer to that is, and the answer has never been provided to me. But it seems to me at some stage that group was told by somebody to avoid the star property.
I don't recall that ever coming before Council or anybody else, and when I was Mayor I can't recall it ever coming towards me for that decision either. So I don't know where that came from. But that has been there all the time, and I believe that has influenced the outcome. It has led to several routes which, as described by Councillor Zamprogno, really don't solve the problem. They actually make things worse, if anything. And the 1986-87 route was not considered at all.
If the, on page 26, sorry, at the top of page 26, it comes to a conclusion, the alternative options considered resulted in a combination of non-compliances in design and increased impacts on property acquisition areas. For these reasons, the concept design alignment remained the preferred alignment. Now, to me, that's not a satisfactory explanation . Those three lines should be expanded, in my opinion, to something like 10, 15 pages to go through and tell us exactly what the problem is. For example, in one stage there it says that one of these options comes out across the river at an area below the 1 in 100 level, but it doesn't say how far below that level it is. If that, for example, was 10 centimetres below, then I don't see any problem with us considering it.
If it's 10 metres below, then obviously we may not. But it doesn't give us that information. And I just want to point out that this bridge, the developer offered to build this bridge. It's not a council bridge. We didn't say we were going to build it. The developers offered to build it. We are trying to, in this case, I believe, trying to represent the community to get a better result. And because of all the confusion and because of all those questions that have not been answered, I don't think council at this stage should endorse the VPA. I am therefore going to support Councillor Zamprogno's amendment. However, I— As it says in the amendment, I do want this bridge to go ahead, and if there's any danger of the developer responding in a negative way, I think we should try and work with him to get through this because what we're looking for as a result, it would actually be better for him as well as the community because Redbank's getting called all kinds of names at the moment, and I'm sure he doesn't want the public image of Redbank to go down the drain.
So I acknowledge Councillor Zamprogno's attempt to make a positive impact on this and get a positive way forward, and I will support that.
Just wanted to ask the question of whether it's possible for us to be able to get the information that Councillor Zamprogno has asked in point 4D, which is determines the relative cost of property acquisition and compensation to land and homeowners under both proposed and alternative alignments. My understanding of the Property Acquisition
We have determined the best possible route. So I'm just not sure that I agree that that point should be included, and I just wanted some confirmation about that process, please. Thank you
Through you, Madam Mayor, what we would need to be doing there is making some assumptions, first of all about the amount of land to be acquired under both scenarios in the first instance, and then we would need to, Council would need to pay for a valuer to value both the area of land on the adjoining property, as well as that of the Wilcox's property, and then, you know, in my experience of these acquisition processes, there is usually a multitude of valuations that will often be at play and often they are at odds. So all we could do is provide Council our best estimate on that. It doesn't necessarily mean that that would be a final figure that either the parties or the valuer general at the end of the day would agree on.
Some of the commentary to date has been that Transport for New South Wales will pay whatever the cost is for land acquisition. So I'm just wondering if by taking that out, we won't muddy the waters. If that is the case, then we don't need— I'm trying to get this amendment to be acceptable to me, and it would be acceptable to me if we didn't have that part in it, because I think that just makes it — well, I just don't think that it's going to be something that we will use to make our final decision.
Look, my intent in including clause 4D is to just get some rough indication. You know, even an indication to say, look, it's about the same. The property acquisition of vacant land is less than the cost of compensating a family for the loss of their entire home. I was simply after something indicative. I agree with the General Manager that valuations, you know, can be contestable, and I'm not seeking to pin us down on that. I'm simply looking for some reassurance that we're not suggesting a course of action that's radically more expensive because , for example, of the way that an alternative alignment needs to follow the contours of the landscape, for example. So if the councillor would be prepared to leave that in, given that my intent was to merely find something indicative and reassuring rather than numbers that might muddy the waters, does that answer your question
Thank you through you. Yes, back to you , Councillor Kotlash. Yes, but that's not going to—I mean, the developer is still going to build the bridge presumably without that as a constraint. So, I suppose it's public money in the end, so—
Can that be amended, please? Thank you. Anything else ? Sorry, anything else to add, Councillor Kotlash ? Not at this point, thank you . Councillor Conolly.
Just a question on the amendment, actually. I just wanted to know when was the Part 5 application for the current route lodged, and do we have an expectation of when that will be determined? General
Manager. Through you, Madam Mayor, I have a feeling that Part 5 application was lodged about—yeah , April was the time that it was lodged, and we were anticipating an approximate timeline that, in the event that Council endorsed the Voluntary Planning Agreement, that we would have a determination on the Part 5 application at some point before Christmas of this year. In order to meet, allowing a little bit of fat for the March 20, we are expecting the 801st allotment within the development to be completed on or about March of next year, so we're told. So that just allowed us a little bit of a buffer there.
Would it be reasonable, therefore, to assume that if there was, if we went back to the drawing board on this and designed a new route, that there would be a period of some months to get a new design, followed by another, you know, eight-month period of another Part 5 application?
Our assessment time, Councillor, is one thing. I think there would be a much greater and prolonged period of time with the applicant and/or with Redbank redesigning, getting all of the drawings redone and all of the technical reports that supported the Part 5 application, which was quite comprehensive and relied on a number of technical reports. So my suspicion is that it would be longer with them even than it would be with us before it even came back, and we would need to re-exhibit that whole, that application and go again.
I know I said one more, but I've just got one more. Based on the commentary behind me, there seems to be an expectation that we could pick up a project that was designed in 1986 and lodge that as a Part 5 application today. Would that be your expectation that that would work?
My expectation is that the concept may be something that could be looked at in terms of picking up the drawings. Absolutely not. It's a 36-year-old drawing. The Australian road standards of 1986 look vastly different to today, and my instinct is it would be wholly unsuitable on that particular front. But it's not to say that it couldn't be looked at. But certainly, you know, I can look at one point, for example, where I can see that the junction on the 1986 plan with Springwood Road isn't perpendicular, and that's been a deal breaker for RMS. So there are some of those sorts of details that, upon looking at it, may be more of an issue than perhaps we think.
I guess if the amendment, it would take some months and not some weeks there, I say, but I thank him. But my question is, and I guess it's an open question, and I doubt if anybody may have the question, but I'll ask it anyway. Why do—
Why would we think that the developer would wear this one enough, you know, if we delayed it again? Because the goodwill they've shown in the past — this is my concern— why, if we postpone it again with the various milestones, and they've come back, and I know the history behind it, they've come in and they've asked for milestones to be changed, and Council has asked that question and they've accepted it, and we've moved it out to 801 lots present, which is about March date, why would they accept another delay? Why wouldn't they just pick up their kit and take it home and just give the money over to the state government? I don't know if you've got an answer for that, but I'd be interested if somebody could tell me, or at least somebody could ask that question and they could come
Back. Perhaps it was rhetorical, but your point, I think we appreciate your point, Councillor Veigel. Is anyone wishing to speak on the amendment? Anyone else? Sorry, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you.
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
There's an indication that we might hear back from Transport for New South Wales later in this year as to their preferred route. They've obviously put the options report out, but we're waiting to hear back in terms of what route they've finalised, but hoping to hear back before the end of this year. Yep.
Maybe an election announcement. Thank you for that. I had a second question, and I don't know if anyone here would know it, but back in 2014, there were a number of options investigated by Redbank. I've got an article here, but it doesn't specify them. But one looks like a bridge across the Ashton's Road area. I'm just wondering if we can ask them, or I don't know what it's called, but it looks like there's been three routes looked at. General Manager? Not the current three routes. This says 2014. Anyway, I'll speak on in support of the amendment, and thank Councillor Sempronio for bringing that. I think that this is about getting a good result for the community. We must remember that the issue around this is that the VPA proceeded on the proviso that the project was to be at no cost to government.
We now have a different scenario where Transport for New South Wales, according to what Councillor Sempronio has said, have agreed, and I believe that we should get a commitment from them on this, that they have agreed to finance the land acquisitions that are required, which is quite a significant change in the situation, because when Redbank originally looked at options, they were not wanting to have to pay for any land acquisition at all. Which was why the bridge went through the nature reserves, which, as Councillor Wheeler pointed out, there was enormous opposition to. So I just wanted to address this narrative that exists around people saying that the new council changed it and delayed it and all that sort of narrative that I hear back from people, including that I changed the location of the bridge.
I'd just like to say that if a mayor has that much power, I don't know why the developers didn't get Councillor Conolly or Councillor Calvert or now Councillor McMahon to change it to wherever they wanted it, because that is not true. There was a unanimous council decision in 2017 to look at other alternatives, and that was where we went with that, because, as Councillor Calvert said, we all had a commitment to getting a bridge built , and the developer had gained approval for that development on the proviso that they would provide such a bridge. So. I also think it's a little unfortunate that we have never really had the engagement with Transport for New South Wales around this. And it's not that they're just a player to deal with the land acquisition; they're a party to the VPA.
This is a three-party voluntary planning agreement, and yet we've never really had any engagement. I know there's a committee that used to meet. I never met with that committee, but that was where these negotiations took place. So we don't know, as a council, really what was said in those meetings and what part Transport for New South Wales had, or, well, anyone really in those meetings. So the delays that occurred, the essential delay that was occurring was in 2012, there was a council resolution to actually prepare plans of management and to do work towards gearing up for this inevitable application that was going to come regarding a bridge. In 2016, when the new council came in, of course none of that work had been done by the previous councils.
That was two councils before that. And so there were various issues around that and the work that would have to be done with reclassification of land and with getting plans of management done. On top of that, there were significant delays with the Redbank development around the issues around Sydney Water. So despite being told at the start of it that there was adequate water, there had to be a lot of upgrades done around the water, and that delayed their release of lots. And I think what some people may not understand in the community is that this was specifically tied to the delivery of lots being released in a subdivision. So the delays weren't being done by the new council, and the decisions weren't specifically to do with the change of council.
The decisions are really The symbolic of a reflection of a flawed voluntary planning agreement and something that many of us projected would one day result in such dilemmas as we're seeing, as we're facing now. However, Councillor Sanpranio's amendment has given us somewhat of a way forward when the investigations were going on, of which we didn't necessarily know where the final route was only arrived at, like, recently, so we weren't to know what that was going to result in. So I think that if it takes time, I think the developer should respect that because I'm sure if the developers are acting in good faith, they want the best outcome for this community as well. It's already been a long time.
They have the benefit of having profited from the development in that area, so our community is calling for us to get them the best result possible, and I think this is the best way forward we have at the moment. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I might take this opportunity here to speak against the amendment, and the reason that I do so is a pained one, but also I'm hoping when councillors listen to me and my remarks, a pragmatic one. This, we have all sat here tonight and listened to the fact that this has an extensively long history, this item. Most of us in this council chamber weren't here when the development was approved, yet the burden of responsibility and leadership means that we've been lumped with some pretty tough decision making. I know there are people here tonight who are aggrieved with how this is happening and how it's playing out, and I just want you to know that— Regardless of how people vote, they have their reasons for how they vote, and I want to make it very known how awful it is, as the 12 of us, to be put in this position.
It's an extremely awful position to have to put in, too, as councillors. We all live in this community amongst you as well. But on the other hand, we also have legal obligations, and we cannot forego those legal obligations. And I don't know if anyone picked up on two points that Councillor Conolly made that were quite important, and I wanted to reiterate those points. The first one was, there's been so much discussion here tonight in the chamber about the cost of acquisitions. So you're talking about the fact that if this route was realigned, then Transport for New South Wales will pay whatever. Well, first of all, I've never seen that in writing. I don't know where that is. But second of all, the main point here is we're all debating back and forth about what the cost of acquisitions will be.
Not one councillor in this room has said that that, therefore, if we're looking at one of the realignments in the business paper possibly, therefore puts seven other families into this situation. And it's not about picking one family over the other. What I'm trying to say to you is that acquisitions aren't just about a financial cost. And again, Councillor Conolly was right. If we therefore look like we're favouring one route over another route because we're favouring one family over another potential family, it's still someone's land. I'm not going to keep engaging with the gallery. I will call them to order. I will call them to order. The chair has the right to be heard in silence, and I will call the gallery to order while we continue speaking, while I continue speaking, and any other councillor does.
Our arguments deserve to be heard. So I do want to make it clear that when we're talking about acquisitions, please just, please put the financial aspect out of your mind because it also has a human aspect as well. And we are here, and we cannot say that we are favouring one person over another, like we're favouring one cost over another. That is against what we are elected to do. And I wanted to make the second point that Councillor Conolly touched on very clear and remind councillors and the gallery and anyone listening at home as well. We are not the determining authority for the DA. That Part 5 application is determined either by council staff or it goes to a planning panel. What we are tasked with here tonight is the amendments to the VPA.
Let's get that very clear in what we are deciding here. They will still then have to decide throughout that process whether that road is fit for purpose or whether that road does align to the standards necessary to approve it. That is not our job. We are not allowed to do that under the law. All as we are doing here tonight is looking at approving amendments to a VPA. So I wanted to make that very clear in moving forward and really reiterate those points that were made because whilst we have a very, very difficult job at hand, and I can tell you now no one in the community would envy being in the position that we are in now. It's awful.
But we have to make a decision, and we have to make that decision with all of the facts put in front of us. So I've called the gallery to order, and I'll do it one more time because this is the chamber who needs to discuss things to make a decision, and one sentence from one councillor can assist another councillor in their decision making. So please remain quiet while we're speaking. So I do just want to make those points. I'll be voting against the amendment currently on the screen tonight. I don't think the amendment goes far enough. In taking into account all the other issues that I have raised, it puts too much of an emphasis on a financial cost, which we will never be able to know. And if we do decide to go down another path, then it's not just about the delay, but it's about the fact that we will be putting this on a whole new set of circumstances, being going back to the drawing board.
And then, like Councillor Conolly said, we could end up being scrutinised because there could be favouritism over one way or another. And what I would like to do as a councillor is continuously look at the report in front of me, and we have to act in good faith that the information that we are given has been provided to us thoroughly. So I'll be voting against the amendment tonight. Is there any other speakers who would like to speak on the amendment? Councillor Dogramaci.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Again, I have to be different, and if I'm not going to be hit with another code of conduct mentioning two words, when I said logic and common sense. I don't know which councillors were in here, who was doing what, why it took, you know, so many years. That was another failure of the council, not the councillors, but they couldn't make a decision. And I don't know who made that comment, what we read, which I have received last month, quote and unquote, that, you know, it shouldn't go through Star Property. Maybe we should have called, which at that time I mentioned Councillor Conolly was the mayor. Again, the same word, don't hit me with another code of conduct. When I said, are you going to let him get away?
Maybe we should have invited that person to come and give us the reason whether he wrote that part of, you know, that word or not, or who did it. That's beside the point. And now, if we all, or if this latest thing, you know, goes ahead, there is no doubt that Wilcoxes will take the matter to court. That's what I think. Anyway, and then another delay, another delay. And I wish, I wish, if I was Redbank people, I would just say, well, keep your land, keep your project, whatever it is. I'm going, I'm going, you know, I'm just ending this. No more of this road, and then more traffic on that road, more traffic on Elizabeth Road, more traffic on the Richmond Bridge, more potholes, more accidents.
If it was me, I would say, thank you very much. Goodbye. But I think, you know, it's too late. But that's what I would do. If your finger has a cancer, don't try to treat it. Just chop it off and say thank you and goodbye. That's what I would do.
Any comments is too much. We sat and listened to the speakers. I'll leave it there, but I expect something to be done. Madam Mayor, all of us had conversations about the situation that the Wilcoxes are in. No one's comfortable with it at all. And if it was my house, I would feel exactly the same.
Just a question to the GM through you. When was the plans presented, Council lines bucket said about four months ago. Is that right or was it before then?
They were formally submitted to Council as part of the — there's two streams going on. So one of them is the Part 5 assessment, so that was submitted in April of this year. And then obviously the VPA discussions have required, the amended VPA has required those final drawings to be submitted into it. But those discussions have obviously been going on for much longer.
And we haven't rolled a play, and we're limited to how involved we can get in situations like this. But it doesn't mean to say you can't get involved. You can ask questions and the like, and that's our responsibility and obligation.
A lot of the things that have been discussed have been kicking around for a long time. And now we've come to make a decision, it seems that some don't want to make a decision. And it's not going to be easy for anybody. But the delay, irrespective of the past, it's with us tonight. And I spoke to Councillor Zambrogno about his motion, and I understand where he's coming from.
And certainly the concerns that I've had, and all the things that have been put to me, and a lot of them were discussed both by the speakers and councillors tonight, I've approached the staff over the last month, two months, to get the answers to those questions. And some more recently, even today from Mr Wilcox's son , the concerns he had, and asked me to find out about them because I felt they were in error. And the information I got today, that they were in error, which really concerns me because it gives , I guess, the information that we're talking about, that it gives a direction for the Wilcoxes that there is something going on or inappropriate or even that if there's a court situation, that there's a winnable situation there.
I guess the part that concerns me is not only the councillors, but perhaps the lack of communication. The meetings that were discussed by Councillor Lyons-Buckett even are still happening between the three parties. It's not something that's not happening; it's still happening. So that communication not only is not going to the councillors, but it's certainly not going to the very people very much involved, the Wilcox and probably Redbank as well. The conversations I've had with Redbank haven't been all that cosy either. So the communication is something that we need to do as councillors and staff. So I'm going to support the motion,
Speaking against the amendment, which doesn't sit comfortably. I know the frustration. A lot of the speakers I spoke to understand that frustration and feel it. But the questions that were asked there, we as a council have had an opportunity for four years to find that out, most of it. We've had briefings, and there was people there that we could ask questions of that related to all those things. Some questions were asked, and we got answers. And I don't know whether some of the councillors, I can't remember whether some of them weren't there, but some of the questions were answered in relation to those questions there, asked and answered. So, and we've had the opportunity to contact the staff in relation to those matters since.
And the distrust within the community, that can be cancerous. We've got staff here that we rely on for information. Now, why there might be issues from time to time in relation to communication or the like, they're there to provide us information, and that we can be guided by and appropriate response and trust in that response.
Sorry, I just realised the timer. I think we need to get a second buzzer on that timer so that we know when the timer is up. Sorry, Councillor Sheather, if you'd just like to finish on your final point. I'm
Just saying that we need to have trust in the staff, that the information that we require so that when we do respond to the people that we represent, that there's a clear communication that it's kosher and as it is.
Thank you, Councillor Sheather. Is there anybody else who would like to speak on the amendment, although most councillors have? No other remarks? Okay, then I will put the amendment. All those in favour—and I'm going to record this slowly, you'll find that I'll do that as a mayor—all those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand.
Councillor Djuric. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Zamprogno. All those against the amendment. Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor McMahon.
Wishing to speak further? No. Point of order, Madam Mayor, just a point of protocol. If the amendment becomes the motion, do I get a second bite at the cherry or not?
Just check with the staff because you've spoken on the amendment. Precisely, yes, I will just double check that. May I have clarification? Now, because it's now a motion, you can have a second speech. Councillor Zamprogno, I take that as your light being on to speak.
Yes, and thank you, and I'll try and keep this brief, and I'm glad that the amendment has become the motion. But I just want to address briefly just a couple of things that have been said in the debate. Firstly, there's some apprehension that, you know, if we were to lodge a new Part 5 application is that it would take as long to process as the previous one. But it bears remembering that the VPA, which is over a centimetre thick and probably comes with a lot of associated documentation, will be 97% the same as the document that we've already submitted. All we're proposing to do is to alter one portion of the alignment, and I don't know that that amounts to— Quite the drastic change that some people are making it out to be.
It sounds a little overblown. As far as my contention that, you know, the assertion that I'm forcing a 1986 Mornsell design on the parties, I suppose it would have been more accurate to say in my amendment that it's elements of the Mornsell design. I'm not suggesting the Mornsell design in its entirety, but merely elements of, and the elements particularly that pertain to the alignment that was deemed perfectly okay in the vicinity of 1 Ashton's Road.
I'd also like to refute the suggestion that, you know, if we go to the developers with any suggestion of further delays, that they're just going to pick up their bundle and walk away. This is something that's asserted constantly, and yet when every time they come to us and have us over a barrel and demand some kind of a delay, and we supinely agree to it, that's okay. But when we go to them with a very well-founded concern about a flaw in the VPA and we ask for a matter to be readdressed, suddenly that's something that we can't do. Well, I don't accept that that's correct either. And furthermore, to the degree that that relates to any kind of delay, I'd invite councillors to contemplate what kind of delay, what kind of spanner in the works would be put if this were to be litigated and was tied up in the Land and Environment Court for a couple of years.
I think we've got an opportunity to speed the plough by getting this right and then bringing something back that everybody's happy with. As far as our obligations in this chamber, you know, I don't accept the contention that we are acting improperly by mentioning one property by name or another property by name. I did seek ethical guidance from the General Manager about whether it was appropriate to speak in those terms, and I was told generally that it was perfectly okay to do that. Whereas the favourable treatment that a particular property owner appears to have received occurred as a result of a secret meeting that had to be exposed through a GIPA application. So ethically, I think we're on very strong grounds in resolving the way that I hope we will tonight.
I find that the Mayor says that it's a very, very difficult decision, and I agree. But I don't know. I find it easy to do the right thing when it's as clear as this, and I cannot understand how anybody who had taken the time to go out to see the lay of the land, to eyeball the property and the alignment that's being proposed and the vacant land that's to one side, and furthermore have sat across the kitchen table from this family could vote to effectively condemn their house without going through our due diligence. So I'd like to thank the Chamber for their support so far and hope we can get this home.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just before forgot to bring up the point about I would like us to clarify exactly who determines the route of this road. Transport for New South Wales say that we as a council are determining the route. That's what I've heard from the residents. But when you look all through this document, the route has— Sorry to
Stop you there, Deputy Mayor. If you are in this room, you are sitting on a seat. Otherwise, you are intimidating the councillors. Please take a chair. Please continue, Deputy Mayor.
All through this document, it shows that the route has been determined by the design parameters, and the design parameters, in my mind, have been put forward by Transport for New South Wales, which talk about the size of the sweep of the bends and the meeting the 90 degrees. A corner at Springwood Road, etc. So if Transport for New South Wales determines those parameters, and those parameters determine where the road is, then how can anyone argue that Council determines where the road is? I would like to get that clarified because I believe it's not us determining the location; it's actually those parameters from Transport for New South Wales.
Through you, Madam Mayor. So in terms of the route alignment, obviously we're talking here about a tripartite agreement between Redbank Communities, Hawkesbury City Council and Transport for New South Wales. That route alignment, Council, in its decision in February 2020 to shift the route off Nevoa, set some high-level principles in that resolution about what it was seeking. So greater level of flood immunity in particular, and the opportunity to leave important community land as it was at that particular point in time. From that point on, there has been ongoing discussions, and the meeting minutes that we've extracted and placed in your business papers are meetings between Transport for New South Wales, Redbank Communities and Hawkesbury City Council that have been ongoing for many, many years.
So I don't know that it's necessarily fair to attribute the route alignment to one party or another, because I do believe it's been an agreement between those parties and an evolution through that process. So there are different factors at play around road standards and acquisitions and, you know, our drive for flood immunity and those kinds of things. So my take on that, Councillors, would be that it's probably been a joint response.
I guess I've got to be careful in how I talk now because I want to represent Council and have its best put forward, and I hope that I was wrong in what I said. I have to hope now that the developer doesn't find this situation of having our minds changed a third time too much to bear. I have to hope that we do get the best case scenario of a process that takes another year or two, not another four years. But if we go ahead and vote for this motion as it's before us now, been amended, I think that's the situation we're looking at, is one of those two outcomes: either we don't get a breach, or if we do get a breach, it'll be several years later than what was planned, and what was planned was 2025.
So you're talking, you know, 2027, 2028, you know, probably best case now if we go ahead and do this. I don't think, and I think I would just say, you know, in 2017, Councillor Lyons-Buckett mentioned, and she was quite right, that it was put before the Council not to change the route, but that we should consider other options as well, because we run into this problem where we've been identified to us that actually changing the classification wasn't quite as quick as we thought. Redbank was still going to go ahead and put in a DA, which they did for the Nevua crossing, but that we should look at other options, and that was broadly supported. After a three-year-long process of looking at other options and coming up with something that would work, in 2020 we resolved on that other location, and at that point, I don't think anybody anticipated that in 2022, late 2022, the Council would come to a decision and say, actually no, we're going to change our mind again.
And my fear is that what's to stop this from happening another time now? And that'll be, you know, I hope doesn't, and I've got to, as I said, I've got to be careful because I don't want to put that out there. But that would be the obvious fear if this motion is passed, is that if Council's not going to stay firm on any particular position, why would anyone keep spending money designing different options with absolutely no guarantee that Council will still feel that way by the time the option comes? And it's perfectly possible that this next option won't come to this Council; it'll come to a whole new bunch of people. Potentially half the Councillors might change again, and people will have a totally different view.
And that's what I think is the reality if we do pass this motion. That's the best case. Worst case, of course, is that there's a monetary contribution, less everything that's already been spent on the two options put forward, that's passed to the State Government and we don't get this bridge. I did also want to comment, there's been a lot of commentary about the VPA being flawed. Clearly, this process has not gone how any of us anticipated. But the VPA never anticipated that the party that would try and get out of it would be Council. The VPA has been written with the assumption that the party that might try and get out of the agreement is the developer. In this situation, it's Council that keeps changing its mind about the route, and that's why the VPA is not working the way it was intended.
It is correct that Council's had probably said that there've been requests to push back milestones, but that's always been a result of Council changing the route of the bridge. How could the original milestones possibly be kept when it was Council's decision to change the route? And that's why the VPA isn't working. It's because nobody anticipated that the party representing the residents would try and get out of this infrastructure being delivered. So obviously we've passed the amendment. I don't think we should be going down this road. I think, you know, this is a terrible outcome for our residents who we're supposed to be representing, as we've all been saying over and over again. But the reality of passing this motion is that our residents will be several years without a bridge if we ever get it.
And that's why I think, you know, this is a dereliction of our duty. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Conolly. The amendment has become the motion. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather , Councillor Kotlash , Councillor Calvert, Councillor Durick, Councillor Lyons Buckett , Councillor Wheeler, and Councillor Zamprogno. Those against, raise your hand. Councillor Veigel, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor McMahon. The motion has passed.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Conolly, seconded by Councillor Sheather.
That:
1. Council supports the intent of the revised VPA to construct a bridge over the Grose River at the location indicated in Annexure E, plus approach roads connecting Grose Vale Road and Springwood Road.
2. Council endorses the variation of the milestone relating to the Practical Completion of Peel Park, from the 901 st urban lot, to the 915 th urban lot (Schedule 2, Item 1.7).
3. Council acknowledges concerns raised in 256 of the 377 submissions during the VPA exhibition process, and resolves that the road alignment in the vicinity of the dwelling at 1 Ashtons Road be reexamined.
4. Consideration be given in the ongoing negotiations to:
- a) The ability of the Maunsell 1986 design commissioned by the then-DMR to deliver an AusRoads compliant road which also delivers on the 1:100 flood immunity.
- b) Places no constraint on the examination of an alternative route passing through adjacent properties.
- c) Determines the number of properties requiring partial acquisition if an alignment passing just to the east of the dwelling at 1 Ashtons Road were constructed.
This is page 7 of the Minutes of the ORDINARY MEETING of the HAWKESBURY CITY COUNCIL held at the Council Chambers, Windsor, on 13 September 2022.
ORDINARY MEETING
Minutes:
13 September 2022
5. The matter be further reported to Council.
In accordance with Section 375A of the Local Government Act 1993 a division is required to be called whenever a planning decision is put at a council or committee meeting. Accordingly, the Chairperson called for a division in respect of the motion, the results of which were as follows:
Thank you very much for the opportunity to address the Council. I'm the applicant for this matter representing Sydney Water. It's a pretty basic application. It's a parcel of land that's redundant to Sydney Water's requirements. Therefore, it's going to be sold off, subject to the rezoning going through, of course. It's logical to adopt the zone that adjoins the land to both sides. It's an R5 zone we're proposing, and we expect perhaps a dwelling to be erected on that lot. Quite ironically, Sydney Water needs to approach a private sewer provider to connect the allotment, but that's a deal that's in place.
I'm speaking against the motion. I can't, in good conscience, after the last two years we've had, approve any further release of land for development in Pitt Town. I know that this is one dwelling. Well, it's potentially one dwelling. This is an R5 zone. You can do quite a lot with an R5 zoning . You can have an animal boarding facility, you can have a childcare centre, you can have a recreation facility, you can have a veterinary hospital, you can have a caravan park, you can have camping facilities, or you can have a club. None of these things are a good idea in a flood island like Pitt Town. I can't, in good conscience, allow yet another dwelling or worse. On this site, with yet another family on a really poorly serviced flood evacuation route, this is not good planning.
Thank you very much. I will put the motion as the recommendation appears in the business paper for item 153. Those in support, please raise your hands. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, sorry, Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor McMahon. Remember to raise my hand. Oh, and Councillor Djuric
Thank you. Those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, and Councillor Zamprogno. I therefore declare the motion has carried.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Conolly, seconded by Councillor Veigel.
That:
1. Based on assessment of the planning proposal, and the advice of the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel, Council supports this planning proposal with a requirement that connection to a sewer system is provided prior to granting the provisions to amend the Hawkesbury Local Environmental Plan 2012.
2. Council forward the Planning Proposal to the Department of Planning and Environment for a Gateway Determination.
In accordance with Section 375A of the Local Government Act 1993 a division is required to be called whenever a planning decision is put at a council or committee meeting. Accordingly, the Chairperson called for a division in respect of the motion, the results of which were as follows:
CP - Planning Proposal to Amend the Hawkesbury LEP 2012 to reduce the
Sarah McMahon
Okay, the next item subject to public address is item 154 on page 64 of your business papers. We have one speaker for the recommendation in the business paper, and that is Christopher Bell.
Madam Mayor, are we able to get the noise to cease out here? I'm finding it really hard to hear when there's noise coming from all directions. I agree. Are we able
Yeah, we can shut the doors. Yeah. I think if people want to disrespect the process, well, we need to conduct our business. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. Mr. Bell, please proceed.
Not support the motion. That's right. So, yeah. So, my name is Chris Bell, and I'm the president of the Pitt Town Progress Association. I'm here with several of my colleagues. With regard to item 154, as I just mentioned, I would like to speak against the motion and the associated planning proposal to reduce the minimum lot size provisions from 2,500 square metres to 1,000 square metres. In doing so, we are fully supportive of the Hawkesbury Planning Committee's recommendation to reject any such reduction in the minimum lot size. The applicant's claim as part of their justification that an increased density facilitated by the reduction in lot size to 1,000 square metres will enable the funding and delivery of an enhanced flood evacuation route, that is simply not the case.
What their proposal will deliver is a very nice one-kilometre section of residential road through an expanded development comprising an additional 64 homes that will accommodate in excess of another 130 vehicles. During periods of flooding, this will simply then dump an additional 130 vehicles onto an already overwhelmed flood access route that is currently not fit for purpose and is a very, very sad state of disrepair. I would like to take this opportunity to remind Council that the flood evacuation route that is referred to in the proposal document is not a single direction, one-time use only route to evacuate Pitt Town during times of flooding or an emergency. This road is in fact an undersized and poorly engineered road that is our only flood access road for Pitt Town residents during times of even the most modest of flooding.
Councillors are aware that Pitt Town Road, Cattai Road and Pitt Town Dural Road are closed by floodwaters when the river levels at Windsor reach 10 metres, or when we experience heavy localised rains during flood events. That forces the 3,500 residents of Pitt Town to use the flood evacuation route as our only flood access road. This route is then quickly overwhelmed and chopped to pieces by the huge increase in residential traffic, coupled with heavy supply vehicles and emergency service vehicles, all forced onto this sole remaining access road to our Pitt Town community. In addition to the above-mentioned increase in traffic load on our flood access route, the proposed new section of flood evacuation infrastructure will in fact create a dangerous T-intersection at the intersection point with Redfern Road and Mitchell Road, which is the path taken by the majority of vehicles departing Pitt Town.
Irrespective of any improvements to the flood access road, the reduction in lot size to 1,000 metres and the associated increase in density would also set a precedent that would encourage applications for similar lot size reductions to adjoining sections of land that have yet to be developed and are currently limited to the same 2,500 square metre lot size. The existing lot size allocation was approved so as not to exceed the safe evacuation number of residents living in Pitt Town. The flow-on effect of any reduction in permitted lot size would see the maximum dwelling number exceed the SES zero tolerance evacuation limit for Pitt Town of 1,100 homes, and the Planning Minister’s original owned approval for a maximum of 893 dwellings.
Until our state government takes responsibility for the funding, delivery and installation of a fit for purpose and well-engineered flood access road, and until the issues of exceeding the SES determined safe evacuation limit for Pitt Town are addressed, no further reduction to planned lot sizes and the associated increase in population density should be considered by Council or the state government. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr Bell. I'm aware that your association represents a significant amount of the Pitt Town community. I'm just wondering if you could just let us know what you feel the sentiment of the residents is towards this development request in light of so much state government infrastructure, such as the two metre wide road shoulder on Pitt Town Road, upgrades to intersections on Pitt Town Road and the Pitt Town bypass, plus a number of other items not yet being delivered. What do you think residents feel towards a development request increasing the number of houses in Pitt Town before these issues are actually resolved?
Technology. I did it. Yeah, I can honestly say that we're against any increase in the number of people in Pitt Town until the infrastructure that was critical and promised as part of, and indeed dictated to be part of, the development has been delivered. And that includes a serviceable and fit-for-purpose flood evacuation route and the bypass, and a wider, more usable road running the length of Pitt Town Road. Councillor Wheeler summed it up quite nicely earlier on by saying that, you know, it's unconscionable to consider any further development of Pitt Town or any increase in dwelling population in Pitt Town until all of the design requirements and the infrastructure requirements have been met.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions? No. Thank you, Mr Bell. Thank you. I now call on the first speaker registered against this recommendation, which again I remind people is not to support the application, is Matt Owens. Thank you, Mr Owens
Our family has owned the property for approximately 43 years. The planning proposal presented to Council is comprehensive and detailed, with the exception of the detailed feasibility study, which is confidential to the public. I am a public accountant and specialise in taxation and management of developments, including detailed feasibility studies. I'm not a developer. I am profoundly aware that Council will normally follow the recommendation of the planning panel and Council staff. In this instance, I urge Council to dwell very deeply in the planning proposal submitted to clearly understand the proposal. Council in March 2015 resolved to support the then proposal of reducing the lot size from 2,500 square metres to 1,500 square metres.
That proposal was for the subject property and three adjoining properties, a total of an extra 29 lots. This proposal is for an increase of 38 lots, an extra nine lots from the original council-supported proposal. In March 2016, the Department of Planning refused the proposal, but requested Council to provide further information. And that's important, because in January 2016, I submitted my version to Council, the response I thought would be sufficient for the Department, and included a flood report prepared by Mollen Stewart. No action was taken by Council to respond to the Department's request until late 2021.
I contacted Town, the town planner, by 18 emails and 35 telephone calls during the period January 21 and August 21, without a courtesy of a reply. In fact, my emails were deleted without reading or not responded to.
I contacted the Department, but they couldn't talk to me, even kept asking me to call Council. Now I'm going to go to the minutes of the planning panel, which are indeed confusing. It states that the planning proposal is in the public interest, but little other planning merit. It will increase the number of people based on three persons per household by 114. They also said it should not proceed because the flood evacuation route is worthy of consideration, but subject to further consideration. They state that a significant reduction in lot size is not strategic or site specific. This site is site specific. It is the only site, and the site with the flood evacuation route, and the cost to me to develop and construct the road of 18 metres wide, a medium collector road, that was, has been designated by Council, not by me.
Thank you. Okay, now, very important to understand that the recommendation by Council and the Planning Panel is that it would set a precedent. It cannot set a precedent because no other land has been designated for a flood evacuation route at the cost of the landowner. It cannot set a precedent anywhere . Now,
The Planning Panel has also stated that lot size requesters is incongruous with the surrounding lot sizes, yet on the boundary of my property are two lots, one size 1,393 square metres, 1,043 square metres, to the west of my property. Only 650 metres lot size is only 266 metres from the subject site. To the northwest, between Hall Street and Well Street, is minimum 1,500 metres square and share common boundaries. So there is not a substantial increase in lots, and I take the remarks that the speaker before me has said. I do take that on, but does Pitt Down want a flood evacuation route? If they don't want it, that's fine. I'll just go and sell the lots. But that's designated, and it is specified by Council, not by me.
Now, it was also mentioned that the newspapers and the media have really written up a lot about some of the residents, and I'm not sure if they're part of the Progress Association, but they've been on television, they've been in the newspapers, on asking for the flood evacuation route. There is no other area, if Council can find one, that they can put the flood evacuation route. Great.
Mr Ghantous, welcome. In the material that's been provided to us in support of your application, there's an assertion that at the density of 2,500 square metres per block, you are unable to achieve a positive return on your investment. There are many other blocks in Pitt Town of approximately that size where it was obvious to the developers of those blocks that they were able to achieve a positive ROI. Why are they able to achieve a positive ROI, but you are unable to at 2,500 square metres?
Okay, let's go back a number of years. I do know that a big property there was purchased for $4 million. And at that stage, they didn't have the contributions that are now on, the council contributions that are now on. The cost of the road just between 2015 and my feasibility has risen from $1.8 million to $5.2 million. The contributions, including the water licence out there, is now $8.9 million. Even I provided council, the town planner at that time, with a feasibility study on cash flows, which I do, and we went through them together.
Thank you, but I think it's important. It's important to understand what's happened, that across have risen so much, plus the extra contributions. The stormwater contribution was not there until 2019. So this is on all the other landowners. And I make the point that if a council were to rezone an area with a maximum lots, then why not let them have it? Why not let them have it? And as far as the SES is concerned, there is an audit being done by council, which shows that the lot size that I'm asking for does not exceed the limit in the Part 3A agreement with the state government and Johnson, nor does it exceed any of the SES parameters.
That kind of information is relevant to us. We're keenly aware of the costs associated with developing blocks, but is it therefore true to say that if you can't achieve a positive ROI at the current level of development consent that you have, 2,500 square metres, is that that's effectively a guarantee that if that doesn't change, you nor any other subsequent purchaser will ever develop those blocks because the economic proposition is not there? I will say this, that
If I can't make a profit out of it, nobody can. The second thing is, is if I'm not supported in this, I will sell four lots. And I'll make more money, I'm sorry, more money than trying to develop it, which will give me a negative over a two-and-a-half-year period. And a lot of people don't realise on the other costs that are involved in this: capital gains tax, GST, all these other factors, taxation. You add all that up into it. It is not feasible. Now, going back to the people that have developed out there, what has happened is when they first started and they were able to buy properties at a lot less rates, and as the cost of— sorry, as the development was going through and construction, the construction costs were lower, and also even though the land values were rising, but not to the extent they are now.
Madam Mayor, Councillors, staff. My name is Matt Owens. I'm the principal at PMO Planning Services and the applicant for this planning proposal. I'm speaking against the recommendation that's in the report. I'm requesting that Council actually defer consideration of this report to principally permit additional discussion and clarification of some issues with staff prior to further consideration by Council. As you may be aware, the Pitt Town Development Precinct has a significant and complicated history, of which I'm unfortunately very familiar with through my time here at Council. Also, the report and recommendations before you seem to have a bit of an each-way bet and seem a bit confused about what should occur on the site.
It wants the flood evacuation route, as shown in Figure 8 in the report, which goes straight through the middle of this property, which is the primary one in the DCP, but it's not sure how to achieve that. So the report's a little bit confused. As Mr Gansos said, he's undertaken a detailed feasibility assessment, and it's actually shown that there's a loss if you did the development, considering all the costs. So the planning proposal provided an overview of that feasibility, not all the details, and we offered to have a confidential discussion with staff, but that offer wasn't taken up. So we had a discussion with the local planning panel at their meeting about this issue. At that time, I also advised that when the planning controls were imposed, there was little to no economic feasibility undertaken to support the lot sizes that were introduced in the LEP.
Now I know this because I was working at Council and I was directly involved at the time. There was a range of options that came up with it, but economic feasibility was not one of them. So we'd appreciate the opportunity to present return on investment scenarios in a clear comparative manner, with Council staff for inclusion in a subsequent report to Council, and that would make it much clearer for you to understand. The report recommendation suggests an alternate funding arrangement be explored via existing contributions or grants, but this actually suggests a bit of a limited understanding of Pitt Town's unique circumstances and the history, and indicates because the opportunity to use those existing contributions has been lost.
That's mainly because of the advanced status of the report of the development in the precinct. The original contribution plan was prepared by the previous Minister for Planning and not by Council, and it wasn't in Council's control, and Council couldn't amend it. That's been rectified now, but that did hold Council back significantly . And there are also complications introduced with the Part 3A approval and the contribution cap. The report also on page 75 suggests that a precedent may be set, and that was mentioned by the other speaker. The setting of a precedent requires similar circumstances to prevail. So in this case, it would be the flood evacuation route would need to be located on those properties.
There are actually four properties that part of this evacuation route in Figure 8 in your report are affected, but those four properties have already been reconsidered in relation to lot sizes as part of the 3A determination by the State Government in 2008. So there's no actual case for setting a precedent for varying these lot sizes because the circumstances are different. The Council report also on page 76 refers to additional lot modelling and indicates that that modelling showed that with the application of a precedent, which I don't believe is relevant, it would push the number of dwellings over the flood evacuation capacity. The report also states this scenario was modelled and presented to Council in November 2015 with the previous planning proposal.
Whilst that's true, the modelling is now seven years old. The assumptions should be changed to reflect the current situation, as Mr Ghantous has outlined a few of them. And there's no mention that a subsequent report for the subject land was presented to and supported by Council. Also on page 77, the report states Council should enter into an agreement with the owner considering the minimum lot size of 1,000 square metres for the subject site only, based on the owner delivering flood evacuation route through a VPA with a set time frame. This statement's a little bit concerning to me because a VPA can't override an LEP provision. So you can't enter into an agreement saying, we'll lower your lot size if you do something else.
That's just not possible. If my interpretation is incorrect, then the report should refer to site-specific LEP provisions and a VPA, both requiring specific Council resolutions. And then, so the report should be deferred anyway to clarify that intent. And the last dot point in this recommendation is that additional feasibility assessment should be undertaken, which is exactly what we're requesting, defer the matter so that we can do that. I have a suggested motion if Council is interested in that, but I note that the time's run out, so I'm available for questions if
Well, it's in two parts. Part A would be that this matter be deferred to allow a meeting with Council staff and the applicant, so that further clarification of the economic justification for the reduction in minimum lot size can be considered. And then B, following the above, the application and clarification information is to be reported back to Council no later than November 2022.
I have read all of that material very carefully, and I am mindful of the information that's been supplied. That said, I was present at a meeting of the Pitt Town Progress Association meeting last week, where this proposal was unknown to them until I brought it to their attention that it was coming up at tonight's meeting, and I'm grateful that representatives of the Progress Association are here with us this evening. I concur with Mr Bell that it was abundantly clear that the Pitt Town community, as represented at that meeting, were not particularly enamoured of the idea, and that concurs with my own gut feeling, and that is that I do not support the additional densification of Pitt Town. So for that reason, I support the recommendation. Thank you.
Yeah, wish to move an amendment, Madam Mayor. Which is that we defer consideration to allow time for the applicant to have a meeting with staff to discuss the economic feasibility of the development.
To me, this is a fairly simple decision because we have two options. One is we reject the refuse the application without further discussion. The second is we allow some further discussion, and then if nothing changes, we refuse the application when it comes back. I guess from my perspective, I tend to think that there's other ways of providing that infrastructure, but if what the applicant is saying is that that land is getting locked up and it will not be developed at two and a half thousand square metre lots and cannot be developed, then I think we would be doing our job at least to hear them out before we hit it on the head. So not suggesting that I would be in favour of this when it comes back, but I certainly would be in favour of hearing them out.
Yeah, thanks. A question first, Madam Mayor. In the Molina Stewart report, the last paragraph, it says a copy of the detailed analysis is again attached for your reference. The letter is fairly basic. It just talks about the safety aspect of evacuation, how many vehicles can evacuate. But there's no detail with that apart from that last line that indicates there's a detailed analysis that we haven't got. I'd like to have that. And in speaking to the amendment,
For a long, long, long time. And a lot of it, well, I guess if you look at blame, there's a lot of people could put their hand up. But the outcome is that we've got a lot of people in Pitt Town that have been hard done by. And what's before us tonight, and while I'm supporting the amendment, the issues that they—I didn't attend the meeting that Councillor Brogden, but I know the feelings of the Pitt Town area, and try to spend as much time as I can with friends from that out there. The issues they have are not with the developer. The issues that the services that have been promised time and time again have not been provided, and their backs to the wall.
But they live in houses that, well, some do, that's been provided over the last 20 years there. And it's not proper for council to reject another opportunity for a property owner in the same area with an outcome that we've discussed and discussed often about evacuation zones and the like, roads, and Pitt Town evacuation road has been something that all of us, Councillor Brogden— Very much included about fixing it up so what they have got is useful, because what they're at the moment isn't. But it's not, this is not about that. This is about an application for a developer to make good on property that he would like to see happen. For us to not support that because of issues that we're very much— have been part of, not providing, or banging on doors to be provided, is something that we really need to address.
So, Madam Mayor, I support the amendment on that basis. I don't know what the outcome would be, but the discussion that we heard from Mr Owens in relation to discussions they would want to have with staff, I don't know what the outcome may be. But I certainly hope it's not 37 phone calls and 38 emails that weren't addressed. You know, we spoke earlier tonight about how we address and conduct ourselves with the people we represent. Some of us work for those people. Some of us are elected by those people. And we've got to step up. So, Madam Mayor, I support the amendment and would ask Council to just be mindful all of us are aware of the situation of Pitt Town, and we need to do something about it.
Rejecting this is not appropriate. To have the staff reassess the information that was being discussed is proper.
Lyons-Buckett? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think I do speak against the amendment because I think that's just prolonging the inevitable. And I hear what Councillor Sheather says, and the sentiments of the Pitt Town community and the failure of the development that has occurred there to deliver their promised infrastructure and facilities is a really dreadful thing. But there's a lot, and I understand their point of view. Of course I do. I sympathise with them greatly. But there's a lot more to it than that. And if you've read the actual reasoning given by the planning panel and given by the staff in here, it's very clear cut why this development, and it's had a long history. We just went through this when we were speaking about the bridge of the delays and the length, and nobody wanted that then, but then they wanted delay and do it again.
I think for the applicant, I think that it's prolonging the inevitable because I don't think that the situation is going to alter when the planning panel has given that form of advice. Something I just wanted to mention, and I did mention it to the general manager previously, is that I think it would be really good, even though there's no official requirement around planning proposals, that we be notified of this because we don't— these proposals can come up very quickly in a business paper and the community may or may not hear about them depending on that. So if we're truly committed to transparency, I think we need to be upfront about all of these and allow the stakeholders and allow our engagement, even for the applicant's sake, that we are engaging with them earlier on so that we can consider more.
However, in this instance, I think that— I don't support the reduction in the lot size and therefore I don't support deferring it to possibly keep the same decision. I can't imagine, after reading that advice from the planning panel and after witnessing the issues connected to flooding during the last flood in Pitt Town, that anybody would consider that reducing that lot size and adding that number of people in the current situation out there could be a viable thing to do. It's not the issue whether any specific block of land in Pitt Town can withstand a flood, but it's the consequences that go with the additional people. I also think that these, you know, spot rezonings and minimum lot size alterations have been heavily criticised within this council by various planning panels, by Gateway and by the community.
And I understand, and I could be wrong on this and someone can correct me, I understand that this area was originally designated not to be developed in the initial round of development when it went ahead. That's my recollection, but if somebody knows otherwise, I don't know if there was a reason to that. But regarding the suitener about the kilometre of flood evacuation route, I find that a little bit disingenuous because regardless of that, it's very widely known that we have advocated, we've had various motions, we've had the flood inquiries, we've had the state government commitments, and we've had requests from our council go ahead about having that flood evacuation route upgraded, which hopefully it is going to be anyway.
There shouldn't be any more increase in housing in Pitt Town until the promises connected to the original development are delivered. And Councillor Sheather's right, it's partly the fault of this council and the people who approved it when that council went through that it became such a debacle. However, we still have a situation out— Out there where people who have purchased into those areas of Pitt Town , who don't have what was promised, and for the older sections, which have then been impacted with the addition of more people, traffic and housing and so on. So I've understood from various sources have told me as well that there's persisting issues around drainage in that area, and I would very much like some clarity around that and the investigations being done to ensure that adequate drainage systems are in place.
This was apparently quite evident during the last flood episodes. So to further exacerbate any existing issues by introducing more people would not be satisfactory. To say that the evacuation route would come at no cost to the community doesn't factor in the community burden of additional people, cars, etc. So I don't believe the statement that the flood evacuation route will only happen with this development is true. I think putting more people into the area will not reduce the flood risk and may well amplify it. There's still missing sections of the evacuation route that would still have to be upgraded anyway. So given that we should be consistent with the metropolitan rural lands area objectives as we're directed to, I can't see any merit to be gained by deferring this, as those issues would all still remain.
If the return of investment for a property is not feasible, then that's the nature of speculative development. We do not determine lot size on the basis of profit making. I will not vote to increase the risk of burden on the existing population around drainage issues and flooding to increase an individual's return on investment, such as the nature of the market. I'm happy to support the staff recommendation and the planning panel's advice on this, and to leave the development with the two and a half thousand square metre lots. Thank you.
A question. I don't know who can answer this flood evacuation route through the subject site. When did we decide, or when did this council decide about that route to go through that land?
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
Sort of, it would have been, so after the major project status was issued for the Pitt Town development in 2007, then there was changes to the concept plan in Pitt Town, so that was in 2008, and then subsequently led to an amendment in February 2009 to the Hawkesbury Development Control Plan, which identified the evacuation route.
I'll repeat again. I'll repeat my question again. When did this council okay that route the very first time? I believe 19th of February 2009. 2009. And when did the gentleman, Mr. Garnous, purchase that land?
So is it not some kind of a contradiction that, like another failure of this council letting someone to buy a land... And then suddenly allowing that person to build a house or a plant or factory or whatever it is, and then to receive complaints from the adjacent houses saying that, you know, noise is too much or it's affecting my lifestyle or whatever it is. So this council is allowing people to buy a land
40 years ago, and then the subsequent council or councillors or whoever is making the decision is suddenly, you know, carving, you know, part of that land with a flood evacuation route. And now we are here again discussing that wasting time again. So what are we going to do? Start, you know, some kind of a committee again and call the interested parties and talk about it and tell them, you know, to reduce the size of his plot. I really don't know what's happening with this council. We'll be gone in about a year's time. Well, at least I will be gone anyway. I won't be running. Somebody else, you know, will occupy this chair and the problem will start again.
I don't know. Something is happening. Something is wrong. Why don't we just bring, you know, these people, you know, all together and sit in here and talk about it? Does this route has to go, you know, through this property? Could it not go, you know, up or down? I'm not an engineer, thanks God. I don't want to be one. But again , I'll be using, you know, that two words. Please don't
Push me again or don't mention code of conduct. Common sense and logic. I mean, what's happening? We're allowing people to buy a land and 40 years later, you know, we're putting, you know, some kind of a route, you know, through it. And then everything is okay, and this gentleman is coming and trying to do something to build a house or whatever, you know, he wants to do it, and council is saying no for something that, you know, they put a restriction maybe 37 or 35 years later. Something is happening, I don't understand, I don't know who can answer it. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Sam. Yeah, I don't wish to defer this decision as well. The infrastructure for the flood evacuation has to be borne. To do anything less is just incompetent. I've got a problem with the development, but the flood route needs to go through. What was, I think it was quoted, what is about 10 kilometres of improvement road to get that flood route correct after the last nine. Well, nine million, but how many kilometres is it? It's about 10 kilometres, and we're getting one kilometre based on the development. I agree with other councillors' comments, right. The infrastructure for the flood evacuation for Pitt Town needs to be borne by the state government, and if it's not from the state government, it should be for the federal government.
Now they went through a flood improvement plan for the local LGAs. Penrith seemed to get more notice than what we did over here. It's absolutely crucial. We sat here before trying to support development. Number one, I think it was McGraths Hill railway station, that's number one. The bypass is number two, and here we have the flood evacuation route. Now when it doesn't rain, nobody cares, but they happen to have three major floods in the last, what, 12 months, and we've got a bad road, and it may well happen again and put the angst of the community there. Put the route in, then consider development to go and subdivide blocks. So I can't support the defer, and I won't support a decrease in the block size.
Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I agree with Councillor Veigel. Look, when you're in a big hole, you don't decide to keep digging because someone offers you half a ladder. That's what we've got. We need a 10-kilometre ladder, and we're getting a kilometre, and we're still digging. We're still looking at putting more people into Pitt Town. It's unconscionable. I'll quote Sue Ribbons from the Department of Planning . Pitt Town, it's you and the snakes. She said that in our floodplain risk management committee, looking at the flood maps of Pitt Town. We know this. We know it because we've lived it four times in less than 18 months. It's unconscionable that we would consider increasing lot yield in Pitt Town any further.
We've already got a mess. Councillor Sheather's points regarding the things that were supposed to be delivered to Pitt Town. If you go back and you look at the 2017 budget estimates discussions between David Shoebridge and the minister, and there's a Labor, I can't remember who the Labor member is. It may be Daniel Mookhey who participates, talking about the Pitt Town developer contributions. Millions of dollars was handed back to the developer. That's why Pitt Town doesn't have all the things, because the money that people paid in good faith when they bought very expensive properties in Pitt Town was handed back to the developer by the state government. The state government needs to be on the hook for delivering an evacuation route, and we need to listen to the people of Pitt Town about how that evacuation route is being used.
It's not being used to evacuate. It's being used as a thoroughfare during times of flood. That's an entirely different proposition to a road that you would go out once and come back in again in two weeks' time. You know, this is not an old-fashioned flood route. People are not sheltering in place. And they're not coming out. They're coming back and forth to go to work and to go to the shops. No deferral is going to fix the flood risk in Pitt Town. This is only a Band-Aid. And I think point two of the recommendation in the business paper articulates really well that there isn't enough merit to warrant this increase. It doesn't meet the housing diversity gap that we have here. We don't need big houses on a thousand square metres.
We have lots of those. We have enough of those to do us for at least the next 10 years. What we need actually is more small housing closer to our centres where we have public transport. That's not Pitt Town, where we can get people out in times of flood. That's not Pitt Town, where we have easy sewer connections to Sydney Water's connection that don't cost people a fortune. That's not Pitt Town. It's far better that the New South Wales Government complies with the recommendations of the Select Committee and just builds the evacuation route for the whole of Pitt Town than we up the lot yield by 64 houses or 130 vehicles in order to get a kilometre and a bit of a desperately needed route. This, we have to be really clear about our responsibilities.
I want to quote in finishing from the OKeane Report. In all development considerations, there's an overriding obligation to keep people safe. Development should only occur where it's possible to ensure residents' lives are saved through safe and effective evacuation processes. We do not have that for Pitt Town, and a kilometre of an already inadequate evacuation route is not going to give that to us.
Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the amendment? I'll just say a few words. I'm happy to support the amendment, but that does not mean I'm giving support for or against the application. I'm certainly happy to have those other matters cleared up and brought back, and I'm very happy for that process to take place. So I'll be supporting the amendment tonight, but that does not, of course, as I said, give a condition of where my vote will be placed next time it comes back. If anyone, no one else is wishing to speak, I will go to right of reply, Councillors Improgno.
Oh, sorry, yes, you are correct. Sorry, all those in favour of the amendment, which I remind Councillors again is to defer the matter, please raise your hand. In favour of the amendment is Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor McMahon. Those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Veigel, Councillor Calvert,
Thank you, Madam Mayor. This has been proposed before and rejected before. I don't think there's a reasonable prospect that new information will cause either ourselves or a planning panel or a higher authority to change their mind. Two. If it costs so much to develop a 2,500 square metre block that you cannot get a positive return on your investment, that is nature's way of telling you that you should not develop that block.
Thank you, Councillor. I'll now put the vote. The motion is to defer. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci and Councillor McMahon. All those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Veigel, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Zamprogno. The motion is carried on the casting vote of the Mayor.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Zamprogno, seconded by Councillor Lyons-Buckett.
That Council defer consideration of the matter to allow the applicant to have a meeting with Council Staff to discuss the feasibility of the development.
In accordance with Section 375A of the Local Government Act 1993 a division is required to be called whenever a planning decision is put at a council or committee meeting. Accordingly, the Chairperson called for a division in respect of the motion, the results of which were as follows:
As carried. The next item subject to public address is item 167, Notice of Motion 1, restoration of Windsor Mall gas lamps. The first member to address us of the public is Paul Calio.
Thank you. I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of our land, the Darug and Darkinjung people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Councillors, for this opportunity to address Council. My name is Paul Calio, and I'm speaking as a Windsor resident in favour of the Notice of Motion in item 167. I wish to advise that I'm also a member of the Defenders of Thompson Square Incorporated and currently its secretary, but I'm speaking tonight on my own behalf. I acknowledge and thank the Council for listening to the community in securing, as part of the Livability Project, the retention of a number of items, including the rotunda adjacent to 156 George Street, the wisteria plants near the rotunda, the water wheel and the gas lamps.
I will defer to Mr. Grant Gerrish for his knowledge and research on the subject of gas lamps. However, my focus tonight is on the wonderful ambience which is defined as the character or atmosphere of a place created by gaslight. Also, the harmony with our heritage that the existing gas lamp network provides when it is lit. I have actually located and have read a copy of the New South Wales Act of Parliament of the 20th of June 1884, titled An Act to enable the Windsor Gas Light Company Limited to construct gasworks within the town of Windsor. That's a copy of the original New South Wales Government Act . I remember very fondly the beauty of the Windsor Mall when it was first opened in 1984.
The pride that was taken by council workers maintaining the many plants and flowers within the mall, the ability to walk and wander about safely and at night to admire the gas lamps when they were lit. Of course,
Not everyone agreed with the creation of the mall, and some would still prefer to see it reopened to traffic. But we have the opportunity with this project to see the mall and other parts of George Street greatly improved. I believe the relighting of the Windsor gas lights would enhance tourism to our area. Who doesn't enjoy sitting outside beside a fire? It's that same quality of light that the glow of a gas lamp provides. The original consultants that worked with the previous council on the Windsor Mall, Lucas Stapleton and Johnson, have enviable credentials in the heritage consultancy space, and the inclusion of the gas lamps in this 1984 Windsor Mall was not by accident. References have been made by some to the borough charter of 2013, claiming that it doesn't support the 1984 replica gas lamps.
My assertion is that under two of the four significant values of the borough charter, the gas light network does fit. The aesthetic significance part on scenic, architectural qualities and creative accomplishment, and number two, social significance, which is contemporary community esteem. On emissions related to gaslight, I note the following. Some politicians criticise renewable energy sources such as solar, stating that the sun doesn't shine at night. However, in addition to battery storage of power generated during the day, another possibility is using surplus solar and other renewable energy to create hydrogen gas. And then this green unit of energy can be available for use at any hour of the day.
Furthermore, currently available high-efficiency and lower-emission gas mantles, as referred to in this motion, would reduce usage and emissions. Combined with the addition of hydrogen gas into the network, as has already commenced in South Australia, these are matters that should be considered by Council before destroying the existing Windsor gaslight network. Should it be beyond the current ability of the Council to fully realise the relighting of a retained Windsor gaslamp network, I appeal to you to not destroy the network or convert the lamps to electric LED. Perhaps a future Council can complete this work and the balance of the deliverability project can continue. However, why should we keep to the tradition of putting down new pavement and then see it ripped up shortly afterwards, as often happens?
Other cities around the world are restoring gas street lamps and/or are reintroducing them. Recently, I located a video of a British Pathé film shot in 1963 titled Old Street Lamps, where gas street lamps of London were being removed and replaced by electric lighting. Towards the end of this video, the narrator states, All the way to Australia this lamp will go. As you can see, a large and beautiful restored gas lamp being carefully packed into a timber crate with markings on the side stating AGL Sydney. We now know how London and many other cities and towns have reintroduced these gas lamps. Please do not destroy the Windsor Gaslight Network, and I thank you for the opportunity to talk tonight.
Great timing, thank you. Are there any questions for Mr. Calio? Have I said that right? Calio or Calleo? Calio. Okay , Calio. No, thank you. Thank you very much. Before I do call on the next speaker, I had already declared at the start of the meeting that I had an interest in this item, but I was staying in the room. I will just read that to the floor now, and sorry, I only picked it up once the speaker had started speaking, so I afforded him the courtesy to finish. The nature of the interest is less than significant, non-pecuniary. I have removed myself in the past from voting holistically on the Livability Program. This item, whilst in it, is on its own, is not related to the approval of the entire project. The interest I declare is related to Richmond, and this is a niche matter about Windsor. Thank you. I now call on our second registered public speaker, Grant Gerrish
Thirteen pictures that I'd just like to pass around because some of them come from overseas and some of them come from interstate, so each councillor gets one, and they're really beautiful. And so here's how we begin. I'd like to begin by saying, first of all, to the General Manager and to Mayor Sarah, and to devoted Father Patrick and Deputy Mayor Barry, and all of you , I consider this fantastic. If I'm only here for ten months more before going to Tasmania, I've spent between a thousand and two thousand hours, and I'd like to suggest this. If you go to Canada or North America and you say, You know what? We've got this fantastic custom of, before we have meetings, we have an Indigenous recognition, they'll say, That's very strange, but you have international eyes, and we're going to try that out.
It does not happen. In almost any place, few in Canada, but very, very, very few in the United States. So I ask that you consider that I'm offering international eyes to this, and I'm also offering a bit, I'd like to say, paying respects not just to Indigenous people, but to these people. Because unfortunately, most of them aren't alive. What am I referring to? I'm referring to the councillors that did this. I find it unusual that I'm sticking up for councillors that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight aren't here. Another one is incapacitated. I want to suggest to you that you have something of extraordinary, extraordinary value. I challenge you, and I say that I'd like to address four items here.
What's the market say about this asset? What does it compare to other places in Australia? And frankly, what does the highest experts in this country say about its heritage value? Let's see. But first, if you'll note the picture here, we congratulate Shane on his own bat, spending a thousand, going over there to see the first place in a decade that said, We're going to make some money off this. We're going to restore it. I have to thank Darren, who sent some images. It's 5 a.m., but you'll see some comments there from him. And he has made five trips to the United States. And each time I've provided him some information in addition to his business trips, he has spent Five trips investigating best practice in each of those four places in North America plus the UK.
What's the market appeal? If you don't think he has his finger on what market appeal is, you may know he's opening a fourth establishment very soon. But I'd like to really, really suggest to you that as you perhaps turn this page, you know you can't correspond with me by email or text message and all that stuff, because previous councils, the way I did it was to say, I'm off the record. I get nothing out of this, but I am so fascinated by the prospects. And I'll turn to this, and this time I'm going to get a little bit, I suppose you'd say, a patting myself on the back. And that is, I think you'll find, unless you assume it's a forgery, that after we turn to the wonderful story about Shane, and also there's nine pages in the Hawkesbury Post, that if you look at this letter from the executive, some of it's confidential.
It's a billion-dollar company, but the opening line is, Hoping you can pass this on to Grant, because people do the email for me because I don't do that, as I've said. But we've been discussing this with Grant for the past six months, and as a consequence, we are restoring our lamps. And then the person goes on to say in the last yellow there, if you would look at that, Thank you for the information, and he says this regularly today, talk to him all the time, because I don't do that email. It's my voice. And snail mail takes a while, but the chickens can come home and roost nicely. Thank you for the information you provided and the inspiration. As without this, we would not have had the restoration.
Do you think there's a bit of an irony that I can get a place 1,500 k's away to restore its gas lights, nevertheless it's the— Obstacle that we find here. Look at the bottom corner. If you'll also look over your head at the Lachlan Macquarie painting, you'll see that it's burnished gold. These lamps that we have, this is the tops of the lamps in South Australia. I don't hold it against people here that have worked possibly a thousand hours to do this work. But if you spend a couple of thousand more, I think you'll find that you weren't given the right information to make the correct decision. The lamps that we have, apart from what looks like at night time, in the daytime, these are the crowns of the lamps.
You see there in the lower left-hand corner, they are burnished, burnished brass. People will stand there and do this. Everyone but me. That's not about me. If you'll turn to the one on the right, the right image there, you'll see that I come from a place that has 1,800 lights. But we're going to talk about markability. The markability is, is that it doesn't matter the size. I'll just name some places in areas that I know intimately, okay? Sorry, Mr Garish, I
Oh yes, okay. That's okay, because there's some questions I think someone may want to ask me. But the end of this is, I'll say that the borough charter mentions that the— if you look on the next page, that's why I'm covered by this— he will go on to say there's three reasons why it's valuable: evidential, interpretive, and even the quality of the light. If you look at German Gaskulturlicht, you will find that the light is the opposite of fluorescent. Try putting fluoro in your bedroom. The light is the kindest light that you can possibly have, and people subconsciously relate to that because it only does 65 instead of 100 in terms of the light spectrum. They even use it in Downton Abbey. So there's subtleties here that research will show.
If you read these pages, you will see— Yes, okay. That's the reason there's the four pages. If you'll study them, you'll get some international expertise, and I'm happy to provide much more.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I carefully considered this matter prior to bringing it before the chamber. I heavily weighed the criticisms and consequences of putting this matter forward, and I remain confident that it was most appropriate to do so. Arguably, I have engaged over a thousand sentiments in regards to Windsor Mall. Since just prior to being elected, I encountered two people, or 0.2% of the community, that would like an open sterile mall. I encountered 12 people, or 1.2% of the community, who were concerned about gas emissions. I found 30 people, or 3% of the community, who just want potholes fixed. However, overwhelmingly, 95% of the community that I encountered want the mall refreshed without the mall's identity being maltreated.
This included retaining the gas lamps on gas as they were intended. Windsor has the largest network... Gas lamps in Australia, and this is fast becoming recognised by gas lamp experts across the globe who are watching our restoration closely. Recently, a letter from Sean Johnson of renowned heritage architecture firm Lucas Stapleton Johnson states the reconstruction of the gas lighting appears to have been based on sound photographic evidence and to have been in place for over 30 years. The system would certainly have cultural significance in terms of the borough charter for its evidential and interpretive value, as well as for the quality of the light that the gas lamps emit. He goes on to urge our citizens of the Hawkesbury to continue the fight for preserving Windsor's heritage.
Another expert, Lyn Jones of England, the only female gas lamp engineer in the world who has restored over 300 lamps, last week posted a video onto the I Love Windsor page specifically for the Hawkesbury people to show that gas lamps don't need to be expensive nor problematic in regards to emissions, as there are now mantles that reduce emissions by over 70%. The good news on this front is that recently I travelled to South Australia to be part of the gas lighting ceremony at Port Pirie, where I met David Holden, who runs the Australian Gas Network Company. David informed me that they currently run 5% pure green hydrogen gas mixed into their gas supply, and despite their official statement, he assured me that by 2024 they would be running 10% hydrogen, and by 2040 100% green hydrogen would be used right across Australia.
On that day, David was running a barbecue on pure green hydrogen, as well as a single gas lamp to show what was coming in the near future. In Western Sydney, in our own backyard, Jemena is running neck and neck against the Australian Gas Network Company with their very own green hydrogen plant, with prospects now being focused on ever-increasing power outages in the near future. If we fit our lamps with LEDs, it won't be long before we are wondering what the point of those lamps are at all, and I think that we all owe it to the community to make sure that we don't ever reach that point. When I was first elected, there were discussions amongst my fellow chamber members on tourism, with a comment suggesting that tourism was largely a state government issue.
Well, Windsor was built from some of the most rich history in the country. Not all of it was fantastic, yet important history all the same. And history sells, and we have so much raw material to draw from. I was recently informed that tourism begins with civic pride, and I believe that we should lead by example in embracing what we already have, and from there it will become a self-generating thing. Now, this is relatively inexpensive and very doable by us. It's nice that we want to push outdoor dining to generate tourism. However, Windsor wasn't founded on cuisine. Only by embracing our rich history will we set ourselves upon the international stage for tourism. I think to label us as laissez-faire in regards to embracing history for tourism thus far is a fair comment.
Further, we are viewed as having dropped the ball on what is expected on the mall revamp. All things considered, such as coming off a pandemic, flood and fire disasters, and the time frame on delivering the mall project, the only thing that matters to the greater community is appropriately saving our identity. And then to double down on delivering such a contentious project is not being seen as okay. In fact, the common view is that the community would rather do without the money if it comes at a cost. In closing, I would like to say that the gas light emits a different wavelength of light that is soothing and doesn't attract insects. So our lamps are Japanese encephalitis free. And also the new mantles run on as little as 30 cents per day.
And if vandalism is a problem, then let's target the vandalism and not our lamps. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Those three addresses to Council were a hard act to follow. But I truly commend Councillor Djuric on his passionate stance on this issue of gas lamps in Windsor Mall. However, I'm unable to support this notice of motion for three reasons. Firstly, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that powering our gas lamps with gas instead of electricity is going to make an appreciable difference to visitor numbers to the mall or to the level of their expenditure. Secondly, we haven't budgeted for this additional expenditure and it seems we aren't able to assess the scope of work that will be necessary to make this happen. So essentially, we'll be flying blind and I'm not prepared to accept that we expend our grant funding and public money in that way.
Thirdly , I'm confident that we have adhered to the guiding principles in the Borough Charter around the best practice in working in heritage precincts. So for those three reasons, I just can't support that we expend money on this small part of the refurbishment of Windsor Mall. Thank you.
In the time of Augustus called Ovid. He said, The drip of water hollows the stone. Not through its strength, but through its persistence. And I'd like to recognise Mr. Gerrish as the living embodiment of that principle. I think that we have a unique opportunity here to really adorn a really important heritage precinct, not only within our district, but which has national and international significance. And I recall that when I have walked through other historic areas, it's the flourishes, it's the moments of unexpected delight that come from something that's creative, consonant with the heritage of the area, and yet which was not expected, which causes the greatest impact. When I was walking in the shambles in the city of York, they have street art in the form of little statues of cats, and they might be on an awning, or they might be at the top of a ridge line of a roof, or it might be in some other little hidden place.
And the game that you play when you're in York is to try and spot all of the cats.
You are at Circular Quay in the city, the embedded bronze medallions that not only show the lives and achievements of famous Australians, but show the original shoreline.
Or the fact that the Sydney Harbour Bridge, when it was built, commencing in 1923, in a time of great economic privation, they had the foresight to build a bridge that would not only last and, you know, have significant utility for a century, but which was beautiful in a way that was not necessary. The expenditure was not necessary to build huge granite. Appears, and again, they have no, famously, no engineering value to the substance of that bridge will put there, because to not do so would have made it less beautiful. And they could afford to do that in a time of relative privation. I think future generations will lament the paucity of our vision if we don't take opportunities like these to put something into our public spaces that are beautiful, that are whimsical, Councillor Kotlash, that aren't necessarily always practical, but which add real value to the spaces that we live in.
And for that reason, I would encourage you not to suffer from a paucity of vision, but to see that there is an opportunity here to do something beautiful, to build on the work of earlier councils who saw that it was a good idea to put gas lanterns in the mall in the 1980s. I don't
That they were replica lamps. I think they're a part of our street furniture. I think that to pass this notice of motion really drives home that we don't simply want us to look at this issue, because we could end up being terribly disappointed.
Drive the point home and say that we're going to preserve the gas lanterns and have them as part of our streetscape. And I think people will bless us for our vision rather than curse us for the paucity of our vision. If we only look at things like net zero, we can find a way of making this happen. So please support this.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, I'm going to support the motion as well. When I first came to the Hawkesbury about 27 years ago, we went up to the mall. I saw those gas lamps and I said, wow, gas lamps, looked a bit closer and no, buffalo, or a fluorescent.
I think it does enhance the heritage of the area, and that can only be a good thing. I'm not overly perturbed by running gas. I think in time it will go green. It's probably a little bit further out than what we suspect, but it will go green if you can get a 10% hydrogen in there anyway. But I do accept that the mantles are very efficient. I don't know how many gallons we're expecting it to do, but I'm quite happy to light the whole network. So I'm not going to bore you by going and dragging this out by another 4.4 minutes, but you have my vote on the motion. Thanks.
And a portion of that is to refurbish the lamps and run them on LED. Yes, that's correct. Do we have costings for running on gas, and is that a similar price to the LED refurbishment?
Amanda Kearney(staff - Manager City Design and Economic Development)
In the research we've undertaken at this point in time, until such times as the pavers are lifted and we can actually investigate what the gas connections and the pipelines under the ground, we can't get a good idea of that. And no one was willing to actually quote on it until such times as they could actually sight the connections underneath.
But we're moving some of the lamps to allow greater accessibility. Correct. So we would still be renewing pipework, even if the pipes that are there, and it's unlikely, even if the pipes that are there are in good condition, we would still have to do some additional work. Correct. And do we have a— is that possible in the current budget? That's not committed at this stage, no. Right. So we don't have money— Something would have to be compromised within the project. So we would lose something else. Correct. What's sort of— what's the completion date for this project in order for us to get the money from the state and federal government? June 2023. That's the completion of works. That's not us— Correct.
That's not us starting and— Correct. —carrying out another round of special pleading. And it's September. Correct. And we haven't turned a pave yet. It's not going to happen, is it? If we're going to start— if we're going to start modifying more bits of this proposal,
Amanda Kearney(staff - Manager City Design and Economic Development)
Where are we up to with heritage office? So we have the Section 140 and the Section 60 in with Heritage New South Wales, and we're expecting to have a decision hopefully next month. Have they been asked to adjudicate on the gas lamps? They have all of the information with them.
Thank you. So I'm assuming then that if that's in the hands of the heritage office, and that if this is a crime against the borough charter, to convert these to LED, the heritage office will cheerfully point that out to us.
We are jeopardising the only chance we have to spend significant money on the refurbishment of not just Windsor Mall, but a very long stretch of the main street of Windsor for some gas lamps.
Aside from the fact that it's holding up the whole project, I don't know how people intend that we afford to do this. I get that the lamps are— that you can put more efficient mantles on these lamps, but gas prices are prohibitively expensive. I understand that Point Pueri are finding this an easy thing to do because the gas company is running the lamps,
But we're going to have to pay for them ourselves. Gas prices have trebled since 2016. Tripled. This is council's money. Boston is converting its gas lamps to LED. Because they're prohibitively expensive to run, they're leaching methane into the soil and poisoning the trees.
We're hinging , we're jeopardising an entire project for 25 gas lamps, replica gas lamps that are going to be kept anyway, to run them on an outdated fuel at a cost of at least $40,000 per year with money that we don't have.
And I will be the first one to stand up and say that we need to do more to defend heritage. I find it staggering that the very same people who were happy to see Thompson Square obliterated are now willing to die in a ditch over 25 replica gas lamps. The very same people who referred to quite superb Indigenous artefacts as a bucket of gravel. The same people who were happy to wave away the brick arches and have them covered in concrete. And yet here we are fighting over gas lamps from 1985 and jeopardising this whole project. I can't support this.
No, it's fine. Look , we have to move on from this. If you don't want to convert them to gas, then just put them back in running on nothing and give them a good leaving alone. If that's the best way. But this, this , this constant back and forth
Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. Must be getting late, Councillor. I've got friends in electricity and gas that I've spent quite a bit of time talking to after I spoke to the general manager about it. And it's likely that gas, in the long term, because of maintenance and things that can go wrong, may be a little bit dearer. But in the scheme of things, when they're initially put in, power is different to gas, whereas dug up. It's likely that where it's not under concrete, it's got to go down 600 deep, which means you excavate into the old road and stuff like that. So there's a whole heap of fors and against a lot of it. Just before I go on, Madam Mayor, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Grant for— he's not a Hawkesburyite. He's a drop-in, and I've never seen anybody as passionate about a portion of our city. And Shane, what he's been doing, and—
Both of them work tirelessly to support people who are passionate about what we're discussing. A question: whether it's gas or power, is that going to change the timeline or the process that we're going through?
Amanda Kearney(staff - Manager City Design and Economic Development)
Through you, Madam Mayor. So at the moment, the plans do actually include the powering of the lamps with LED. If we were to change to gas, we would actually have to go back and have the plans rectified to demonstrate that the gas would be running through, and that would then have to be resubmitted back into Heritage New South Wales. So there is definitely a different timeline.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, that's something that doesn't sit very comfortable. Are we talking about a conversation, a letter, a period of time? How long would it take to get a response?
Amanda Kearney(staff - Manager City Design and Economic Development)
What we're talking about is we would have to go back to the designers that have actually prepared the plans and submitted them to Heritage New South Wales to actually re-review the plans and update them to demonstrate that there's gas running through there instead of electricity, and those would have to be resubmitted to Heritage New South Wales.
Don't disagree with the speakers who spoke in favour of it. There's quite a few things up there I'm not happy about. I'm not going to go into that now.
But the issue with the gas in relation to the power, I don't know, those of you, I expect Grant's driven everyone pretty mad with his information. He's passionate, but he's doing it on behalf of some of our residents, quite a few of them that feel pretty passionate about it and don't know how to approach it. And I guess I'm probably one of those.
Very briefly, I was just going to say I tend to agree with Councillor Wheeler that, you know, we're talking about replica lamps. I had a lot of meetings with people in Windsor during my time as mayor, and the defenders of Thompson Square passionately put the case that these lamps should be relit with gas, as did Grant and one or two other people. I spoke to a lot of business owners who almost unanimously said the same thing. They want to see it relit. They couldn't really care what the fuel is because it doesn't matter. It's going to look, it's a replica, and it's going to be a replica gas lamp with a replica fuel. And I think that whilst it would be great to relight them with gas, I'm not, like Councillor Collage, I'm not ready to go and, without sign a blank cheque that we should just go and do it, however much it costs, it costs.
I could kind of get on board with just not lighting them then and waiting to see if a future council could do it. But then I could be convinced, but I still think the state and federal government's that are currently paying us to relight these lamps, and we're going to turn down that opportunity in case something better comes along in the future, I think that's potentially not in the best interest of our business community either. So I don't think I can support the motion.
I will be looking from practicality. Yes, and I'll first to say that, you know, we have to have them. So what? Whether they run on methane or whether they run hydrogen or propane or whatever you name it, or pure alcohol if you want to. Doesn't matter, right? Five, ten, fifteen years ago we didn't have electric vehicles. Now we have them. Now we have a problem that where to dispose of the batteries. So let's have these lamps. The problem will come with it, of course. How are we going to stop people vandalising them? And we can try them. We are talking about tourism. We are talking about bringing people back to Hawkesbury. We know this is one of the oldest townships . So how do we attract these people?
I mean, are we going to attract them because we have gas lamps or we have redone Windsor Mall at big cost? I don't know exactly how much, no less than maybe, you know, 10, 15 million dollars. We're talking about $40,000 a year cost. So what? Who cares about $40,000 while we are footing a bill of $6 million on the sewage matter? So we will—I'll go along with Councillor Djuric, and yes, we can have them, and let people tell us, you know, whether they like it or not, whether they will enjoy walking under those gas lamps or not. If people start complaining or for some reason it doesn't work, then we'll convert them back to LEDs or, I don't know, whatever is available on that day. So I thank Councillor Djuric for his passion, and I'm all for it.
And anything I could do, financially otherwise, I'm your man. Thank you.
If no one else wishes to speak— oh, sorry, Councillor Irons Buckett. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you to Councillor Djuric for bringing this forward. I know it's a reflection both of his own endeavours to look into this issue a lot more and to also translate the passions of some people who are very committed to this as a project. As others have raised, I think, you know, the issue is, of course, around the fact that we have a project that is in place, that has been budgeted, that is underway, and that is very constricted around a particular time frame. So, what I think would be the ideal thing would be for those who want to pursue anything further on that, we proceed as we are because we both cannot lose the time, in which case we may lose the funding altogether, but also, you know, by using more money on going back and looking at this, we're taking money from someone else who is expecting to have something done as part of this project.
And I don't think that that is very fair to do that to other people who have been told that they're getting either paving to a certain spot or they're getting something done in their town because this isn't a Windsor Mall project. This is a Windsor Richmond South Windsor project. So, we don't want to see the money reallocated. I'm not speaking on the validity of the project because I don't know of the costs around the investigations to do with that, but at this point, I think that the issues that are raised are that the lamps are not being destroyed. They're being retained. They are going to be lit. They'll be still lamps , as lamps are. You know, the issues around gas. We know there are the issues around the expense.
This comes with also an ongoing expense for Council, which is not budgeted. The other issue I have a bit of a problem with is that other people have approached me as well about things in South Windsor or in other places, and it's not really—we cannot just suddenly have individuals, regardless of the merit of whatever they're bringing forward. We can't just have people come and try and change a project once that project has already been committed to, and the money has been allocated and the plans are underway. So I can't support it in this form. I think that if people want to go and look for an alternative source of funding, which there may be, or if they can work to see if when the investigations around the feasibility of it can be done.
But now is not the time that we could commit to such a thing because we've already committed to something else, and I think we have to stick with that, or we risk losing everything, and that would be really unfortunate, not just for the people of Windsor Mall, but for the people of all of Windsor and South Windsor and Richmond who are under the impression that they're getting a project done.
Councillor Calvert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I commend Councillor Djuric for bringing this forward, but nowhere in the motion does it indicate where the money is going to come from. Even the money to pay the $40,000 a year to run these lights. And at the moment, this council is not flush with funds. We have a lot of disaster recovery to look into. So I can't see that we could, as a council, that we could support it at the moment. What I would suggest, however, is that perhaps when the pavers get pulled up, we can check the viability of the gas pipes at that point, and then make another assessment and perhaps look for another grant to put new pipes in, not the old pipes. The other thing is, from my observations, most of the visitors in Windsor are daytime visitors, not nighttime visitors.
The lamps would be, you know, nice to look at, but there'd be very few people there looking at them. And the other thing is that when the NBN was put down in many parts of Sydney , and I think some parts of Hawkesbury, the fibre optic cables were actually threaded through old gas pipes, which were no longer being used. So I think we should see if that was the case in Windsor, because then you can't use those gas pipes. You need new ones. So, as I said, I commend Councillor Djuric, but I can't support this at this time.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Before we proceed, I'm very conscious of the time. We will need to extend the meeting past 11 p.m. under 18.2 of the Code of Meeting Practice. Can I get a mover to pass that? Councillor Reardon, a seconder? Councillors in progno? All those in favour? Yep, carried. Thank you. We'll continue with the meeting.
I might just add my remarks quickly to this and say I'm probably the first person over the last six years in this chamber who carries on about cost and wanting to know how much things cost before we go and do it. And I know I've sounded like a broken record in that respect. I'm conscious of the staff answering the questions regarding time, and the last thing I think anyone who supports this idea wants to do is put this entire project into jeopardy. And I just don't think that that will be the case, because what we are talking about here in regards to the gas lamps is basically down to what fuel they run on. So I hope that if there is support for this motion tonight, in the investigations of looking at the gas piping under the pavers, we are able to see that it is possible.
But we really are just talking about the fuel, and I think with my tourism hat on and the speech I just gave earlier about needing to put everything together, we probably have one opportunity here while our pavers are off the ground to make this happen. And without that, if we don't do it then and we lay the pavers, then we probably won't want to rip up those pavers and we won't get another shot. In that regard, I'll be supporting this notice of motion. And no further speakers on the motion?
I've got a question, Madam Mayor. Yes. Of the staff, is there some way the gas can be looked at that's not going to interrupt the process, where it can
Thank you, General Manager. Yeah, through you, Madam Mayor. This is something we've been grappling with as well, Councillor. I think certainly our intent and our preferred path is we've got to get out on the ground and start doing some work on this thing, otherwise it's never going to get built. We've had incremental scope creep on this in my 14 months here at Council. We've had this five times. We keep chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. We've got to get out on the ground. Our intent was to get started, uncover what was potentially in the mall, and then at that particular point in time, if it was simple and easy enough, it may be a fairly straightforward process for us then to make those connections.
If it's not, I fear we're in this process right now when I've got a hole in the middle of the mall, and that's what challenges me in this sort of particular process where we're mucking around with the scope of the project while we're still working on it. So I don't have a clear answer for you. We can certainly take that path, but it does come with the risk that we're making these decisions when you've got business owners who are affected once pavers have been lifted and we're out there operating. So it's one of those scenarios, Councillor.
Right. If this motion is supported, and we're going through the process that was mentioned earlier, it would mean that it doesn't happen, really. Is that what we're saying? That we, well, if it's going to take another four months, that's nearly the deadline, that it's got to be finished, not started. So you're saying if this is supported tonight, that the project literally doesn't happen?
We would definitely make a commencement, hopefully, to start the construction works, but what it would mean is we would have to go back at an additional cost to the designers to have the plans redrawn. We'd then have to resubmit those to Heritage New South Wales, so that would presume that it takes another four months. We also have to then engage the contractor, which we want to do once Heritage New South Wales have the final plans approved. So we're looking at potentially another few months for that process, and then start construction. And I will say also, sorry, there is the question of what are we taking out of the scope of the project in order to deliver this component, and that's not known at this particular point in time.
Sorry. Come on, it's late. Sorry. Just a question. I know in recent times we've been talking about the lack of experienced workers for particular jobs. Are we, is there a risk that we won't be able to get people to do this particular type of work? I mean, I don't know whether you can answer that. I don't know anything about this sort of work, but it seems to me it's quite specialist.
So we have secured a lamp restorer to actually do the restoration and the refitting of the LED fittings. So we have had that locked in for quite some time to ensure that they're ready to go once work starts. In terms of a gas fitter, I'm not sure. I'd have to look at that. But one would presume at this point, we've been locking all our trades in quite early to ensure that we have secured tradespeople for the appropriate jobs at the time they're required.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm just, I think that where we've headed is it's around the sequencing of things around this project, and the fact that if this passes tonight, we've got an actual commitment to go with the gas. And from what the General Manager has said, and from what we've been told about the time, I think that that is quite problematic, particularly if it results in an imposition on business owners in the mall. Is there a way we can structure this so that there is some outcome from the investigation when that's done to determine either way without— A significant delay occurring. Can we proceed as is and then revisit it perhaps? I'm just concerned that if it's in place, that's the direction we have to go.
We're doing that without knowing who else is going to miss out on their project, and I don't think that's a very suitable or a very responsible way to look at it. But can we revisit this in some shape or form? I've got concerns about an ultimate commitment when there's so much uncertainty and so many unknowns, particularly around imposition on other businesses.
Could I just say that this is the whole point of notice of motion. It's to have a debate and see what we can come up with. Councillor Djuric, would you possibly be— I was having a look at a change of words. Even point one we could possibly change to, if you agree and if you don't, it's your motion. You know, investigate restoring the Windsor Mall gas lamps when we pull up the pavers and come back to Council with a cost estimate, and then continue on with your motion.
The thing that concerns me is the word coming from some Council staff from the beginning is we're never going to see gas in those lamps ever again. These things currently, arguably, would run on gas today, except for one or two damaged ones. They just need a pressure test to make sure they're safe, and they would run. There's a gentleman that has worked on these who is willing to offer his time free as a hobby. We just need to pay for parts. To wait and dig up the infrastructure is a total— I don't understand that whole point of thought, because we're moving every one of those lamps. Gas pipe comes in a roll. It's PVC, it's dirt cheap. To lay gas pipe, it's going to be cheaper than laying cable. Except there is a maintenance. I heavily dispute $40,000 a year, which included being damaged and destroyed by vandalism. I think — I'm
Only trying to find a way forward where maybe a lot of your colleagues could try and get on board. And I think from what the staff have said, Ms Kearney has said, you're digging it up anyway. So it is getting dug up regardless. And I'd still motion, I don't mind, I'm supporting it. I just was wondering if there was an opportunity to maybe, at the point where the staff have guaranteed they're being— it's being ripped up, can we maybe ask the staff come back to us at that point with a cost estimate? I don't know. I'm only just throwing an idea out there.
I'm happy to try and work with the chamber on something, but I just don't see the point considering that moving all 24, 25 lamps and just laying PVC gas pipe, I don't think it's a big issue. I don't see the need to wait for something we're not going to use.
I gather you are relocating the lamps anyway. You have to run power to it. That's number one question, if you are. So you have to run new power to the lamps, yeah, if you're going to run them on electricity. Thank you. The other thing I was going to ask, surely there's been diagnostic on them all to find out what's underneath the pavers. I know before I do a project, I've always got a sweep and an ultrasound know where the cables are, where the water pipes, where the gas pipes are, and dare I say it probably has got high-density nylon pressure gas pipe in there, because if you left them in the 80s, the only thing they were running in those days wasn't lead, wasn't copper, but it was yellow high-density nylon, which is in situ, which is one-to-one.
So it's just a question, but that's a statement, but the other question is, so if you're going to move them and you're going to run electricity, that's a feasible question to ask. But if you're going to do that, then why wouldn't you go and have a look at where the gas's got to lie? Thanks.
I covered some of it as we were discussing just then, but I'm very critical of 40,000 annually. It's a very ambiguous figure. We have these lamps that run on gas. We're going to totally pull them down and totally change them to run on something else, which there's an expense for that and a cost.
There is Mr. Ron Vanes, who said that he would volunteer his time to work on these lights all the time when they need something. We just need to cover the parts. So I think there's a significant difference in $40,000. I think highlighting Boston is unfair. They've got nearly 3,000 gas lamps, and America is one of, if not the worst producer of greenhouse emissions on the planet. They need to do something. So I don't think that that reflects so much on us.
Yeah, I just want to reiterate that the point of looking at infrastructure is a moot point. We're not going to use any of it. We're not going to use any of it if we run electricity. We're not going to use any of it if we run gas.
And the cost of gas, I mean, just like any green energy, at first it's dearer, but as it gets across the country, it's going to be cheaper to run. I think it's the better option going forward. And in regards to the money, I mean, we hear all the time about people winning the lottery and then claiming it's the worst thing they've ever done. Just because we've got money , we don't have to spend it if it means that we're wrecking something that the community is passionate about. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. I'll now put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Those in favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor McMahon. Those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, and Councillor Wheeler. I declare the motion carried.
Okay, two important things, councillors. I think we all need a break, but before I do that, I might just adopt the items on block so we can tick all of those off. So just to remind councillors, I am removing item 166 from being on block because all items on block must be unanimous and must not have anyone speaking against or having a conflict of interest. So for the remaining items on block, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, do I have a mover to adopt the items? Councillor Conolly, and seconded Councillor Reardon.
Madam Mayor. Yes. Are you aware that my speaker for the notice of motion has gone to bed? Yes. My apologies, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I had my sheet turned over to address that very issue, which is why I went to items on block, because, yes, Mr. Mitzer did remind me that it was too late for your speaker. So, unfortunately, that's how some meetings go. I'd like to move that we have a short break of 10 minutes and come back to the chamber just after a quarter past 11. Thank you, Councillors.
No more items to public address, we've done the items on block, we'll now go through the business paper in order. The next item on the agenda is item 155, GM, review of delegations of authority under the Local Government Act. I'll just flick to that. Does anyone want to move the recommendation? Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Reardon. Any discussion?
General Manager. Well, it's certainly been the standard practice at Hawkesbury. So they were the delegations that were in place when I commenced, and it is practice at a number of other councils. Certainly, there's all the checks and balances that live around that, I guess, around procurement guidelines in particular, and going to tender for valuations over a quarter of a million or half a million dollars in the case of emergencies. So that adds a particular check and balance on that. So it would be a matter for Council if you weren't comfortable with that particular delegation. It just would mean that those contracts would be coming to Council in confidential session.
I won't hold this up to deal with that, but I think that is something that I would like us to discuss going forward. It's— I don't present it as a trust issue, but I do present it as a governance issue that I think we probably should have at least a ceiling on that level, because I think it leaves the General Manager quite unprotected. In fact, if the General Manager, regardless of who the General Manager is, was to approve something that we didn't necessarily approve of, we've handed that capacity away.
I'm wondering if we could have a minor amendment to the motion in the business paper. Where it, a minor amendment to the delegations, where it talks about the General Manager's performance review, I think it currently says something like undertakes the whole process of the review. I think when we discussed the General Manager's performance review most recently, a number of us stated that we would prefer that that process took place in consultation with the whole of Council before the process was handled, or the completion of the process was handled by the Performance Review Panel. So if we could change the words in that section to undertake, comma, in consultation with the whole of Council, comma, and then the process of the General Manager's performance.
It just states more clearly what our expectations are as a whole Council being brought into that process, and means then that we're not, again, post hoc asking for participation in the process. It's a clarity around our expectations more than a necessary change of practice.
Yes, we do, but when we were discussing this previously as a Council, we had some concerns raised that it wasn't brought to everyone, and we sort of all did agree that we would be happy to do that. This just formalises that. Yeah. Thank you, Councillor Reardon.
Sorry, councillors, just on that, in the concept of delegating a function to a body or a person, I'm not sure that it's entirely lawful to then say you must then consult with somebody else. Okay? I don't know that that's strictly lawful.
If it's not, that's fine, and we don't want to put you on the spot to have to find that now. Could we bring that back after some— could we get some advice in an email from you and then discuss it further? Yep, lovely, thank you Any right of reply?
Well, I don't— I mean, I don't have a real problem with it, but I wouldn't say just adopt something else because we're not sure. In that case, we should defer it if we're not going to resolve it. If
2. Could we create an addition to the recommendation: Council resolve to confirm the delegations attached in Part 1 to this report and receive advice regarding... The amendment to the General Manager's performance review.
Councillor Connolly's approach is perhaps the cleanest one, to stop the paperwork, is to just adopt it. And ultimately, if it's not lawful, we won't enact it. Okay
Are you happy with that, Councillor Wheeler, and Councillor Conolly and Councillor Reardon? Yes, excellent. Right of reply? Not necessary. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Munn. Those against?
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Conolly, seconded by Councillor Reardon.
That Council resolve to confirm the delegations attached as Attachment 1 to this report, with the delegation to the General Manager's Performance Review Panel amended as follows:
- That Council delegate authority to the General Manager's Performance Review Panel to undertake, in consultation with Councillors, the whole process of performance review and performance management, including discussions about performance, any actions that should be taken and the determination of the new performance agreement.
Councillor Sheather. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just very briefly, and just to thank Councillor Wheeler for putting those additional motions in. I just have one slight change to it that was in point two — not in point two, sorry, it's not to the recommendation, it is to one of the questions — and that was around seeking that the Betterment Fund be jointly funded by the federal and state government to make it, to enable a magnitude of a fund that is actually capable of delivering some tangible projects rather than just money from one level of government. That's how they do it in Queensland, and it seems to be very successful, but that was only a minor thing. And I did just want to point out, too, that I particularly like the third one, the third question that Councillor Wheeler has put forward, in that we must push to eliminate the practice whereby LGAs have to compete against one another for funding.
I think that's a terrible thing to happen post-disaster, that we have to vie with other councils . So I think that these will be really good motions, and they can possibly be replicated to go to the national conference as well. And those of us going, I'm sure, will strongly advocate for them at the conference. And if anybody has any particularly strong issues on any of them, just let us know before we go, which I think we've got another meeting before then.
Councillor Wheeler. Thanks. Look, these are largely based on recommendations from the Upper House Flood Inquiry, which in part has come from submissions from this Council and other councils. The federal Betterment funding, I think, request is already a position of ALGA. I watched a nice video of Linda Scott pointing out why that was a good idea for the federal government today. But some of these things could be game changers for councils if they were to go ahead. And I think moving into an election year is always a good time to go cap in hand. The fourth one note, sorry, the insurance costs one, point one, is probably worth just putting a little bit of information on the public record here.
And this comes in part from the Insurance Council of Australia's submission to the Upper House Inquiry, which shows that houses in the Hawkesbury, relative to houses across the rest of the metropolitan area, are paying about double the state taxes on our insurance premiums as everybody else in the Sydney metro, because of these state government taxes that function as a percentage. And so instead of paying $270 to the state government in tax on your insurance, we pay in excess of $500. And that's when your premium is only 1,200 bucks. And I don't know that many of us have got premiums that are sitting at $1,200 anymore in the Hawkesbury Nepean. So we're being actively disadvantaged. And it's the Insurance Council of Australia's belief that these taxes are leading to the underinsurance burden in the Hawkesbury, which has really big knock-on effects for our community.
So they're the points that we should be making from the floor, that we want these removed from insurance and placed in a fairer system across the state. The other stuff is largely self-explanatory. The push for risk-based planning, I think we've seen juggling development —sorry, planning proposals coming from Pitt Town. There's this idea that just because something is above the 1 in 100, that it's not at a high risk. That we're currently working with a more hazard-based system and with a fairly flawed 1% AEP, and we need to move away from that. So hopefully we can get some push from LG New South Wales to get this sorted. Thanks.
Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett? Not necessary. Okay, I'll put the matter to the vote. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, I'm assuming yes, Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor McMahon. Carried.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Sheather.
That:
1. The report be received and noted.
2. In addition to the motion Council resolved at its meeting on 9 August 2022 to submit to the 2022 Local Government NSW Annual Conference, Council submit to the 2022 Local Government NSW Annual Conference motions regarding:
- a) Removal of State-based duties and taxes on insurance premiums.
- b) Establishment of a Betterment Fund to be made available post-natural disasters to impacted Local Government Areas.
- c) Rapid relief funding for flood affected Local Government Areas.
- d) Movement to a risk-based planning system, and implementation of a State-wide program for provision of fire, flood and extreme heat risk information for property owners.
Just briefly again, just really this is to go out on public exhibition, and I do think that the briefing we received on this was very thorough and very informative. And I'm really keen to get the public's feedback on this strategy, which has been a long time coming. And I think that, as all councils face challenges around the management of waste, we know that we've got so many opportunities here in moving into a circular economy and in utilising the facilities that we've got. I'm particularly keen to see us move towards getting a FOGO system. But I think what I — and I also think that the partnering with Western Sydney University and Sydney Water is quite encouraging. But what I really want to encourage everybody to do is to really get people to give the feedback on this, because whereas it's a much less glamorous part of our role, when you actually go out and speak to people, so many people have these issues around waste, and they have ideas around waste, and it's not something that we really encompass.
They care about it so much, whether it's about their bin collections or how the tip operates or, you know, what the future of our waste management is. And how we cope with waste before and after disasters, of course, is another big issue. So I would just urge everybody so that when we get this back, people have inputted at that point rather than coming at the time and then having their ideas when that happens. So that was all I wanted to say. It's a strategy well
Thanks. Just a couple of points. I want to acknowledge the previous Director of Planning, Linda Perrin's work in this space. This has been a big project. Reinventing the waste space for us, and I think we're particularly sensitive here because we pay so much to put our own rubbish in our own hole in the ground. You know, it's extortionate, frankly . A couple of the things that come out of here, I think, are particularly interesting. And I've got a friend on Wollongong Council, and they've done lots of work with their FOGO service. And one of the game changers for them was when they decided to keep their red bin as a weekly service. That's something that people, even if they've got nothing in it, you know, they might have two plastic bags, they want that weekly pickup because they're really worried that they're going to have something revolting that has to hang around for a couple of weeks in 40-degree heat.
And they're particularly sensitive, and it seems like the whole FOGO thing can fall over the idea that your red bin isn't picked up once a week. I think we still do a few things that are backwards, and I'm glad to see that the push is to shift to a smaller red bin once FOGO goes out. I've said for quite some time that we should be giving people a small bin when they ask for a bin, not a big bin. We make the big bin the standard service, and the small bin something you ask for specially. That's really, really stupid, and we should stop doing it. We're just adding to the rubbish at the tip. I think, I think we see it's good to see that people are quite satisfied with the waste service. I know there's a few people who aren't, where the service doesn't come directly to their homes.
I think we realise how important waste is to people when we can't get the trucks through in a flood. You know, one of the things that people who are just cut off, largely, and aren't flood impacted really worry about is whether we're going to pick up their bin. And so this is one of those really basic services that people really depend on, and it throws everybody out if the bin doesn't go at 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning like they expected it to do. So I hope that, I hope we do get some buy-in for this. It's really important, and it's important that we do it as well as we can, because when we stuff it up, it's really expensive, and that's only going to get worse. And then we've got all the other imperatives from the state government that we shift in this space.
I think we've been really quite slow adopters on a lot of this stuff. I think the luxury of having a big expensive tip has probably made us a bit slow, but we need to get on board. Thanks.
Question, Madam Mayor. We've got the tip closing in a few years. Are we going to have a briefing where we're going with that down the track, and what other areas for the end product, I suppose, are we doing, or the state doing in relation to waste? It's alright to ask people to Deal with it, and we provide a service to pick it up and then put it in a hole.
In respect of the landfill site at the Driftway, it's probably good for us to have a good opportunity to brief Council on what we see as the potential of that future facility and also some of its constraints. We have been garnering some consulting advice over the last couple of years about what to do with that. I will say, though, it largely hinges on this piece of strategy around what we want to do with transfer stations and those potential land uses. So, more than happy to schedule a briefing on that, Councillor.
Thank you, General Manager. I'll just add a couple of very quick sentences. I know it's late to this, and just to bring to everyone's attention, yes, what Councillor Sheather just said. It is very clear in this report that our tip will reach capacity by 2026, which is not far away, and I think we really need to discuss that urgently. The other thing is, I think our LGA needs to get used to this term FOGO, because I know when I first saw it, I had a giggle, like, what does that mean? But our LGA does need to get used to food organics and garden organics being a thing and having a bin for it. What is interesting is that we have a FOGO mandate to transition to this by 2030, but to date, the New South Wales EPA has not released any regulations on how the FOGO mandate will apply.
So I know that we have a lot of work ahead of us there, but I think the residents need to start getting used to this FOGO idea and that it will encompass a new bin. So that's something to keep in mind. If there's no further speakers, I will put the recommendation. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. All in favour and carried.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Reardon.
That Council:
1. Endorse the Draft Waste and Resource Recovery Strategy 2032, included as Attachment 1 to this report, for the purpose of public exhibition for a period of at least 28 days.
2. Receive a report on the outcome of public exhibition of the Draft Waste and Resource Strategy 2032.
Have someone move that way. Oh, Councillor Reardon. Seconder? Councillor Conolly. Councillor Reardon, did you wish to speak? No. Anyone else wish to speak? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks
Can I add a point three if the mover is amenable, otherwise I'll move an amendment, that we consult with local First Nations people on this name. I'm not sure who the local group is.
So I'm assuming that we're calling this Miles Way because Miles was the Aboriginal guide who led Howe up the road. It would be really helpful if that was—I had to go hunting for that—it would be really helpful if that was in the report, because this will go on public record. I understand where you got it from, but this is what becomes the public record that people search for if they want to know who the devil Miles was. I would like us to consult with First Nations people so that they're comfortable with it, because we are calling it after a First Nations person. But I also want us to check that Miles is the name that they wish him to be known by, because it's quite possible that that's a bit of an Anglo name, and I suspect that that wasn't the name that his mother gave him.
So could we— Could we look into that? I think we also, when we pick these things, are likely to open up a can of worms. And there's a can of worms open currently in the Hills where they've named a road after someone who ran an Aboriginal mission, and everyone thought it was a grand idea at the time. And it now turns out, after the Royal Commission, that he was not a good bloke. Now, I'm not saying that there's any problem with Miles, but we need to have it as part of our processes when we choose a First Nations person to name something after, or we choose an historical figure, that we directly consult with First Nations people to make sure that we are doing the right thing and that we're not acting out of ignorance whilst trying to do something good.
So if we can add that point, we can hopefully tidy this up. Thanks.
Yeah, question, Madam Mayor. We're looking at—this is right on our boundary with Singleton. How many of those subdivisions are in our city, do we know?
Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. It's just concerning that we've got a subdivision like that. That far out of town, with no roads, no service or anything, it would be old. It's just something, I guess, as councillors we need to be mindful that there's mistakes been made in the past, and I expect this is probably one of them.
Thank you, Councillor Sheather. I'll just make a quick comment in relation to Councillor Wheeler's remarks, and very happy to support your point three. There was a point made in one of the items that went through on block, which was item 165, which was also another road naming proposal, and I'm sure you know more about this than me, that there was an emerging, if you look at page 143 down the bottom, an emerging consideration is the opportunity to incorporate names which contribute to achieving the outcomes of Council's Reconciliation Action Plan, which is presently in draft form. So while that's still taking place in draft form, I think if you turn over it says once the plan is finalised and adopted, Council will work with the working group to develop that framework, which is I think what you're talking about, by which signage is reviewed and names of cultural significance, which will include road naming, can be recommended.
So funny it was in one road naming report but not the other, so that was there, which was good. Anyone else wish to speak? Councillor Kotlash. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Like Councillor Wheeler, I was intrigued by the Aboriginal name of Miles, so I did a little bit of research, and I think Miles, that was his nickname, but his actual name was Myerum, which is I think his Aboriginal name, and I think that's really, we have to look at this sort of thing to be able to address the… The reconciliation plan, we have to at least not recognise Aboriginal guides by their colonial nicknames. I think that's a bit troublesome . So I definitely agree with Councillor Willers' extra point, and I think we have to be mindful of that in future. That's all. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, just a quick side question off on a tangent. Have we any idea why our RAP is taking so long to get through Reconciliation Australia?
I can respond to that. So I think it's been previously advised to councillors at briefings that the RAP was in its fifth iteration with Reconciliation Australia. I have been advised that that is not unusual. However, given the significant amount of time that's lapsed and the change of membership of the working group, it's now been deemed appropriate by staff and members of the working group to revisit the RAP just to ensure that the critical action items that were raised as part of the initial engagement are still reflected in the end product, which will be brought to Council for consideration. So just to make sure that the intent of the actions weren't distilled to fit within Reconciliation Australia's framework to the point that they didn't actually reflect what the community had told us.
So we are working quite intensively. We've committed to weekly meetings over a period of the coming six weeks, and we've had one meeting to date. And we actually have Reconciliation Australia engaged in that process. So as what we develop ultimately should be endorsed in that form and be ready to be reported back to Council prior to going out on public exhibition.
Thank you for that. Thank you. If there are no further speakers, right of reply, Councillor Reardon? Not necessary. Okay, thank you. I will ask everyone to vote on the motion with the added point three. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Vigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Carried.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Reardon, seconded by Councillor Conolly.
That Council:
1. In accordance with the requirements of the NSW Roads Act 1993, place on public exhibition the road name of Myles Way which is for a Private Road off Yengo Drive, Putty (Lots 4-11 DP 786523) for a period of 28 days.
2. At the expiration of the public notification period outlined in Part 1 above, the following action be taken:
- a) Should any material submissions of objection be received regarding the proposed Road Naming Proposal, a further report be submitted to Council, or
- b) Should no material submissions of objection be received, Council adopt the Road Naming Proposal.
5. 3 . Consult with Local First Nations People on the road naming proposal.
Unanimously. Look at the work we do after 11, right? Next item is 166, Local Traffic Committee, because we had to pull it out of the block item. Councillor Sheather, would you like to declare your interest, please?
Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. It's a less than significant non-pecuniary interest. I've been the finish cover data for the bridge to bridge for some years, and there's an issue within the traffic in relation to the event that has been cancelled.
It's been cancelled, that's right. Thank you, Councillor. Would someone like to move the recommendation? Councillor Conolly, seconder? Councillor Reardon. Wish to speak on that, Councillor Conolly. Anyone else wish to speak? No. No right of reply? Okay, all those in favour, please raise your hands. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler. Yep. Councillor Zamprogno. Yep. And Councillor McMahon. Another unanimous.
2, establishment of a floodplain management subcommittee. I will leave it with you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I would have had some speakers, but they dropped out for various reasons. I know this is a similar motion— Sorry, I just need a seconder, sorry. Oh, sorry. Councillor Will. I know it's late, and I know everyone's tired, and I know this is a similar motion to what I've brought before. However, and I'm not wedded to how I've worded it, what I simply want to do, whether it's a committee, a forum, whatever setup potentially that we could have, we need to act on it and get something in place. We had a floodplain committee when we didn't have floods, and now we've had multiple floods, and we have no dedicated floodplain management committee to work through the many issues that we see that are coming up.
And this, of course, would involve reviewing the findings and the recommendations of the recent flood inquiries and how they impact on our LGA. We've had, in the interim, a stream of resolutions through Council around various issues. We've had flood mitigation, we've had evacuation routes, we've had resolutions to form working groups which have never met, we've had a call for a closed meeting with agencies which we haven't had. And these could probably have been better managed by a centralised system that's either a committee or a regular forum, without sending the staff in all directions with this stream of motions that are brought all the time. So I think one of the big issues that we have is the uncertainty of not having regularly scheduled meetings.
It's— and I know that the latest change in our disaster and emergency management meeting is unavoidable because of the public holiday, but I think that... We haven't really achieved a lot through the current setup that's specific to what we need to be dealing with around flood issues. So in saying this, I'm not referring at all to the operational responses of either our staff or of emergency services personnel. They operate in spheres where their responsibilities are clearly articulated, and they do it by the book. But from a community perspective and a floodplain management perspective overall, we've got a lot of work to do. So we've got all the vital information we must collect, and I understand some of that's collected through the recovery process.
But not everybody's involved in that because not everyone's directly impacted, so they don't necessarily register and they don't necessarily feed their information into anywhere. We need to collect and store that information for reference so that when we make decisions or before the next flood, we're better informed and better prepared. We need to set up a dialogue with representatives from specifically flood-impacted areas to ensure that we have the continuity about these issues, because the worst thing that can happen is when complacency sets in and people forget. We need somebody from these communities to be involved in still working around the various issues. And at some point, we have to face it that recovery initiatives and funding will at some point run out.
I know that we've got various systems in place in council at the moment and through agencies, but it won't keep going. And then we have the other whole issue around how flooding is incorporated into land use planning and the ongoing task with that, which was very heavily touched upon in the independent inquiry into the floods of this year. So we have to translate what's been observed and learnt from these floods into how we make decisions around planning and infrastructure provision . And we need access to the state agencies whose obligation it is. is to actually assist the councils in our duty to manage the floodplain. So we've got a really big LGA, which, with much of it impacted by floods and other disasters, and we need to allow these communities to delegate representatives to provide us with their really location-specific information around the flood issues.
And we haven't captured that as yet. I'm going to run out of time again. So I think probably the councillors that will support this are the same councillors who went to the flood forum at the racecourse, and that was about a state government issue about lowering the levels. And we heard Professor Khan speak. And I think besides that, though, all of us were engaging individually with the people in that room, and we could see the passion and the angst of what they were worried about. And these are the voices that we're not capturing through the way our committee system's set up at the moment. So I'm not doing this to be contrary to that, but I think we need something else. We're not capturing the various people that we need to be speaking to.
So I think that we need something that's regular, and we need something. We know that today the BOM has released that we're expecting another La Niña, and we're all going to have to be more prepared than ever. So I just want us to work onto something. The gaps between the other committee meetings are too long. We're missing opportunities when the best time to educate people and to get people to understand is when it's on their minds, when it's happened, and we're missing the boat. We really need to change this, and I would like the support to change it. And I'm happy to call it whatever you like to call it, but I think we need to get the proper representatives from each flood-impacted area in here to be able to feed us that information for the future.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm speaking against this notice of motion, and my reasons for not supporting it are threefold. I think it introduces unnecessary bureaucracy. I think it limits community involvement, and it perpetuates the misunderstanding of the way our community structure works. I'll briefly expand on these three things. Unnecessary bureaucracy. In 2020, some of the more progressive members of Council dissolved the Flood Risk Management Advisory Committee, but importantly , and I've underlined this in my notes, moved all its functions to the new Disaster and Emergency Committee. This was done to streamline the committees and decrease the number of ineffective items of business that were being dealt with, particularly in the standalone Floodplain Risk Management Advisory Committee.
I remember at the time my analysis showed that about a third of the time the committee met was spent on updating or advising the advisory committee. There wasn't very much advice to Council. This to me represented unnecessary bureaucracy. I believe that it is more efficient to be able to deal with any disaster or emergency items of business at the same meeting, noting that the SES, the RFS and Police are often involved in all of these types of situations. And also, we wanted to involve all councillors in the deliberations about disaster and emergency matters in recognition of the importance of these types of issues to the Hawkesbury community. The second one is about the limiting of community involvement.
Asking the community for expressions of interest to participate in a committee so that they can have a voice, in my opinion, is archaic. Many in the community have information, experiences, stories and opinions about how they want disasters and emergencies to be managed. This can be vast experience or it can just be one-off experiences. All of those things are important. We must have a mechanism to allow everybody who wants to to have an opportunity to have their say. Narrowing this down to certain people from certain areas who will be chosen by us, that is politically appointed, in my opinion, is not the way forward. Being able to write an expression of interest does not make a member of the community any more representative than any other.
I think this would be a very limiting and a regressive step backwards. Now to the way our new committee systems work. To suggest that we need a new dedicated flood committee to , and I quote from the notice of motion, dedicate significant attention to flood-related matters for which we are responsible, is simply unfounded. The Disaster and Emergency Committee will meet as often as necessary. And I realise we have a lot of work to do, but we have set it up so that we are able to deal with all of those issues on an issue-by-issue basis.
It seems to me the Disaster and Emergency Committee structure is working as it was intended. To my knowledge, we have two working groups. One was established to meet the requirements of the flood-related grant-funded projects, and the other has been established to look specifically at the issue of electricity supply in times of natural disasters. So if we had a separate flood committee, we have the potential to be needing two working groups to look at the electricity supply issues, one for flood and one for bushfire. So the Disaster and Emergency Committee enables us to have one working group that looks at those supply issues with all of the state government and all of the agency people that are responsible in one go , and that relates to my earlier point about unnecessary bureaucracy.
I think we just have to use the system that we have; it has been designed so that we actually get some stuff done. It seems to me that, you know, I don't want to go back to when we just talked about issues over and over again for the sake of having a meeting. I don't think that's the way to go. Admittedly, we've got a lot of work to do, and I think we should just get on with it and really utilise our new structure, which involves all of the community and all of the agencies that are related to those issues. Thanks.
Thank you. Yeah, I tend to agree, and I won't support the motion. I do think that this kind of has to stop. We've had now three or four motions about different types of committees we could have, and specifically around the Floodplain Management Committee or replacement for it. And with respect, I can't think of a single notice of motion where you've put something up to refer something to the existing committee to be discussed. And I think the effort would be far better spent actually putting the issue forward rather than coming back over and over again to Council trying to get a new subcommittee or a new committee or a new working group. I don't think that the committee hasn't met a number of times.
That's not true. Right, yeah, but that's not No, I completely agree. I completely agree with you. The problem is not that a lack of working groups or a lack of subcommittees or a lack of committees. The problem is that we have a committee meeting and nobody puts anything on the business paper, and then the committee meeting— well, at the last meeting, I believe the last meeting of the Emergency Management Disaster Committee, there was no business put forward by the Council and it went for 20 minutes. And yet it's all this stuff we have to urgently discuss, and I'm just suggesting that the time would be better spent rather than all these motions to set up different committees and working groups and subcommittees, just actually put forward the issue you want the committee to look at so that the committee can do so.
I also would, you know, I would also sort of question whether or not we as a Council have a really good understanding of our role in this, because we're not going to have any role in first response to floods. We're not going to have a role in coordinating or managing the floodplain. All our role in managing the floodplain is about planning. It's about long-term stuff. So it's not stuff that's going to be done well—it's not stuff that's going to be done well in a committee. It's stuff that we have to give direction to our staff and then review documents, provide feedback, adopt documents. It's not something that you can have a meeting and quickly sort out. And I just think ... I understand that this is probably brought forward with good intentions, but we've just had so many of these motions now to set up new subcommittees, committees and working groups, and we're not getting anywhere.
We just need to try out the system we've got and see if we can make it work, instead of constantly looking to expand on the number of groups and bureaucracies we have, because it's not achieving anything.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I know, I strongly suspect I've asked this question before of staff, but I'll ask it again through you, Madam Mayor. Is there some statutory requirement or strong recommendation for councils to have a flood risk advisory committee that was well fulfilled by the previous flood committee and is now not fulfilled by our current emergency management committee, or is poorly fulfilled by our emergency management committee?
Andrew Kearnes(staff - Manager, Strategic Planning)
Thank you, Madam Mayor. So just highlighting the New South Wales flood development on flood liable land policy basically requires… So it's a best practice document and sort of highlights that, you know, the best practice is to have a floodplain development committee that's made up of a number of representatives, either from the community, from state agencies, and council representatives as well, including elected members. But that's put forward as best practice. It's not as such a statutory requirement, but is best practice.
You would know that I have formed the view that the reformed committee structure that I was prepared to pass in the dying days of the previous term have failed. And now I hear that a best practice document suggests that we have precisely the kind of committee that we disbanded. And I do not believe that the emergency management committee, as it's currently constituted, is capable of discharging the same function. Why? Because the flood risk advisory committee that we used to have was made up of people who were passionate about the subject, who were subject matter experts, and who were accorded the courtesy of feeling a sense of ownership and agency through their voting membership of that committee.
That, to me, seems like the very definition of democracy. To say that you can only have a democratic committee if you have councillors as the sole voting members is to be particularly tin-eared about how community groups can work well. And I used to attend meetings of the previous flood risk advisory committee and saw that it was made up of a variety of people who were prepared to give their time and expertise on a voluntary basis because they knew how existential and intrinsic this issue was to our area. Now what Councillor Lyons-Buckett is proposing to do here is to— Utilise the structure that we have and to form a working group within the Emergency Management Committee. I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
And I think we're just falling along traditional lines of demarcation politically to stand against it. I just think it's objectively a good idea, and I don't know why anybody would stand against it. So I'll be voting for the councillor's notice of motion.
Thanks, Madam Mayor. I take on board the structure that's in place, but of all the committees, the council should have, the Floodplain Committee should be the top one, without doubt. And we ask questions at briefing and the like. And there's things that concern me, and I've mentioned them around this table and briefings before. The project that has been taken on at Cornwallis, including that drain, there's funds and government organisations that fund just those projects. In the Lismore area is one of those areas that that happens, and I know it happens
The other thing that is our responsibility is things like the ferries. We nearly lost two of them, and there's no answers from anybody. We lost power. We had St Albans without any communication whatsoever. Now, if that's not our responsibility to kick someone's butt, I don't know what is. And that's aside, the State Floodplain Manual was printed in 2005. It's being addressed now, but 2005.
What allow local councils dealing with the State Government to allow that to happen? We've had disasters like Lismore and the likes, and we're looking at a policy that was before a drought. Yeah,
The system that the council had before, I guess at the time that I wasn't elected to it, it had changed a lot from when I was involved with it. And we got too much involved with the day-to-day state issues, and we weren't going anywhere. But again, it was through a drought. But the people that were on it were passionate, and they needed to be, because the people expect just that. How can you, you know, we spoke earlier about the lights of them all. It comes from passion, and that's what the community expects of us. They expect a few people to sit around and look after their interests.
And I don't know whether we need to— To set up a committee with the part two where all the areas that we need DAs for expressions, I think there's probably—we don't need to go to all those places. There's a few people around that would nominate and could be selected. You want people that have an understanding of flooding, not people who have an issue with flooding, I guess, because they're pushing the barrow that you don't want. You want someone resolved. So I support—I certainly support the principle of it. I'll support the motion tonight because I think that we need to do something. I think the community expects us to do something in that regard. And I take on board the comments that have been made by Councillor Conolly and the like.
I wasn't here when those discussions took place or the reasoning that it happened. I know that there was frustration within Council, and something needed to be done. But with the issues that need to be addressed, notices of motion or the like, or requests of staff, with flooding there's just too much to deal with. And it needs people and the experience of the government agencies sitting around a table to answer the questions or give you advice.
Thank you, Councillor. I might just add a few comments into that as well. And I think I addressed earlier this evening the fact that item number 13 on our agendas on the first page of your business papers actually matters to be referred to committees. And the whole reason that we have that item there— is based on the very new committee structure that we have put in place. So if we were going to be picky, I would say that this notice of motion would be more perfectly placed under matters to be referred to committees. And if Councillor Lyons-Buckett was more amenable in this process to maybe even add that as the first line of her notice of motion, something along the lines of that Council refer the following question to the Disaster and Emergency Committee to then add that as an agenda item to the committee, that would be something I could support because that, therefore, is the process of our committees.
And that's the whole structure that we now operate under. So following the process for that would be the way that I could somehow look at this to then be discussed at that meeting. And if you like, the reason that that's the perfect forum for that as an agenda item is because we have the dedicated personnel there from our emergency services who will be able to inform us of their opinion. The other thing I want to just make a point of is talking about People wanting to come along and participate in a flood management subcommittee, well, they're just as entitled to come along to the Disaster and Emergency Committee with those agenda items on there and still participate. And that was the very point, again, of our committee structure, that it wasn't a closed-door session to certain people.
Those same people who profess to have a passion for flood mitigation or flood knowledge from the past are able to participate in an open-door session. That's the whole point. It's more inclusive and it's more transparent. And that was the reason we brought the committee structure in in the first place. So if there is an acute passion for that topic, then turn up to our Disaster and Emergency Committee meetings and participate. The other point that needs to be made is that when people say, I only participated in a former committee because I got a vote, well , I think we are very well aware that your vote was only a vote in the committee meeting, and the vote validity actually comes from this chamber when those minutes were brought to this council chamber, and we, as the 12 elected representatives, had the vote that carried the weight that passed a resolution.
So I think to use both of those two angles as reasons that people no longer participate in committees are both invalid because they didn't really have a vote that carried weight, and they are still able to participate under the current committee structure. So if there was an ability tonight to say that this question would be posed to the Disaster and Emergency Committee meeting that I think is now meeting on the 27th, that could be an agenda item, and that would be following our correct process. But in this form, it's not following our correct process. Again, I don't have a problem with the substance, I guess, but I would like the mover of the motion, if possible, to put that as a question to the committee and follow due process.
Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak? Councillor Calvert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, I tend to agree with your comments. Firstly, we still do have a floodplain committee. It is part of the disaster and emergency committee, and the document that Mr. Kearns was reading from before, which I think is the floodplain manual, says further on in the document that Council can allow the floodplain risk committee to be part of a larger committee, which is what we've done. So to suggest that we're not following state guidelines is incorrect. The way the disaster and emergency committee is set up, they can establish a working group at any time, and that working group can co-opt other people to be in it. All those people listed here in this notice of motion could be co-opted to be part of the working group.
All we need to do, though, is for the working group to have a reason to exist, which is to have an issue that you're asking it to address and a timeline or a way of presenting that back to the committee. It could be that what you're asking the subcommittee to look at might take six months or a year, could take one week. It depends on what the issue is that you're putting up. It's not restricted by time. So I think a more proper way of doing this would be for Council to request the disaster and emergency committee to give consideration to establishing a working group such as the one that is put here in this notice of motion. I think that's what the process is at the moment. And I would personally think this notice of motion, therefore, is possibly out of order.
But I know council can do what it wants whenever it wants, but the process at the moment is to ask, as the mayor said, to ask the committee to do these things through council. And many committees are staggering; they're not running very well at the moment because they're not getting input from councillors. They're designed to get input; councillors give them input, give them issues, and then they run with those and report back to council. If councillors don't give the committees any issues, then they're not going to meet.
Thanks. Look, there's a lot of misinformation flying around this room at the moment, and I want to address some of that. But first, I want to point out what the guidelines are and point out that we are not indeed following them. So the purpose of a floodplain risk management committee, according to Appendix D of the Floodplain Manual, is for a focus and a forum for the discussion of technical, social, economic and ecological issues, and for the distillation of possibly differing viewpoints on these issues. It must include community groups and state agency specialists. The appendix, which is D4, is very clear that it should include elected councillors, staff, including engineers, planners, environmental representatives, community representatives, environmental group representatives, local industry bodies, the Department of Planning, the Bureau of Meteorology, the SES, and welfare and community services.
Now, we might have some of those on our disaster and risk and emergency committee, but we do not have a dedicated space for them to bring items to the agenda, and this is one of the problems. When you contrast this with the Heritage Committee that is still running largely the way the previous committees. Staff are able to place items on the agenda in consultation with agencies and community members, and that's a key thing missing from our current committee structure. There are fixed meetings, or there were fixed meetings. People knew that they were turning up every two months to a meeting. The agencies knew that they were turning up. They weren't useless updates . They were incredibly helpful and great learning opportunities.
In fact, what I now understand of the floodplain, having witnessed four floods, comes largely from those updates on the floodplain risk management committee. And I'm a bit staggered that people would pretend to be experts on that committee when they weren't on it. I don't know how you know what happened in our meeting. You weren't there. And the minutes didn't discuss it in great detail. This is, you're presenting a false dichotomy in arguing against this subcommittee. You can still have community involvement. People can still come and speak to the disaster and emergency committee. None of this is unraveling the disaster and emergency committee. It's asking for an additional subcommittee to meet our requirements under the floodplain management guidelines.
We need inclusion of community and state specialists in roundtable discussions, not in formal meetings constrained by a code of meeting practice. We need closed meetings where representatives can speak freely, and in fact those meetings provide an excellent chance to hold their feet to the fire and ask them why we're not being provided with the services and the information that we desperately need. That's what we did with the Department of Planning. That's what we did with Infrastructure New South Wales in the Floodplain Risk Management Committee, and we've lost that opportunity. And our community is less safe as a result. And that's on us, or it's on those people who continue to vote against these initiatives.
They're also not voting committees. It's not that people get a vote in those committees that makes a difference. It's the fact that everybody's sitting around the table, from a flood-affected mum and dad, or mum or dad in McGrath's Hill, to a senior engineer from the Department of Planning, who all get to voice their opinion on an even playing field in a room where they feel comfortable and aren't going to be publicly castigated for what they've said. That makes the difference. There is quite reasonable transparency. People are still free to come to the Emergency Management Committee. There's nothing stopping them from doing that by putting this committee in.
It's perfectly reasonable for people to meet and discuss an issue behind a closed door, and the decision to be reported to the community. That's a reasonable part of decision-making. If you're dealing with something where we're discussing people's lives being at risk, this is not something that you should be scoring political points off and clinging desperately to some half-assed committee thing that you hatched last term. People are going to die
Thank you. I'll uphold that. I'll withdraw. Thank you. Anyone wish to discuss further on the item, on the notice of motion? Thank you. Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett
Sorry, I feel like I've turned into Jim Hacker. I'm living in an episode of Yes Minister. There's 12 of us here. We're the people on the Disaster and Emergency Management Committee. You don't want more bureaucracy, but you want us to send this to that committee, which we did last time. There was no back and forth dialogue because that committee does not operate in a way that's conducive to debate. So the meetings are run like council meetings. There's time speeches. People stand up at the lectern. The debate's being stifled by the nature of how it operates. So the promises we were sold on this committee system, that we'd sit in here till every question was answered, we'd get hordes of people coming in to engage via submissions or speak to us about things.
It hasn't materialised because that is not a welcoming or productive way to do it. It's as simple as that. So we're sending things back and forward, and we have sent things to the committee, Councillor Connelly. There's a list as long as your arm, but nothing's happened about any of it. So I'll show it to you if you can't find it. So many of you never went to the floodplain committee. Councillor Kotlash attended around 50% of the meetings, and that was at a time when we hadn't had floods for a long, long time. Now we've had multiple floods, and we've got no dedicated forum in which people can come and speak to us, and I'm embarrassed by that, and you all should be too, because it is, as Councillor Wheeler just said, it's a political thing of my way or the highway, sticking to some half-baked committee system that just simply isn't delivering anything.
We don't have anyone come. The people who did come and speak said to me that they felt like they wasted their time coming because they weren't able—nobody asked them questions. I asked them questions. Nobody else did. It was back, no back and forward, and nothing came out of it. There was no actions from it. There was no things taken forward. Their information was not recorded in a way that gives us something to refer back to. It was useless, in other words. This motion is calling to incorporate all the existing resolutions, Councillor Conolly, so it's one committee, not multiple committees. So if we haven't ever dealt with the McDonald Valley flood study, which we set up a working group to do, the people down there aren't happy.
You'll hear that when you go down there to see them. They're not happy at all. So the last time we were going to invite the Chamber of Commerce, they didn't come. This isn't working. It simply isn't working. I'm trying to work productively to find a way to help this community that's crying out for it, and those of us who went to the flood forum, who turned up to hear the people, we knew, we heard it, and if you don't do something about it. That community is not going to be very happy, and I don't think that this should be politicised in the way it has been. And I would just like to see a productive way forward. I won't refer it to the committee because I just think that is an absurdity.
Those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Dogramaci, and Councillor McMahon. The motion is carried.
RESOLVED on the motion of Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Wheeler.
That Council establish a dedicated Floodplain Management Committee or sub-committee of the Disaster and Emergency Committee to address flood-related issues, and
1. To incorporate the existing resolutions which established working groups to look at flood-related issues;
2. Invite expressions of interest for representatives to participate from flood-impacted areas including MacDonald Valley/St Albans, Upper Colo, Windsor, Pitt Town, South Windsor, McGraths Hill, Richmond Lowlands, North Richmond, Lower Portland, Cumberland Reach and any other areas suffering the impacts of floods;
3. Include relevant agencies from State Government and Emergency Services as per the Floodplain Management Manual.
Okay, before we move into confidential, I do want to just state a couple of things, reiterating something I did just touch on briefly, that if you do have a matter to be referred to committees, it is an item on this agenda. So if you want to just get our committees meeting and putting questions to those committees, please make sure you get them onto the business paper. We have no questions with notice, no responses to questions. Therefore, the next item is 169, confidential organisation structure. Do I have someone to move into confidential? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Reardon. All those in favour? Carried. We'll move into confidential, please.
You, Madam Mayor. In respect of item 169, Organisation Structure, whilst in closed session Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Sheather, seconded by Councillor Kotlash, that Council endorse the organisation structure provided in Attachment 1 to the report. For the motion were Councillors Reardon, Weigel, Sheather, Conolly, Kotlash, Calvert, Djuric, Lyons-Buckett, Wheeler, Zamprogno and McMahon. Against the motion was Councillor Dogramaci, and then Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Reardon, seconded Councillor Calvert, to return to open committee.
Thank you, General Manager, and as that is now all of our items and all of our business, I declare the meeting closed at 12:55 a.m . Thank you for your contributions, everybody.
