8 August 2023 - Ordinary

Good evening and welcome everybody to Hawkesbury City Council's meeting for the 8th of August 2023. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of the country. I'll 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, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would also like to advise 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 may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is provided 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. 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 personal reflection against 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.

Finally, it is requested that if any person participating in or attending the meeting this evening has a mobile phone on them, can you please turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you very much. I'd like to also welcome everyone in the gallery here this evening for attending. Apologies and leave of absence. We only have one Councillor not here this evening. That's the Deputy Mayor Barry Calvert, so he will be an apology. Are there any declarations of interest from our Councillors? Oh, sorry, I need to move and accept. Sorry, someone move the apology. Thank you, Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Reardon. All in favour? Declare that carried. Thank you. Any declarations of interest? I'll just declare my own a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in item 5.1.2. Can I have somebody confirm the minutes of the last meeting, please? Thank you, Councillor Reardon, seconded Councillor Veigel. All in favour, please raise your hand. Thank you, unanimously declare that one carried.

The first item tonight will be the item subject to public address. The first item is item 4.3.1, Draft Urban Greening Strategy, and I invite the registered public speaker, William Snedden, to address the Council. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Councillors and the gallery. Right, major urban, regarding the greening strategy, I put in a submission, and in the last three or four weeks there have been quite a few documents in Sydney Morning Herald, etc., regarding heating, etc. This one in particular, only about a week ago, summer heat stress worst in treeless suburbs, newer estates, etc. I've seen a gentleman in Penrith referring to the fact that he went through 48 and a bit last year several times and is not looking forward to it. He said if it gets to 50, he's going to think he's on another planet. So I have addressed it in my submission. So basically I'd just like to go through a few points characterising it.

There's major urban heating in Western Sydney, and that indicates more urgent action is needed than the slow pace indicated in what I believe is in the draft strategy. Hawkesbury is away from the maritime cooling effects along the eastern coastline, in other words, the ocean. Windsor, Hawkesbury summers appear to be getting hotter, as with Penrith. Penrith recent string of 43 degree C days last summer. The consultant's report is a report as such. However, I do feel that they're missing quite a lot. There was no mention about the West Rock actions on urban greening and the heat island effects in the western suburbs. Now, I was on both the Waste Management Committee and later, when it was merged with the Sustainability Committee, this was discussed a number of times.

I remember seeing urban greening documents presented here, and quite frankly, I would have thought that they would have had the guts for council staff to get on with this. There is nil mention of them in this draft, which I find stunning, considering also that our absent Deputy Mayor for tonight, Barry Calvert, is the head of West Rock, who also spoke on those documents among a number of other councillors several years ago. Also in this little document here, there is a little thing about why the Bureau of Meteorology won't declare an El Niño for this year so far. On the other hand, we've also had the head of the United Nations declaring that the northern hemisphere is not going through a hot period; it's now a boiling period for this summer up in there, with all the fires, etc., in Scandinavia, northern Europe and the United States.

So I really think that we need to have some urgency, politely. There's nil mention of the recent documents submitted to Hawkesbury Council over the last several years from West Rock. They really hit the spot and significantly contributed to the factual input regarding urban heating. In my area alone, there is a silky oak tree next to me at 115 Church Street. In the last five years, it has ceased to drop leaves. This is an obligate, normally deciduous tree. The jacaranda trees along Church Street, where I live, are now not dropping their leaves. These are deciduous trees. This is an indication of significant warming in the area in my street in the last five years. The weird thing with the silky oak is that at the start of spring, it starts dropping some leaves, but that's required in order for it to allow it to flower.

I grew up with stalky oaks, and every one I've seen drop all of their leaves at the start of autumn.

So I find the consultant's report missing a whole lot of things that they could have referred to. Inside it, though, they do go through the appropriate things, mentioning various actions and departments and things to comply with, etc. But I just find it completely lacking in urgency. There's nil indication of sort of what sort of maybe a level of funding that should be expended. They do say about, ultimately, in the budget, the council will need to make some allocation. Also, they're indicating about chasing up alternative funding, which I strongly agree with. However, there's no strong mention of getting on with it. In fact, I read it as though nothing is going to happen, time-wise, for at least another three years, even though there's a 10-year timeframe on it.

I'm really concerned about this because we are in the process of getting a lot hotter. I lived at Richmond for some years in Mount Hobartville, and that is going to fry out there. That's going to be like Penrith because that's well away from the afternoon sea breezes that we get closer in. It's a really hot, real hot spot. At least we've kept the swimming pool there and expanded it for the locals so they can go there. So we don't have the cooling that the east coast of Sydney gets. There are people along the river; they get a little bit of it, but on the east coast you get maritime climate modification. Water is a very powerful modifier of climate. I'm also concerned regarding some of the internals.

One of the things that I've noticed in my 40-plus years of living here is we've lost a lot of street trees to in front of my place, for example. I don't know whether they were council planted, but they haven't been replaced. There's more along Church Street. So when trees go in, they also have to be looked after and maintained and possibly replaced. We had contra temps here about three months ago regarding trees in Bligh Park. Some residents not wanting them on their nature strip so they could park there. We've also had fights up at Kurrajong in the shopping centre when trees were taken down. So not everybody likes trees, but we need this sort of thing. We also need the linking between areas and more green cover, as the consultant says.

So I'm agreeing with the bulk of it, but what I'm really concerned about, the rate things are going in Western Sydney, the heating effects are really strong, and we need to really be getting on with tree cover, etc. I'm concerned about the long lead on the time frame that is apparently there. As I said, I feel that the document, whilst well put together, is lacking urgency. And quite frankly, having read it with all the WestRock documents and things that I sourced, submitted to Council and the Sustainability Committee in the last three or four years, quite frankly, I would have liked to have seen the $50,000 spent on getting things done on the ground already. I think your staff here have the ability to do it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Snedden, I appreciate that. And sorry to have stopped you there. The timer wasn't working and I could only assume that was five minutes. So thank you for your contribution. Any questions, councillors? No questions. Thank you very much. Appreciate that, Mr Snedden. Thank you.

Please get you to turn that mic off. Thank you, Suzanne. Anyone wishing to move that way? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'll move the recommendation in the business paper, but I just want to ask a couple of questions first, I may add to it.

I'll just get a seconder for that. Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Councillor Wheeler.

Thank you, and I want to thank Mr Snedden for speaking. I think he highlights a couple of issues that we probably need to really clarify before we go further, or before, once we've got this strategy in place.

The purpose of the strategy, as I understand it, and this—I moved a... A motion to develop an urban greening strategy several years ago, and at that stage it was considered to be, I don't know, a bit of a bonus, a frippery, something that we would add on when we got to it. I think what we've seen from successive summers is that that's no longer something that you just put on the wish list, that this is really essential. And I think increasingly that understanding is starting to overlay a whole lot of our planning documents and a lot of the major documents that will drive the development of Sydney into the future, particularly Western Sydney, where we are prone to far more heat. What this strategy does allow is us to— it builds a hook that we can hang our funding requests off.

But I'm not sure that that's enough. And I think we really need to include some dedicated funding, and I would look to do that in next year's budget at the very latest. So if I could add an additional point, that council dedicate funding to urban greening in next year's budget. And then I think the other matter that Mr. Stedden highlights is the need for tree protection. And I'll just throw you, Madam Mayor, a question to the staff. I'd like a briefing on how we can better protect the trees that we have. Do we need to add that to this motion, or can I just request at this point that we have a briefing on tree protection?

Thank you, Councillor. I'll just refer that to the general manager.

Happy to provide councillors a briefing on the current state of the, I guess, the legislative framework around that, if councillors are of a mind to want that .

Thank you. So I won't add that as an additional point in that case. So Mr Stedden is right in that we can't now sit on this strategy, you know, and we can't rely either on governments, both federal and state, to provide us with the funding to get on with this. We are going to, if we are fair dinkum about cooling our residential areas and our CBDs, then we have to put some funding in place to do that, to both keep the trees that we have and to add to those trees in a way that's sustainable, in a way that fits in around all the other things that those spaces have to do. Because it is getting hotter. You know, I find it really distressing to sit in spaces with people who are still denying climate change, who are still denying that it's getting hotter, who still don't understand that Western Sydney is going to be fried in the next decade if we don't start moving.

And also that the trees that we do have and the canopy that we have will come under increasing pressure from a warming and drying climate. We're already seeing that in our iconic London plane trees on the way into Richmond. If we don't start to develop a solid foundation for greening the residential and the more dense areas of the Hawkesbury, we are going to be in real trouble. We could rest on our laurels. We have 70% national park in this LGA. We could sit back. 70% is the target for fantastic urban greening. We could sit back and say, We've got that, but that would be patting ourselves on the back while we've done absolutely nothing. Our residential areas are still hot. They still have very low tree canopy levels.

We still don't have enough vegetation. So we need to be fair dinkum about what we do going forward in order to improve. the places that our people continue to live and work. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. I'll just confirm that the seconder was happy with that additional point. I thought so. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on the item? Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. It doesn't escape my attention that this document, which is a very laudable document, only mentions our LEP in one location on page 52, and it's mentioning the LEP and the DCP in the context of long-term change to embed an urban greening strategy into those documents on the scale of 10 years or more. And that, to me, isn't good enough, because we all know that we're engaging in development now. There's going to be massive development at Vineyard. There's going to be massive development at Jacaranda at Glossodia. There's the remainder of Redbank. There's the remainder of Pitt Town. And I suspect that we have no controls at all about how much urban greening we want to oblige as parts of those developments .

And for this strategy to only mention an enforcement regime through the LEP as being a future consideration on the scale of 10 years or more, I think falls well short of what's necessary, and it falls well short of community expectations. So my question for staff is, you know, could some of that funding that we may be pledging in an upcoming budget be devoted to the planning work that's required to get this into our LEP and DCP sooner?

Thank you, Councillor. I'll just direct that to— sorry, Director of City Planning.

I'll refer to the manager, Strategic Planning.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I guess part of the problem that we encountered when undertaking this body of work is that there's currently no strategic direction for trees in the Hawkesbury LGA. So this was the first step in addressing this, and delivering on the actions in the strategy delivers developing a tree inventory, mapping and protecting existing trees, managing and maintaining existing trees, planning controls is the specific question, and evidence-based planting and maintenance practices. So this

Particular strategy falls under the umbrella document of the Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which Council very recently adopted. And highlighted as part of that strategy was the work of Werrisrock in terms of the urban heat issue. And there's obviously the urban heat provisions in the LEP that Council's already resolved to proceed with, and we're going through the process of amending the LEP in that regard, and preparing development control plans to reflect those LEP changes. So there is work already happening in that particular space.

Mr. Coons, can you confirm, however, that That, you know, the biggest scale of development that we're likely to be looking at the next five years, say for example at Vineyard, has no tree cover controls at all, nothing to encourage a particular degree of planting or a type of planting. I'm just wondering if there's anything in our current instruments that encourage good planting.

So the Vineyard DCP has a number of provisions relating to trees, both street trees and on allotments. So there are provisions within that DCP that encourages planting, yeah.

But not in terms of the percentage of planting, which is the crux of this.

The percentage that's referred to in the strategy isn't referenced in that DCP document, no.

All right then, that's useful to know. I just don't want this document, I don't want the only impact that this has on tree cover being the paper that was generated to print it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, I'd like to move an amendment, and that's the recommendation.

Do I have a seconder for that?

Seconded for debate.

Sorry, Councillor Conolly?

I'll second that, yeah, to allow debate. Okay,

Thank you very much. Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. The reason I moved the amendment, we've adopted strategies over the last two years, I suppose, in relation to heating, and I fully expect that the staff will come back at appropriate times on how that will be managed. Only a couple of weeks ago, we had discussions on Council's finances and how we need to deal with it. Motions like this cost money, and not only will the staff be doing what they would normally do anyway, but now we're allocating additional funds to it. I have an issue with that. We haven't discussed those sorts of things. And there's been quite a few strategies that we have adopted, and some of them, like the West Rock one, that'll have massive impacts.

And I expect the changes that'll be made in relation to our LEP, which will take some time, irrespective of money put there or not, and the DCPs, which would probably happen more easily, that the staff would do that as a matter of course and in line with the work they're doing and the sort of things that Councillor Zamprogno spoke of. That's why I would offer the recommendation that's in the business paper.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. Just a question. I'd kind of assumed that there would already be actions in the delivery plan that would be fitting under this strategy and therefore we wasn't too worried about agreeing to funding it, in that we probably already agreed to that. Can I get some clarification if that's the case?

Thank you, Councillor. General Manager. I might take that one. Thank you, Councillor. So, yeah, loosely there are a suite of controls already in—well, not controls, of actions within the operational plan and budget. What you've seen tonight, and you're going to see at the next meeting around our climate change and risk adaptation plan, together with a whole lot of other strategies that we've been presenting to you over some months now, are a suite of actions in all of those documents that will then feed through in a logical and ordered way into the four-year delivery program and the operational plan and budget, at which point we will then, as a group, Council will then need to make decisions around what funding it allocates to those particular actions at that particular point in time.

Thank you. I don't really have a problem with either the motion or the amendment, given that clearly there's another decision point with this that's all going to come out to be discussed.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone wish to speak on the amendment? Councillor Kotlash. Oh,

Thank you, Madam Mayor. No, I'll speak against the amendment. I really can't see that there's any problem in flagging for this to be considered in the budgeting process. The budgeting process is very complex, and I think it's good that we're mindful that this needs to be funded, and we need to always be conscious of that. And I can't see, as Councillor Conolly has said, there's mechanisms to do that. So I think that, you know, I can't agree with the amendment. I think it's fine to have a flag in there for funding in the next budgetary round. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll speak against the amendment also. I agree with what Councillor Cutler has just said, but I think that we really have to, we do have to flag these items. It's part of our role to put forward what we think may be a priority when it comes to funding. But of course, the budget process is quite complex and in the end, we make the decisions. So if people are opposed to having that funding in there, then they will vote against it. But I think that the hearing from Mr. Snedden and the issues he raised, as well as what we all know from our discussions around the other strategies and policies that we're developing, it really does have to have an element of urgency attached to it.

And we do have to be seen to be starting to implement some of these things. While we build a big volume of strategies and policies, which we do need to assist us with applying for funding and so on, we also do need to be seen to be taking some sort of action around them. I do just want to draw attention, Madam Mayor, to the fact that we were sent a responses and a submission that would not be on the public record. And I just wondered, for the sake of clarity around the issue and some of the points that in fact the speaker also had raised, would staff like to just explain, because in that it gives a good explanation of how this draft strategy, the urban greening strategy, was actually an action from another strategy.

And I think that might clarify some things for people that don't quite understand the interaction between these various policies.

Thank you, Councillor. I'll refer that to the manager of strategic planning.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So the Environmental Sustainability Strategy is the umbrella document that Council has in terms of a number of work that we're undertaking. And one of the actions under that Environmental Sustainability Strategy, and indeed the Net Zero Strategy, is to undertake the urban greening strategy. So it's a cascading document, if you like. So in the Environmental Sustainability Strategy, we do refer to particularly the work of Werrisrock around urban heat and also, you know, other partnership opportunities. This particular document does have actions or as a principle is, you know, partnerships as part of that, and that's key to actually delivering on the outcomes.

Thank you. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm speaking against the amendment. Look, we're in the driver's seat as councillors. I know it doesn't feel like it very often, but we get to determine our strategies and how they're rolled out and how we apportion the budget. If we don't give staff an early signal to apportion that budget before that very lengthy budget process starts, we can't expect to get the things that we want front and centre without having to then go through the torturous process of unpicking what they've suggested if we don't like it and trying to rejig it. It's much easier if early in the piece, you know, and it's August, we're only just tripping into the next financial year, it's far easier if we say now we would like some money for this.

That way, if there is some money, we can use it, rather than trying to squeeze it out of the very dry stone like we usually do come March.

If we don't start this, we won't benefit from it. It's fine to have the strategy sitting there, but if we don't put some money behind it, it's not going to happen, or it will happen in tiny bits that don't make a difference. There's a beautiful quote that says, ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.’ We didn't do it 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree, according to this quote, is now. And that's all we're really asking. Make a move now. Put some money behind it. Let's get this started. Don't put it off. Don't put it onto the never-never, because it won't happen.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on the amendment? No one else. We'll put the amendment then. All those in favour of the amendment as per the board, please raise your hand. Those in favour? Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor McMahon. Those against? Councillor Reardon, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno. Absent is Deputy Mayor Councillor Calvert. I declare the amendment lost. The original motion with the point two becomes the motion. Was there anyone else wishing to speak on the motion that hasn't already? No right of reply, Councillor Wheeler. Not necessary.

Thank you very much. Those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Those against? You're not voting, Councillor Dogramaci. Abstaining, Councillor Dogramaci. Absent from the room is the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Calvert. I declare the motion carried.

The next

Item subject to public address is item 4.3.2, Macquarie Park Draft Plan of Management. There are two registered speakers. I call on the first registered speaker, David Crabb.

We're not usually supposed to table documents, if that's okay. Thank you very much.

Madam Mayor and councillors and all our club supporters, I was going to spend a bit of time telling you about our wonderful club and all our wonderful members and how much they contribute to our community, not just in our club, but at least four of them are current or past Rotarians, two past presidents, two Paul Harris Fellows, which means they have contributed greatly to our community. We're people who go out and get things done. We don't ask for things to be done for us. We do them. Anyway, I'm a positive person, and tonight I'm just going to be positive. I'm not going,

And I'll just cut out a lot of the things I was going to tell because it was going to take me a long time. So I'll just get to the why . How did we get to this point tonight when we should have had a clubhouse built three years ago? I'll just tell you, I'm an honest person, so I have no reason to lie or exaggerate about this. The truth is bad enough.

The DA was approved in August 2016. The grant was approved in May 2020. It took us three years of applications. That's why it

Took us to that point in time.

Sorry.

August of 2020, we began meetings with the council building department, and they were very positive. We continued fortnightly until we were advised that a plan of management was going to be done, and to put everything on hold until that was prepared. So December came along. Nothing had been done. We had another meeting with the council. We were given in writing that the anticipated completion date would be June 2021. July 2021, the correspondence from the council: Sorry for letting you down. I've been busy. We haven't even started yet.

Things aren't looking very good. I was getting a bit concerned . So the new timeline was seven more months. But because Christmas and New Year was in that, it might be extended. I was getting quite concerned by now. I contacted Robin Preston because it was a state government grant, and I thought we would lose it because we weren't meeting our timeframe. I also was on the sports council, so I contacted Sarah McMahon, Les Sheather, Paul Veigel, and I also got in touch with Paul Rogers because I said, I think I need some help to go and see the council and see what we can do. But it wasn't until March 2022 we had a meeting with the general manager, by which time we were expecting, once more, to have the plan of management completed.

Her first sentence was, This is not a priority of ours. We haven't started. Come back in nine months. We'll talk about it. I said, No, that's not going to happen. It's already been twice this has happened. And I said, We would have run out of time.

So she advised that she would get some more information, and get back to us. Two weeks later, she hadn't rung, so I called. A couple of days later she got back to me and just verbally said, I can't foresee any objections to this. Go ahead with your work. She did not put that in writing.

We could not get a construction certificate because the council has not given us landowners consent. And we can't get the construction certificate because it was $88,000. We don't have the money. The Office of Sport won't give us the money until we get landowners consent, which the council haven't given us. Because we haven't got the construction certificate, they won't let us go onto the site to do any works so that we can secure the development application.

It's just a very bad situation. I'm not a planning expert, but I think we've been deceived, and I have looked up the deceive

And it's mean you were given information, you're led to believe things which aren't true, and— Once , I think, could have been a mistake. Twice, but three times, I really can't believe it. Anyway, tonight I'm asking you to make a judgement on not what's been done, what hasn't been done, what's been said, what hasn't been said, but what's best for our community. And I think I can't see how our community is going to benefit by stopping this building going ahead. It's going to be a great benefit to a lot of people other than just our club.

That's it. Thank you very much, Mr Crabb. I'll just see if there's any councillors with questions. Councillor Sheather. Yep.

How much money was it?

$801,000, about $216, something like that. That was from the Office of Sport. Plus, we've been fundraising very hard for the 15 years I've been in the club, so we could put in a substantial commitment to convince the Office of Sport that we were serious about this. And at no point did we ever ask the council for one cent. All we have asked from them was permission to build the building.

Just

Your microphone, please.

You've been trying to seek advice, and I think Mr Rogers is going to probably speak on that as well, but you indicated to me that you'd been seeking legal advice. Has that been fruitful?

I believe it has been, because the advice we got from the council is that we, without a construction certificate, we were allowed to do no works at all on the site. So we've started spending all that hard-earned money on paying a lawyer and a barrister, and believe me, they're chewing through that money faster than a bunting sausage sandwich, because that's where we're going to be spending the next few years just to pay them. But they have told us, they gave us a list of things that we are allowed to do on the site, and we have completed some of those in the last week. We just didn't have time to do all of them, and we didn't want to upset the council too much by doing some of the others. But it was certainly contradictory, and I did ask the council to put it in writing, so it wasn't verbal information, and they specifically said we can do nothing on that site, which according to my legal advice was untrue.

And why didn't you go ahead with the CC?

As I said, we didn't have close to $90,000 to

Do it because we didn't have the landowners consent. Still, after seven years, the council said they asked for it from Crown Lands seven years ago, still don't have it.

And in seven days' time, our grant runs out, and all they're asking for is the landowners consent, and the council still hasn't given it to us after seven years.

And it was going to be, yeah, so it's one of those things, we can't get the construction certificate because we can't pay for it, because we can't get the money because we haven't got the approval from the council.

Thank you. Any further questions? Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Neil.

You just answered one of the questions I had, which was you were intending to use the grant money to get the construction certificate.

Yes, and it has gone up greatly in the three years.

Yep Okay. The other thing was, what is your actual arrangement with the council to have the facility there at the moment? Do you have a lease with council, or—

We don't have a lease yet, no But that will be something that will be determined in

The future. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Thanks. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Crabb.

Is that all?

That's all.

I've got lots more answers.

No, that's all. Thank you very much Appreciate that. I'll now call on the next registered public speaker, Mr. Paul Rogers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, councillors. It's good to be back, 32 years since I was in this place last. Good to be back. Some things have changed, but not much. But it's good to be back, and it's good to be part of a public forum. I'd like to address three aspects in my time. The first is a technical one. Tracy Easterbrook from council rang me a couple of times this afternoon and asked for verification, and I've got a letter here from Dragon Boats New South Wales confirming my attendance in relation to supporting the paddlers. So I'd like to tender that as requested by council.

There's

A copy there for each of the councillors. The other two aspects I'd like to address is the first, in my role as an official from Dragon Boats New South Wales, I'm an accredited official, level two, three, I think I'm at, and I'll be more than happy in a moment to talk about the second part of why I am here so that I can take this very hot jacket off. Dragon boating has an interesting cultural background. It started in China some two, two and a half thousand years ago. There was a love affair, there was a broken heart, and there was obviously a need to paddle up and down the Yangtze in terms of the justification of that cultural matter some two and a half thousand years ago. It's been in Australia now for about 25 years.

I've been paddling over 10 years. There's three and a half thousand paddlers in New South Wales. There are some 60 clubs in New South Wales, and it's a fast-growing sport, and there is hopes that one day it might end up in the Olympics. I, as an official, the closest paddling here in the Hawkesbury is down at the Regatta Centre at Penrith, and there's a club down there called Pen Dragons, which I was a member of some years ago. I now paddle out at Lithgow at Lake Wallace. Paddling is fast, fun and furious, and it needs a community to engage with it. It involves both a recognised international accredited association right down to individual clubs. And Dragon Boats New South Wales, as you'll see in that letter, if it's going around to councillors, you'll see that Dragon Boats New South Wales is supporting of the Windsor Paddle Boat Sports Club in terms of its endeavour to have a clubhouse, with the opportunity of Dragon Boats New South Wales having a presence.

So I can anticipate more likely, as the local representative, that we would form a paddle club, Dragon Boat Club here in the Hawkesbury. A Dragon Boat is some 12 metres long, so roughly probably where the Mayor to the Deputy Mayor in distance, and you can have a small one with 10 paddlers, and you can have a larger boat with 20 paddlers. And the purpose of coming here to the Hawkesbury would be not only to attract paddlers as such, but also apply the issues of inclusiveness, diversity and equity. And now I want to leave my official role behind and go to the fun part of paddling. So with your indulgence, if I may just go down to one of my paddle shirts.

This is the paddle shirt that I feel most privileged and honoured to be able to wear, because five years ago my wife and I paddled in Florence, part of the Australian contingent of paddlers. That's what a dragon boat paddle looks like. And if I may, with your indulgence, pass that around because it actually acknowledges that I was part of the Australian team that went over to Florence as part of the Dragon Bests team. So, may I?

I might have to say no because I didn't allow Mr Crabb to pass something around.

All right, well you can see it and have a look at it later if you wish to. The purpose of me wearing this now is to say to you, dragon boating is a fun sport, and there's an opportunity not just only to go get your feet wet, but you can actually participate and engage in a diverse group of individuals who paddle both locally and internationally. And paddling overseas with a group of Australians—there was 400 Australian men and women. It was a privilege to be part of the Australian contingent. We would have a dragon boat club here in the Hawkesbury. Dragon Boats New South Wales has indicated in that correspondence the provision of two boats, indicated the provision of paddles, has indicated the provision of ancillary items like life jackets, etc.

Part of some of the consideration is, is this proposal a sham? It's not a sham from the Dragon Boats New South Wales perspective. Windsor Paddlesports is a genuine organisation with genuine members, many of them present here tonight. Dragon Boats New South Wales acknowledges that organisation and wants to be a part of that organisation by bringing dragon boating to the Hawkesbury. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr Rogers. Are there any questions, councillors? Councillors and Progno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Mr Rogers, for coming and stirring us with the virtues of dragon boating. I think it really would adorn our river to have a sport like that on our own waterway. I'd like to invite you to change hats, knowing that you are also a man with some subject matter expertise in planning matters, and I invite you to speak in general terms about what represents commencement of a work, because I suspect that may become very germane to our debate at the conclusion of the public speakers.

Yes, yes, thank you, Councillor. I make it point clear that although being a lawyer for over 45 years, I am not legally representing Dragon Boats New South Wales. I am not representing the Windsor Watersports. So I happen to be simply here as a dragon boat... Member of DBNSW, but also legally qualified. And I also, as most of you would know, I'm also a community representative of the Hawkesbury Planning Panel. And I've indicated in correspondence, I think to the general manager previously, that should this matter actually come before Council and referred to the Planning Panel, I'd recuse myself from attending on that panel for purposes of potential conflicts of interest. The issue, quite squarely, is this: as indicated by the President of Paddle Sports, there is history in this matter, not necessarily the dealings with the plan of management, but dealing with the paddle boat and the organisation and the grant and Council's role.

I'm not revisiting that. I want to look forward. By taking it forward, we have to look at what works have been done. Not a lot, but what has been done, there's been a peg-out. The law has effectively changed, and I gave a commentary in a correspondence to the general manager earlier this year that stated, It's my personal and professional view that the peg-out at the property site at Macquarie Park would, on the face of it, be sufficient commencement of works to enable a certificate of commencement for the DA.

The law has changed. Back in 2020,

Justice Tobias indicated effectively there has to be a genuine engagement of the works and not a sham. And that's why I made the earlier comment that this proposal to do the works, it's not a sham. This is a genuine organisation with funding, with a desire. The purpose that I raise is one can either read this down or you can read it up. Simply put, it's either a cup half full or a cup half empty. As a community representative, as somebody who's been in this chamber as a community representative, and I believe all of you as community representatives would identify with the cup half full approach. That approach means that you need to have a generous heart, a brave heart on occasions, and embrace the reality that this needs to be read up, that there needs to be an acknowledgement that there's been sufficient work.

Basic, a peg out, to be interpreted that the works have started. This organisation needs funding. It needs support. It needs your encouragement. If I may respond by saying, if I still wear my shirt here, if I may, Councillor, if I could ask you, all thinking about the opportunity, if you join me in a paddle boat, where would we go paddling at the moment? You are the leaders of the Hawkesbury. The best place that I could take you to go paddling at the moment is in Penrith.

Councillors, leaders of the Hawkesbury, paddling in Penrith. I'd like to be taking you down to our river, not far from here, in the Hawkesbury. It's a matter for your choice as to whether you see the opportunity to engage by way of supporting the community and seeing the cup half full and seeing that the works that have been undertaken, broadly speaking, read up, not read down. The law is not settled in this area.

Thank you. I'll see if there's any further questions. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr Rogers. I'm just wondering, I'm fully supportive of the paddle boat club, of course, having a clubhouse. I'm just trying to get the relevance of the dragon boating. Is it that we don't have it here, the sole reason is because there's not a clubhouse? Is that what you're saying?

Yes, yes. Effectively, we want to be here, but because of the size of the boat, it's not something you just put on the back of a trailer and take it home, and the amount of gear that's involved. It does need support and training. There's a lot of occupational health and safety-type considerations in terms of training, so there needs to be a space for it. Okay. Thank you.

No further questions? Thank you, Mr Rogers, appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I have a form of words.

Yes, Councillor Zamprogno.

I've communicated to staff a form of words. I'd like to have it up on the screen and then seek a seconder.

If councillors have read that, can I have a seconder please? Councillor Wheeler. Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you. Look, I want to start by emphasising that I don't want to take away from the fact that the business at hand is the adoption of a plan of management for all of Macquarie Park. And I'll start by mentioning that, with the exception of what we're about to talk about, I'd like to say that this plan of management is a good effort to clarify our goals for what's quite a historic park of our district, the first grant being made in 1795. And it is a complex task when you've got land that has both council and Crown components, with multiple stakeholders and sensitivities. But my aim in moving this form of words, which is basically the recommendation with two extra points, is to keep alive, if we can, the paddlesports grant and the facility that it will fund.

In July 2020, as you've heard, I was privileged to stand with our State Member Robin Preston, along with Neil Crabb, Gary Baldry, representatives of the Dragon, Boating and Pink Fins communities, as the grant was announced for the construction of a new clubhouse. Mayor Calvert appeared in the photo extolling the wonderful facility that would eventuate. And as we've heard, the grant was successful precisely because it brought together so many different groups and yielded so many social goods, not just for sport, but for mental health and in community support.

It also offers a neat answer to the tortured debate that we've had in this chamber over the last six months about water safety in Macquarie Park. If it's unsafe to swim at that location, but we don't want to abandon the site, this offers a facility that promotes safer forms of water activity using vessels and flotation aids. So I think it's a win there as well. But this grant does typify the kind of conundrum that Council frequently faces, where a worthy community group secures a grant from another tier of government without fully engaging Council as the relevant landowner first. Look at the debacle that the grant for a new men's shed devolved into. We have to acknowledge here in this chamber that community groups are not developers and they are not planning experts.

My view and the community's expectation is that Council has an obligation to assist community groups in any way they can to ensure that the goals of a grant can be delivered. The community will not tolerate great facilities like this slipping through our fingers because of our inaction or buck passing. Now, much seems to hinge on whether commencement has occurred, which is why I asked Mr Rogers for his opinion. I've been shown correspondence from Council officers stating plainly that the applicant couldn't do much on the site before a construction certificate was issued, but what they could do was survey works, pegging out the site and conduct soil testing. So that's what they did. And on the 3rd of May 2022, our State Member did not mince her words when she made a Facebook post when she attended an event at the proposed site with Mayor Conolly present, appearing beside her in the photo, saying, Finally, shovels in the ground for the Windsor Paddle Sports Club, with the plan of management completed and surveyors on site at the commencement of construction.

Of this new facility. Certainly, in her estimation, commencement had occurred.

I'm told that the DA for this project literally expires tomorrow. I don't think that grant applicants should be put— grant applicants should not be put into a situation where they can't engage in activities that would lock in the grant funding by commencing, and then can't afford those activities that would allow the money to flow, and then find that council wants to argue with them about what constitutes commencement, when I come in here believing that nobody wants this to fall over. I'm told that the club were told that they should wait for the plan of management for Macquarie Park. Here it is, one day before the relevant deadline. The plan of management says that stakeholders were adequately consulted.

Clearly that wasn't the case, because we are now in danger of losing this, and I don't think that's good enough. And worse, we're in an environment where a new state Labor government are prowling, seeking excuses to cancel grants promised by the previous coalition government. I'm hopeful that what we can resolve tonight will keep this alive, and I'm inviting other views. But I want to acknowledge that the form of words here is less than I'd like, but I've received advice from council staff that we cannot legislate by fiat that commencement has occurred, and we cannot legislate by fiat to grant an extension to the DA, and we're left with this. But I'd like to perhaps end by asking a question of management about what the process is to conclusively declare whether commencement has occurred.

Thank you, Councillor. I'll refer that to the General Manager. Thank you, through you, Madam Mayor

At

I guess cutting through all of the history on it, the point where we're at at the moment, and that we have expressed to the Paddle Sports Club, is that on our preliminary legal opinion, that we would have some concerns about whether the fact that the works had commenced because of a series of precursor conditions on the relevant development consent that did require a construction certificate to be issued, but have on a couple of occasions now invited them to provide a legal opinion on that, and that in all likelihood that we would rely on that in good faith.

Through you, Madam Mayor, permit me to press you on that point. I think what Mr. Rogers says is the best lens through which we can look at this. We want this to happen, but this is an absolutely critical question because we would have to suspect that if the DA lapses, even if we provided some assistance in the lodgement of a new DA, that DA may need to be assessed under new and more stringent rules, which means that this is dead in the water, no pun intended. So again, I'd like to know whether your concerns amount to a veto on declaring that commencement has occurred. I know we can't legislate this in the Chamber, but this is the crucial question.

General Manager.

I'm not sure I can add much more, Councillor. Literally, our advice said we invite you to obtain independent legal opinion for Council's consideration to confirm that the works proposed in accordance with that DA have physically commenced. Any legal opinion must note and comment on the terms of conditions 1 to 16 of the development consent, to include expressly acknowledging that a construction certificate authorising the commencement of the works has not been obtained. In the absence of the persuasive evidence and legal opinion to support that proposition that they had lawfully commenced, we are of the belief that it shall lapse on the 9th of August 2023. To your statement that would a new development application be dead in the water, it would be absolutely far too early to make that judgment.

We clearly have updated planning controls that were not in existence at the time of the 2015 development application, but that doesn't mean that that application wouldn't be considered on its merits. So I think it would be far too early to make that judgment.

Last question, and through you again, Madam Mayor, was there any sense of urgency on the part of council staff perceiving that this handsome grant for a worthy community facility was likely to be lost to us for want of this impasse?

General Manager, I think it's probably relevant in that respect to go back to how we found ourselves in this position to begin with, and the reality of that is that in 2013, Council actually developed a plan of management that included Macquarie Park, or a management of seven parks along the river. And that was followed through under the Local Government Act. The plan specifically allowed for the paddle sports canoe facility, as the idea had been around and in train at that particular point in time. What happened, the plan of management was referred to Crown Lands as part of that process, but didn't require a formal approval from Crown Lands at that particular point in time. That was 2013, and then the development application was lodged in 2015 and approved in August 2016.

What has really, and unfortunately, transpired in all of this was that a new Crown Lands Act 2016 came into force in 2018 that then required the consent of the Crown in order to be able to proceed through and have a plan of management that was endorsed by the Crown. And that's the situation that was sort of the defining moment at which point Council effectively needed to start again on the plan of management. The unfortunate regime that was implemented and imposed on councils at that particular point in time was that Council had to prepare plans of management for over 100 parcels of land and was given a princely sum of $50,000 in order to prepare 100 plans of management for all of its parks.

So bearing in mind Council's resourcing, but effectively amounted to one officer, two days a week, there was a series of prioritisations that happened, you know, back at that particular point in time, 2020, 2021, where another suite of other plans of management were presented to Council that were at the time deemed to be of a greater priority. And then it wasn't really until about the middle of 2020—there was some work done on 2021 on the Macquarie Park plan of management— and then it wasn't until March of 2022, so it's probably a lag there of around nine months, where we sort of brought it to a head and engaged some consultants on board to come and actually push through and finalise it. From that point on, I'm reasonably comfortable that all of those timeframes...

are perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, preparing plans of management is a costly and time-consuming process, as councillors are well aware, and this is unfortunately just the rigour that we have to go through on these types of processes.

Thank you, councillor. Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to just start by saying that in

Paul's address to us, he mentioned the word sham a few times, and I'd just like to say I've never ever thought that this proposal was anywhere near a sham. So just to let you know that I think what we have to figure out here is how to get on with the planning, not the essence of the project, which I think is fabulous. So I just wanted to make that public statement. I think what you're doing is great. What we have to get to is how we do it. So my question for management is , I'll backtrack a bit. I appreciate that Councillor Zamprogno has put this amendment about relodging a DA. My question to management is, if by tomorrow the applicants can produce the legal opinion that work has commenced, would that be sufficient to not require a new DA? General Manager.

Yes, but it doesn't even need to come in tomorrow. So it can come in after the fact. If the consent has not lapsed, the consent has not lapsed. What we need is the legal opinion to just provide us with that level of expertise to give us that advice. So it can happen well after tomorrow.

Okay. What happens tomorrow? Why are we talking about a deadline of tomorrow?

Sorry, I'm— Okay. So in the event, for example, that the— so the consent is due to lapse tomorrow. There seems to be broad agreement that the 9th of August is the date on which the development consent would lapse. Were the— if we have sufficient, as I said, if we have sufficient evidence and legal opinion provided to Council that we can rely on that says that works have commenced, then that date becomes irrelevant. The date is only of relevance, for example, if the club were to go and obtain a construction certificate and then commence those works. That's really the only relevance of the date at this point. If we are at a point after tomorrow where there is not sufficient evidence and Council remains unconvinced that the consent has been secured, then a new development application will need to be lodged.

So in the event we have a legal opinion that says, and the one that Council is satisfied with, point two would become redundant.

Okay, that's what I— thank you. That's what I needed to know . So it sounds like if the Paddleboat Club has retained legal counsel, that they probably have

That information now. This is a bit tricky. I don't want to leave this just up in the air. I want us to sort this out. Can we extend— we can't extend the terms of the consent? No.

Okay. Okay. If I may, the wording of that, it does say, should it be deemed necessary. So it's only if we need it. Okay. My second question

Is, is there anything in this plan of management that we're hopefully going to adopt tonight, is there anything that will make this process of building the clubhouse harder? And I just skimmed the pages on the land ownership that we questioned before. Will the adoption of this impact on this DA in any way? General Manager.

Only to legally enable it.

Yeah, okay. Sorry, I just want to get this moving, and I don't want there to be any confusion, anybody in this room. So

Then we need to change point two.

I mean, I'm happy to agree to that, but if we're pre-empting a thing in the future, maybe we can change it to say, if we don't get that legal advice, then we... Well , does it?

Should it deem to have lapsed. Should it lapse? I

Think the word should is the key word. Okay. Okay, thank you. Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. Just a question. Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm just trying to follow a little bit. So there was a DA, there was a consent issued. Why would council then not issue landholder's consent? General Manager. We're not actually the landholder. The Crown is. So I'm just confused. So what's the relationship between the plan of management and the consent?

Okay, this is getting complicated. Effectively, you need both. So you can't undertake works on Crown land unless there is a— and Crown land will not consent to you undertaking works on Crown land unless there is a plan of management in place. Okay That they have approved.

Right. Even though the consent was issued before that requirement existed. That's correct. Okay. Sorry, I just wasn't suggesting that bit. Obviously I'll— Yeah. When

They're going to approve it. Yeah

I'll support the motion then on that basis.

Thank you, Councillor Veigel.

Yeah, thanks. Through you, Madam Mayor, just a question. Is there a risk of losing the grant? Absolutely. As of tomorrow ? Yeah . Or the possible of getting an extension?

I'm probably not the best officer, best place to advise that. I think what the last correspondence I saw from the Office of Sport was that they were chasing owner's consent and a program for the delivery. We unfortunately are not the body who can issue that landowner's consent. We have, even as late as—we sent something off to them well over a month ago, six weeks ago, asking for that. They've come back and wanting clarification on a few matters at Crown Lands. So unfortunately we're still in a little bit of a to and fro. But I would like to think that with the landowner's consent and a program for work, that we'll be able to secure that funding. No,

Thank you. I too support Councillor ... motion on points one, two and three, and I thank him for it. I've been aware of the clubhouse being on the paper and planning for a long, long time. It's one of those infrastructure jobs that's critically important to the community.

So that's my position on it. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I speak in support of the motion. Just a question first. With regard, what is the current status of extension of development application timing? Has there been anything around extenuating circumstances, for example, COVID or flood, or in fact punishment by state governments by giving us things to do such as plan of management?

General Manager. Through you, Madam Mayor. So this consent would have actually lapsed two years ago were it not for COVID. So there were special provisions that the New South Wales Government enacted at the time that extended the life of development consents in New South Wales in light of the fact that really the building industry was at a bit of a stagnation point during COVID. So they extended the life of those consents, and this has benefited from that extension. But this is the drop-dead date I think we're all in agreement on.

Thank you for that. First of all, to speak, as Councillor Sam Bronio said, aside from the issue that's emerged for the club , the plan of management is something that we welcome for that specific piece of land. The management of that park, which is one of our most central parks, I guess, in terms of being near, you know, near the river and near Windsor, is really overdue. I think it's just become incredibly unfortunate that the requirement to have these plans of management have infringed so much upon our community and the community groups who have sought to have facilities in Crown land areas. It's most unfortunate. However, I think that the wording in this particular motion will assist in trying to get around what is a very difficult situation.

I'm a little bit bordering on uncomfortable with how closely we have delved into a planning decision in this regard, because I know we do not have planning powers, but I think it's covered by the way it's worded there. It hopefully can be sorted so that this club can proceed and, as Mr Rogers said, can expand to include even more users of our river, which is, of course, one of our central aims in many of our plans that we put forward, that the river being our focal point is what we want to have activities centred around. So I think that we're all hopeful that we have some sort of a positive outcome from that. I'm sure that in terms of extending the funding, there would be enough. There would be enough .

I don't know, evidence, I guess, to say that it's got the value and should be and has been plagued by a series, it would say from what Mr Crabb outlined, a series of delays beyond their control, which of course there is some onus on people who are carrying out a DA to get on and do it. But from his timeframe, there were significant impediments to them being able to do that. So I think that I just do find it unfortunate that we have to have community groups who feel that they have been thwarted in this way from proceeding with getting on with their facilities. But I'm hopeful it will be resolved, and I'm hopeful that once the plan of management, not only for Macquarie Park, but for when the plans of management for all of our parks that we're required to do, once they're in place, that we have a smoother transition into enabling and assisting our community to be able to enjoy those areas of land.

And I do think, you know, I really strongly want to say that I do think it's a very punitive measure of a state government to impose on local government to put not only the imposition of having to prepare a hundred plans of management, but the cost of doing that and the time that it takes, the resources it uses, without significant assistance from the state government. Thank you

Councillor Sheather

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I've got a couple of questions, first in relation to the document.

Mr Crabb was going to pass some photos around. It's on page 35 if anyone wants to have a look. It's a question for the staff. The page is not numbered. But it's 3.5.3. It's part of the local environmental plan, and it's the second page over, and it reads, Council consider that the proposed use of the park for informal. Recreation use, environmental protection that are compatible with the flood affected of the land, including the flood hazard classification.

The word informal,

I'm guessing that restricts formal.

Does it?

Thank you, Councillor. I'll refer that to Director of City Planning.

Thank you, through you, Madam Mayor. And again, apologies for the lack of page numbers. We'll ensure that's rectified before it's published. If under section 3.3.2, so it's a couple back, there's a subject categorisation . There's provisions underneath that which actually make provisions for recreational use, so public recreation, and it's actually indicated here on the legend where there's the capacity for sports ground, and that could include formal sports grounds in future.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. I'll just go further. On Table 27, it indicates, along what the planner just indicated, active and passive recreation, including children's playground, walking, running, jogging, cycling and informal games. Again, informal games. And the reason I ask that, not only is the paddle club a formal operation, but there's land there that could be used for sporting fields, which again would be formal.

And through this document, while it relates to active and passive, all the comments relate to very much passive active.

That's a question, Councillor, yes? It is. Okay. I'll just confirm who's answering that.

Director of City Planning. Sorry.

I'll refer to the Manager Strategic Planning.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I guess, you know, the key part of this is, as the Director's highlighted before, it's a categorisation which does actually allow for various uses, including parks, sports grounds, general community use, which includes a number of active and passive type uses. So the categorisation itself, I guess, is the key to this particular issue. Mr

Microphone, Councillor.

So, in reading what's written, if I was interpreting it , without jumping all through the LEP, I might not be aware of that. There's another bit in it about the recategorisation of some of the land from RU2. It's recommended in the document, but it's not part of the recommendation in the business paper, even though it refers to the adoption or support of. What's the reason for the rezoning?

Thank you, Councillor.

Can you repeat where you're referring to, please?

I've got to find the page. It's rezoning from RU1 to RU2, I think it is. 3.5.3.

If I can answer that, it's recommending that the RU2 land, which is the bit along the river, be rezoned as RE1, to recreation, to permit full use of the land as intended for public recreation. So you've got a zoning misnomerly is what that's suggesting, Councillor. If I can probably just advise, we're diving probably too deep down a rabbit hole when the zoning will permit recreation. The master plan has got it allocated as sportsground, and the categorisation has indicated that it would be suitable for active recreation. I probably think that's as far as you would need to go on that.

Right. Yeah. So it just puts the whole park under one zone. That's what it amounts to.

Correct.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty hard to place any sport apart from the canoe club in what is RU2 now. Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Kotlash.

Madam Mayor, there were questions. Sorry,

Yes. No, continue, Councillor.

Madam Mayor, the frustration from the paddle club is not yesterday or the day before, yesterday or the year before. It's years before. The general manager indicated we looked at other management plans, four of them actually. None of them, not one of them, had a community benefit of $800,000.

And the issue is that— And I'm sure there'll be strong support to chase some advice that may be offered to Council to perhaps clarify a situation that is frustrating for everybody. No one wants to lose it. But we can sit around here and go home, and there's some people sitting over there in blue are going to go home and cry.

That's the difference. But in saying that, and I say that because the extension is for the funds that have been asked for in the past and granted.

But to get a CC, we're looking $80,000 plus, and it's going to take to Christmas time. Well, it's a bit hard to backdate that to tomorrow. Well, you can't backdate it to tomorrow. If it's not available, that's the end of it. And it's also the end of the grant. So we get in here, we talk about projects and funding and all the rest of it. It's community money, and we're mindful of that. This is community money from another source that's going to a club. There hasn't been $800,000, apart from probably the race club out there, that's been given to any organisation, certainly in sport, in this city. So it's a great loss, and it's a loss that won't happen again.

When I say won't happen again, the grant won't happen again. A DA, under what I suspect is coming from the State Government in relation to issues with flooding across floodplains of the state, won't allow the sort of thing that we require to have for the paddle boats in Macquarie Park. So I would suspect very strongly that a DA would not get approved. And so the whole lot falls over. And as Mr Rogers, and I recognise a former colleague, indicated, since he was a councillor, him and I had had discussions about the Dragon boats here in the Hawkesbury, but you can't have them in Governor Philip Park. There's a boat ramp there and the like. It's impractical. The only place is upstream of the bridge.

They're worked in conjunction with the paddle club. It's an opportunity that again we won't get if all this falls over. So, Madam Mayor, I just hope that we can get the information that's required to allow a very positive decision to be made. And I would hope that where we've got issues like this in the future, and I know we've got a new planner, that these sort of things won't be stretched out or certainly dealt with in a timely manner. Because what's happened is not acceptable, and there's no finger-pointing at an individual or the like. It's a process that's let the community down, and we're part of that. And I wouldn't like to see it happen again.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Kotlash, you have spoken. Did you have questions? I do.

Thank you. Sorry to harp on point two, but I'd like to know what assistance Council can give if the paddle club don't have to have a new DA.

Point two just says we'll assist the grant applications in the re-lodgement of a new DA should it be deemed to have lapsed. If it doesn't lapse, what can we do? What can Council do to assist the grant applicants to get this going?

Thank you, Councillor. Refer that to the General Manager. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

We're in your hands, Council.

The reality is, if the consent hasn't lapsed, the club and our parks planners and assets planners will need to work very closely around the delivery component of it, certainly through the build, and we will continue to provide support through that process. But short of offering the money, I'm not sure what else you had in mind, Councillor. I

Didn't have anything in mind. It's just that we're going to approve this plan of management, and if the DA is lapsed, we'll waive the fees, but I just want to know— I understand that this process is very complicated and the onus is on the applicants to do what they need to do. I just wondered whether there was something that Council could do, because this has been such a long time and because it's caused such angst, whether, you know, wrongly or rightly. I just want to see this happen, and I just wanted to ask that question in case there was something that we could do, could assist in some way. But thank you. I'll leave it at that.

Thanks, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm speaking in support of the motion, and I will spend a little bit of time talking about the boathouse firstly, and then I want to talk about the broader plan of management, because I think that that is also worthy of discussion. Could Council provide, as part of this assisting the grant applicants — that's quite an open-ended thing, and perhaps deliberately so — but could we at least provide the boat, the paddle club, with a letter for the granting body detailing the holdup? So the fact that we required landowner's consent, that the Crown Lands Act was part of the cause of this delay, certainly our resourcing constraints around the development of the plan of management, and also the impacts of floods and COVID on that site and the grant applicant's capacity. Is that something that Council can undertake to do?

General Manager. Quite possibly, Councillor. What I'd like to see us do is to land point two in some sort of finality first, and then that would then dictate the nature of the third, of what content may be required in the third letter, because there may be very little, if any, advocacy around the grant extension required if we can crack on with the works.

Okay. So I think that the Paddleboat Club has heard loud and clear that the faster they get that legal advice to Council, the faster we can move. And it's certainly, I think, the intent of the Chamber to support that project going forward. The Crown Lands Act is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? I mean, we did flag with the coalition government in 2016 that this would be problematic, and that is the same piece of legislation that nearly sunk the St Albans Common. I mean, it's not been without its problems, and it has been further exacerbated by changes to the legislation that completely removed our capacity to determine DAs in this Chamber. So, and here we are, you know, and we've been told that we can't legislate.

Well, we're not the legislature. We don't get to legislate anything, actually. But here we sit with our hands completely tied, with a community group begging us to do something. So thanks very much to the previous state government for the little debacle that we find ourselves in. I want to talk about the plan of management now. This is a really complex site, and I think what we've achieved in the plan of management is a reasonable balance. We have to be very careful not to sterilise these places. We also need to be careful not to remove public passive recreation from usable areas of the riverfront, because they are very limited. So we have to make sure that active uses like canoeing, perhaps dragon boating.

I rather fancy myself on a dragon boat now that we've heard all about it. I was a dedicated canoer in my teenage years on the Parramatta River at Greenwich, facilitated by a community boat club, which allowed kids like me who couldn't afford canoes to get on the river and really enjoy that space. But we've also got all of these other needs around this site, you know, a serious need for revegetation, weed control and erosion prevention. We've got this incredibly special place that was a first contact site and is very meaningful to the Darug people. And if anybody has not gone to see Aunty Edna's sculpture, which is one of the most powerful depictions of that first contact that I think has been made, please go and have a look at it.

It's incredibly striking in its simplicity. We've had all these flood impacts on this site, and then we've got all the issues around swimming, which we are very keen to discourage because it simply isn't safe and Council will never have the resources to make it safe. It's a very popular site. It's very heavily used, and that then puts a whole lot of management expectations onto Council, and quite reasonably so. This is one of our key parks. We have to make sure that it's well cared for. We also have to make sure, though, that it's well used, not locked up, but not overused either. And I'm hoping that the plan of management will get us to that point. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the item? No, right of reply, Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I hope that that was fruitful. Can I just state, as the mover of this, my intent for point 3 is, as Councillor Wheeler suggested, so the kind of assistance that I would expect Council to provide includes a letter explaining to the grant authority. Can I just ask, by the way, what the deadline on the grant is, not the deadline on the DA, but when the grant grants out?

We're just finding that for you

We'll have to take it on notice, sorry. We'll get that emailed out.

All right then. I was curious, and a related question, and we hear this often from community groups. They get a sum of money, and then there's some kind of enabling action that's required that costs money that they don't have. And if it costs, you know, a five-figure sum to get a construction certificate, that's on the same order. Can I ask what action effectively unlocks the money and allows a claim on an instalment of the grant money itself? Is it the relevant landowner's consent? Is it commencement of the works? Is it the approval of a DA? I'm wondering why the group can't tap the grant money for these purposes.

Thank you, Councillor. General Manager.

I don't have the details on that, Councillor, because that's firstly it's not our grant; it's a grant to the club. And second of all, each grant program typically will vary on that. So, for example, some may, on execution of a funding deed, provide some sort of an upfront payment, maybe say 20%, something like that. There might be staged payments. Other grant funds say, Nope, you're on your own, and then you claim it back at the end. It kind of varies.

All right then. Look, I'll keep my right of reply very brief. This has been a lamentable situation, and I hear the distress of the paddle boat community and the other partners that they brought on board to enable this grant in the first place. When they say that their interactions with council have not been exemplary , and I'm not pointing the finger, but I'm saying we have to learn from this experience because this isn't the first time that a community group Got a sum of money from another tier of government, and then matters were grossly complicated because of their subsequent interactions with council. I accept the arguments that have been put to us this evening concerning, you know, the difficulties of obtaining Crowner landowners consent, and I'm hopeful that part of what will happen moving forward should point two not be needed, that the relevant legal advice flows and that council will spare no effort to badger the Crown Lands people for the relevant landowners consent.

Because if the money's come from the state government and an entity of the state government is standing in the way of something crucial, then, you know, we have to go into bat. For community groups that have no specific expertise in planning law, we have to stand in the gap. So I recognise that the items that are in the motion are weak. They're as weak as water, but it's all we can do under the circumstances. But the discussion, I think, has been fruitful in providing direction to the community group about what they need to do to keep this alive. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. The motion is on the board. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Willer, Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor McVarn. Councillor Calvert is absent from the vote. I declare the item carried.

And now that the item with the registered speaker is over, I will acknowledge Paul Rogers as a former councillor. Thank you for your attendance tonight. Thank you very much. We now move on to item 4.2.1, Local Government New South Wales Annual Conference. Fine . Do I have someone to move that way, please? I'll move that, Madam Mayor. Councillor Lines .

Yes, correct. We'll do that one after this item. I'll move that. 4.2.1. Thank you, Councillor Lines-Buckett. Do I have a seconder? Thank you, Councillor Veigel. Anyone wishing to speak on the recommendation? Oh, sorry, Councillor

Lines-Buckett, over to you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll just speak briefly on it. I assume we make the decisions about who's nominating once we've passed it. I think this is a really important conference. I just had a question first around the cost of it. Is the $2,000, is that just the registration? Because it's on in Sydney, I think, so it wouldn't be. So that's the actual registration . Okay. It's incredibly expensive for such a conference. Does it have, like, just a daily attendance? Is there any difference in cost, or is there just...

I'm not sure we've got that information.

Give me a couple of

Minutes,

I'll have a look.

Yeah, that'll be good. I do think, however, having said that, I do think it's very valuable that we have both the motion submitted and delegates present, both for the voting purposes around the election of the board, but specifically to have people to advocate for what we may raise in that conference.

Can I just interrupt and say I can't hear because of that? Oh, sorry. Yes, sorry

Councillor Lines-Buckett. Another councillor is holding a conference in the foyer, which I find unprofessional, given we are still... Someone's

Taking their clothes...

Your microphone's on.

Sorry, I just couldn't hear you.

Yeah, no, we're just pulling that councillor back in now so we can continue with the meeting.

Oh, so it's all happening tonight

The general manager has asked me whether the noise is okay to proceed. That's

All right

I think we need to continue. I will ask the councillors in the foyer if they can please come back into the room so we can continue debate on the next item, if they can hear me.

Moving it outside. Well, there you go. Wonders never cease. Councillor Lyons-Buckett,

I'll ask you to proceed, please. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Councillor Kotlash, that's okay. I was just saying I think it's a valuable conference that we attend, both to have delegates for the board elections, but mainly to get the benefit of the networking opportunities and to put forward our case for any of the motions that we will have in. In a way, it's good that it's local. I thought that would have kept the costs down somewhat. I mean, if we have five councillors go, that's quite hefty for something that's reasonably local. But anyway, nevertheless, I think we should proceed and have people present at that conference. Also, what I would say is that I do have a motion, which is one I put into the Australian Local Government around the funding and the potential of having a grant funding container component that could be put into account for future operations and uses.

And I would like to submit that on a local level, more specifically around the West Invest projects at this conference. I will submit that in time. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. The general manager just has an answer to your question regarding costs. Yeah,

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So early bird registration for members sits at $1,155, including GST. Standard registration is $1,485, with the conference dinner ticket an optional extra at $230. Okay.

Thank you. So slightly less. Thank you. When does early bird close?

28th of September. Oh,

Okay. So

That's much cheaper.

Thank you. Any other councillors wish to speak on the matter? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks

Madam Mayor. Look, this is the conference that's really important, I think, for as many of us as possible to attend. And we need to make sure that our attendees have speaking and voting rights when they go. We were in the unfortunate position at the ALGA conference, or the final day of the ALGA conference, which was the Council of Local Government. It hadn't been held for many years. We got there and found that three of us were not allowed to address the room because we were not registered delegates. We were not registered speaking delegates. So that meant that we had to sit there and listen to Blue Mountains talk about their flooding impacts, and we couldn't say a word ourselves. So, you know, if we go, we need to be empowered to speak when we get there.

This is the conference last year where we raised serious problems with roads funding in peri-urban areas, which then led to that grouping of peri-urban councilors able to successfully lobby for additional roads funding. That happened on the floor of the conference because I got up and had a go at the minister, who said that it wasn't his problem. And so we made it his problem. That's the importance of these conferences. They can be stuffy, they can be quite tedious, but it's where we get heard by additional levels of government and where we also find out the agenda that's being set by different levels of government. And I think with a changed government, it's particularly important that we're active in that space, particularly given our vulnerabilities around natural disasters.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor . I was just trying to find out, is this going to be held at Rose Hill again? Yeah . I would like to go, but I actually think accommodation is essential because the last time I went, it was to go to do the full conference. Coming home in traffic from Liverpool would be a nightmare. So I wouldn't mind having a bit of extra funding for accommodation, just probably for one night. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? No, right of reply,

Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Not necessary, Madam Mayor, unless Councillor Kotlash wanted to somehow add that, as given it's a resourcing issue around that. I would. I was just trying to find out

Whether that was the case for— Well, it's actually— sorry to

Interfere. It's not $2,000. If we register early, it was what, $1,155?

It's just one of those things that if you, you know, the networking and the dinner and everything, if you really want to make the most of it, and I really would like to go, and it was great last time. It's just a nightmare getting back. It's too long. Anyway, that's my

Off— Thank you, Councillor. If that was the will of the council, we'd probably have to— I'll just check with the general manager. Do we need to—

Travel, start and accommodation expense. Okay

So we'd have to, on point 2, Councillor Lyons-Buckett as the mover, where it says cost of $2,000, that can be changed to $1,155 plus travel and accommodation, if you're happy to add those words. Councillor Veigel as a seconder, are you happy with that?

Yes, Madam Mayor, I am. Thank you. Thank you. If required, travel and accommodation

If required. Yeah, lovely, and that leaves it open there. So happy with that. I'd write a reply, not necessary. Okay, thank you. All those in favour of the motion, please raise your hand. Those in favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zemprogno, Councillor McMahon. Those against? Councillor Dogramaci. Those absent from the room? Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. I declare the motion carried. Now for the informal part of that, we need to nominate up to five councillors to attend and be voting delegates. I would like to express an interest in going. Put your, I guess, raise your hand if you're interested.

One, two, three, four, five, six. We have six councillors. The motion says five.

That's

For voting delegates.

Oh, you are correct. That's for voting delegates. So we can— hold on, I'm just checking that we can send six. Yes, as considered by the general manager, yeah. So raise your hand again, sorry, if you are interested. We'll add your names down: Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zemprogno, and Councillor McMahon. Thank you, general manager. We

Will move to items on the block. Madam Mayor, we were meant to decide the five voting delegates. The voting delegates .

Well, I'm happy to not be a voting delegate if the other five are happy to be.

Yeah, that

Solves

That. And I think there's a clause in there that with your agreement we can change. I know in the past we've had an issue where someone wasn't at a session and— Yeah or at necessary. For the board. Yeah. But this is also for the local government board elections as well. So that can be— I'm therefore

Happy for those voting delegates to be Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Zemprogno. Thank you. Thank you, councillors. Items to be moved on block, item 4.4.1. Can I have someone move that way? Councillor Veigel, seconded Councillor Sheather. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. Sorry, Councillor Sheather, can you confirm if Councillor Conolly has left the meeting? Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Just wanted to confirm.

Okay. Thank you, Councillors. The next item is item 5.1.1, Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee. Can I have someone move, please? Madam Mayor, I'll move that. Thank you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. A seconder? Yes.

Councillor Veigel. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Madam Mayor, I just wanted to speak briefly to it as I'm the representative on it, and to just say that it's a really valuable tool for both councillors and ratepayers to really see the Council working through these various sections of their operation and how Council's implementing changes and actions around issues or suggestions that are raised in the audits. So the Audit Committee were very complimentary of how Council's management had outlined the various actions that would be taken, and these came from the audits that had happened around child protection and, of course, around fire safety, sewer and swimming pool inspections. I have to say it's a real insight into the complexities around how much has to be done in all these various internal operations, which, you know, we might not necessarily have anything to do with, nor should we in many cases.

But a lot of work goes into this side of it around the risk management and everything by all the departments in the Council, but also around the people who specifically look at that, and they do a really good job. And we're very lucky to have the input from the very professional people who are on the Audit Committee, who really look at it with fresh eyes and give us really good feedback about, you know, what's going on. You will note in the minutes that I had a question in general business about when and how an audit of ageing infrastructure would be carried out. A couple of councillors had raised that with me before the meeting, and this was because of any concern that the risk of large burdens coming from deteriorating infrastructure, that we avoid that wherever possible.

So the Chief Financial Officer pointed out that the ongoing condition— Auditing of assets are undertaken regularly, and the remaining useful lives is assessed each financial year. So that's an ongoing process which is done, and this informs Council so that works programs and upgrades and repairs, etcetera, can be factored in to reflect the urgency of anything that comes out of these audits. So I just wanted to point that out to the other councillors because it is an interesting process and it's, you know, there's a number. The audit program is there and looking at all the various things which are very interesting around fraud control, cybersecurity, the enterprise risk management, and various other things .

So the minutes are well worth a read to keep up to date with what the audits have found and what management actions have been put in place. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. A question, if I may, and it's obliquely related, so I'm hoping you'll allow it. It strikes me that these committees that come back to Council have a built-in reporting mechanism, and Councillor Kotlash and I have discussed this at length with regards to the Hawkesbury River County Council, in that we have a couple of committees that we have representatives on that don't come back to us, and I'm thinking of the two that I'm on specifically, so Peppercorn, which we have had a briefing on recently, and also the Hawkesbury River County Council, where they're not normally reported back to Council in any way, which means that unless councillors specifically go hunting, they aren't discussed.

And I guess the Sports Council is another one where they sit in the background. Could I have a question on notice about possible ways of reporting that back to Council to facilitate both awareness and discussion? Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the motion? Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, not necessary. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. I declare the item carried.

The next item is item 5.1.2. I'll just declare my interest. It's a less than significant non-pecuniary interest. I'll be staying in the room. The item discusses issues around Bede Polding College and two of my children attend that school. Can I have someone move Councillor Veigel, seconded Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Councillor Veigel, over to you.

No, what I read of the report, Madam Mayor, was excellent. I saw the amendments there to the crossing there, and I think it's well worth it, safety of the kids of Parramatta. There's obviously a growing school population, so dare I say I'll be supporting it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any councillors wishing to speak? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor, and— Just turn your mic off, sorry, Councillor Veigel. And

Thank you for allowing this to be pulled out. I realised I was late in getting this called up for discussion. My question relates to the item regarding the work around Bede Polding, and it's, I guess it's a question related to that precinct with both Bede Polding and Chisholm Primary School. One of the mums of one of the Chisholm kids has brought to my attention that there's an ongoing problem with pickup at Chisholm, where they've got this very, very well orchestrated pickup where you pick up your kid based on what class they're in at a very specific time, throw them into the car and get yourself out of the way. And so it sounds like the school has worked really hard to make things as easy as possible, but because they're all single-lane streets, and it does get congested in that precinct with both the schools there, and also apparently Chisholm is quite close to where the P-plate is from Bede Polding Park as well, and they are obviously anxious to be on their way, as everyone is when they're 17 and have first got their driver's licence.

And so there's this knock-on effect around there where parents are queuing around the block, and because we've got a lot of no stopping zones in that area, they're queuing— They're queuing in the road. Apparently the police have been there a couple of times and moved people on. All that does is just put them to the back of the queue, and so the queue just continues going around, which is completely ineffective. When we looked at that precinct, how much studying have we done of Chisholm, and is it possible? There's apparently some no stopping zones that have been in effect for a long time that are preventing parents from pulling over, and so they just keep circling, which means that the traffic just keeps going.

Could we have a look at that and maybe make some changes to our signage? Director of Infrastructure.

Thank you, Through you, Madam Mayor. We've been in contact with both the police and the school. I understand the matter that the police referred to was just an ad hoc patrol. There was no complaint received, and they observed some things they do from time to time on the road and took action as they deemed necessary. Similarly, we spoke to the principal, who held the view that there wasn't any overriding concern. I suppose it's to be expected that there's a period of congestion. My office's, or our office's, observation was that generally 15 minutes it lasted of an afternoon around that school pickup. From time to time, there's some decisions made by drivers which perhaps exacerbate that. But there aren't any no stopping zones which can be modified.

The no stopping zones present are required under the standards for the pedestrian crossing. There are some no parking zones, and they're by design that no parking, if it's enforced, you can stay with the car for a few minutes and within three metres of it, which actually facilitates a better pickup and a turnover of vehicles as opposed to free parking or unrestricted parking, which would see, or more likely to see, parents park from 20 minutes, half an hour prior to and not actually do anything to address the situation. Okay

Thank you, Councillors. Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Sheather.

I guess the question, Madam Mayor, and it relates to, well, it'll be back to the Traffic Committee, I imagine. With the event on the weekend, we had at Governor Philip Park, which was fabulous, the detour signs where you went across the bridge and come back just had detour on it. Could it be looked at that if there's an event detour, take the bridge to bridge, for instance, or council event, whatever it is, that that's just above the detour sign, so that because people coming up over the bridge were hesitant. They seen a detour sign, thinking just over the hill the road's going to be closed, and there was issues there. So if there was a detour proposed, like you could have event detour, so that the traffic going straight through knows that there's, I don't know, there might be some other answer, but I think it needs to be looked at.

A detour sign's meant you're detour , and that wasn't the case. It was a traffic management thing that there was a good reason for it, but it just didn't give a clear indication to a driver going past.

Thank you, Councillor. Did you wish to answer or take on notice?

Through you, Madam Mayor, the signs used in traffic control plans generally are dictated to the Australian Standard, which have predefined and prescribed typefaces, but we'll certainly have a look at things like variable message boards and see what other communications means we can employ, or event proponents can employ to communicate to event and non-event traffic.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just with regard to that, I did raise that in the traffic committee before, because especially around the confusion of people going right round the roundabout, whereas the people regularly using that roundabout, if they didn't realise they were going back over the bridge, they might not necessarily be stopping. But I don't know what happened with the signage on that particular day. I also just wanted to say that within that committee and around the schools, I did raise the issue that ask about how the process went when these sort of things are found, these studies are done, and they're fed into our works program, and we find funding or wait for funding until something is done.

I raise the issue that around the need of focus around school pickups, really, because they are so contentious in nearly every area, and to try and be on the front foot. We've got a lot of small schools in our area on roads where there's a growing population around them, and for example, when the Gross River Bridge is done, we will have feeder roads that are passing two schools, which currently both, well, mainly Kurrajong Public School, but Grose View Public School as well, have issues around pickup and drop-off time, which creates hazardous, you know, conditions on those roads. So if our local roads are then used as the major roads of people accessing a bridge crossing, then I think it's really relevant, and I have raised this in there, that we look forward into the future of when that comes to be ready to have measures around that so that we don't, you know, have a crisis point where all the parents, you know, freak out all at once.

I do think that work, and I may have, you know, be testing my memory, but I think that the work that was done around the raised pedestrian crossings for Bede Polding, and Chisholm came from an RMS road safety grant a few years ago to do that study and to raise the pedestrian crossings. But I think it's really good work to see, and I was really pleased to see that we've looked at it in that location. We know a couple of years ago we all had to join in the advocacy for Ebenezer Public School to get safety around their school, and I think that there's probably not a parent amongst us who doesn't want to see our schools as safe as possible. So I think that raising these things, even though the traffic committee essentially isn't a committee for going in and just raising things, but pointing out the need for ongoing assessment around schooling.

And often, as you say, a principal may say something. I think the parents may say something else. It's not always the same message that's coming out. But I just wanted to say that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? No. We'll put the motion then. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent from the vote are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. I declare the item carried.

The next item is notice of motion 1, 6.1.1, Mobile Tourist Kiosk. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. I'll move that, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Do I have a seconder? Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think this is something that I saw a couple of months ago, and I have raised it previously, I think when we were discussing the Destination Management Plan. But I just thought I'd bring it up and put it into the mix, and we've seen that the note of management says that the staff can incorporate that into work they're doing to do further research on that, about the benefits and costs of a kiosk and a program for tourism ambassadors. I think that, you know, we need to make some moves around, you know, promoting our region even more than we already do. And when I saw— When I saw this in operation in the Lake Macquarie area, it just seemed such a simple solution. Up there they've got it fitted out.

It goes to surfing competitions at a specific beach, or it goes around the other side of the lake. Again, another big geographical area to cater for, and they have their tourism information centre in Swansea, which means that not everybody accesses it . A little bit like having our information centre at Clarendon. We have so many exits and entries into our local government area that may not go anywhere near Clarendon, and having some mobile facility to take to big events or to, you know, outlying areas gives a good opportunity to pass around, you know, information about the services, the landmarks, experiences and opportunities around tourism. We know we've got a growing reliance on social media, which plays a big part, but we also know that there's some—nothing really beats the face-to-face interactions, especially when you're promoting an area as well.

And I know that we have our fabulous award-winning communications and events teams who did such a fabulous job with their award. Congratulations. But we know that as well as that, increasing the access of people to see what we've got on offer here is something we should always be taking up any opportunities around. So I think I just thought I'd put this forward just to get sort of the support if we want to hear more about it, and I think it'd be a good idea to have something. It could also be used in other capacities, I would imagine beyond that, if we had something along that line. Thank you. Thank you,

Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. I support the motion, Madam Mayor. I brought up a couple of times in our briefings about how we might contact our community with projects and things we're doing, or just to keep them informed. And I think this is a great idea. We've lost our paper for a second and last time, probably. Our hubs go in a while, and I haven't been to a lot of them, but I've heard lots of reports through the community of what benefit that they've got out of just going there and seeing the results of whatever the issue was at the time of the discussion or the information they required. Something like this, it's suggested that it's supported by volunteers, which further helps promote the community and council.

And with information that could be handed out or contacts that could be handed out if someone's after, you know, a particular asset of council or the like, I think it's a great idea, and it gives an opportunity to go in smaller remote places in our community where otherwise we would never get there. So I think there's a great opportunity there and, like I said, with the volunteers, would further enhance that whole opportunity.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I think this is a really nice idea. I think it's also a really achievable idea as well. I think we have to pivot more. Really, to do more with less. And I think, I suspect that the days of that dedicated standalone VIC in an area like ours are probably limited. We've seen tourist info centres coupled with other facilities in other LGAs. Shoalhaven has it in the front of their library, for example, and I think that's a popular co-location. We've got potential with the museum. But we do have this very large, very diverse LGA that's hard to, and it's impossible, frankly, to cover all entry points. So I think, you know, we're probably better focused on outreach. And we've seen some really good examples of outreach in the last couple of months, both at Upper Colo and at Greens Road, and of course on the weekend at Hawkesbury Fest, which was incredibly well attended.

And I want to convey my congratulations to all the staff involved. They worked very hard. But not only did they work hard to set up the event, but they worked hard to front that event. And I think they really should be congratulated on that. We were at one point at the road works tent, I'll call it that, for want of a proper name, and they were dealing with quite angry people, and they weren't backing away. They were standing there talking about the realities of what's going on in our LGA at the moment. And that takes skill and it takes courage. And I think we need to acknowledge that our staff do that and that they put forward the decisions that we make each day and they wear that. So I think there is great potential for outreach, both within and without the LGA, outside the LGA, and that's one of the things I think that we aren't doing and that something like this could facilitate.

You know, having a dedicated standalone facility that has all the stuff in it already that you just hitch up to the ute and take down the road to Hills or Blacktown or, you know, even as far as the Southern Highlands and do a bit of tourism swapping, I think would really do us good and would certainly do our businesses good as well.

I'd like it to be—I don't want it to look like a Mr

Whippy van. I'd really, you know, I think this one's quite cute, but I don't—it looks like you're going to go there and buy an ice cream or a coffee. Yeah, something that had a really iconic look. You know, I'd love a little slab hut, tiny house that we could—you could fold up the veranda. Yeah, there's a few at the village. No, I didn't say that out loud. So I think this is a great idea. I think it's something that we could do. I don't think it has to cost us buckets of money, and I think it's something we could readily have on a shovel-ready list for a grant. Thanks.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Look, I think this is a great idea too, and I'll just do a plug for brochures. For years and years and years, lots and lots of my colleagues have said, No, you don't need brochures. Everything's online. Don't, you know, don't have brochures. Well, in my work, everybody wants brochures, and it's just something about brochures. It's like, I don't know, a calling card to the Hawkesbury. I mean, it's really—I know, I know, Daniel, I know Councillor Wheeler is going to freak out because of the trees, but we still have a print shop, I expect, and if we can do this, as long as we do it judiciously and properly, I think it can be really good. People still like to see a map and see something and have it in their hand.

So I think it's a good idea, and we can also have some electronics in there as well. It doesn't have to be completely print-based, but I think it's worth a look. And, yeah, I commend you, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, for bringing this forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? I might just add that I too am in support of this idea. I think it's a wonderful idea, given the size of our LGA. Hopefully we can get some staff members who can tow a trailer, because that will be important . Don't look at me. To do that. But I think that it is a wonderful idea, and I was actually going to talk about brochures before you actually mentioned it, for the fact that when I went to Tassie recently, in the hotel foyer there was all the brochures. And a couple of the activities we engaged in were because those brochures were there. You take them up to the room, you have a little browse, you go, Oh, look at that. And I guess given the fact that we, and we all know it, have a lack of accommodation really here in the Hawkesbury, we need more, and we know that.

I guess our visitors don't have an opportunity to get those brochures unless they go to the VIC, which I'm not sure what the data or the stats are, but I don't think that's happening in a great deal. So I think this is a wonderful idea. If money wasn't a problem, I'd love to have a suite of them, you know, going to the different little markets that we have, because our markets, you know, Saturday markets in Richmond, St Albans markets, Lions markets, that's where out-of-towners are coming to the Hawkesbury, where we need to be promoting the wonderful tourism opportunities that we have. So I think it's a great idea. I think the tourism ambassadors is wonderful. There's only one name I ever think of, and that's John Miller, and the badge he proudly wore for years and years and years and years that he was a Hawkesbury ambassador.

So I think that's a wonderful thing, and if it's something that people in the Hawkesbury who have a knowledge in that space want to come and volunteer their time, I think that's wonderful. So fully in support. Any other councillors wishing to speak? Note right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Not really necessary, but just to say yes, I am a brochure queen. And I think that it is returning, though, in the sense that there is such a large volume of material online when you look for something that sometimes just the clarity of having a brochure that says Hawkesbury and it says this, this, this, and there are the lovely Hawkesbury ones, which I've picked up in other visitor information centres and other things. Just, I don't know why, because I know what's here, but I have picked them up. And I think that that's a really good thing. So thank, I think it's a great idea, and I hope we can progress it forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. I declare the motion carried. Next item.

Notice of motion 2, 6.1.2, Habitat pods. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you. I'll move that

Thanks, Madam

Mayor. Seconder, please? Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is another thing that I just thought that we could put in and get some more information and look at funding options. I spoke today to Dr. Carthy, who is the ecologist who has developed this specific innovative and amazing thing that she's made, and I believe some council staff from the sustainability department had also spoken to her. But this is basically an inexpensive and very biodegradable solution for when we are in a situation post-bushfire when the habitat has been lost. It can offer protection from predators. It enables ground-dwelling animals. Often the tree-dwelling animals can get up into the tree and get the safety and also access on food that may be left there when it's been burnt out underneath.

So it's a solution for that, and I think that we could roll it out after any disasters where there's been any habitat loss and where there's a lack of food for wildlife. Regarding the food, the new version of this has the capacity to be sort of, I was going to say impregnated, but I don't know that that sounds quite right, but embedded, have embedded within it the native seeds that generate within it and so on. So it is impregnated, but I don't know. Anyway, I'm having trouble coping with that. But I think what we've seen is locals trying to do their best after the fires to get out there and to put some food and water for animals. And I learnt today that cats and, you know, members of the cat family actually can smell smoke from 100 kilometres away, and they will go to those areas because they know that where there's been a fire there will be a food source, that foxes and cats it was, that they can access, and the panther as well, yes.

But in Victoria currently, they're actually rolling these out after they've done the hazard reduction burns. So testing them out in that way so that when they've cleared the undergrowth and so on, just to see, you know, how they're working. And I think I've got a few notes here. The new version will be more efficient to produce. They've made a new machine to make them faster. The current price per unit per pod is $15 a pod, but within six weeks they'll know, you know, what they're going to actually cost. I think with the predictions for harsh summer conditions, it's really wise that we be on the front foot in looking at any sort of solutions that are out there that we can actually access. We can look at, this is what the motion's calling for, to look at how we partner, support or incentivise people, both private and public areas, to have such things available should the need arise.

And looking at innovative solutions like this, we can play a pivotal role in ensuring. that we're a part of it. I don't know what's left in Bushfire Grant funding, if there's any still going, that would be still around for that. A lot of the bushfire money, I know, has been spent, and it would be really good if, and I'm imagining that governments will have some that is attributed to the preparation phase of emergency management that they could be putting into that. The partnerships, I guess, would be with things like national parks and with private individuals, and that perhaps the Bushfire Management Committee, Madam Mayor, if you're to attend, that would be another area where it could perhaps be raised in case the RFS are in fact thinking of doing it.

I don't know if they are. Various wildlife groups also may be. But I brought it forward at an early enough stage that we can look at all of that, and then we can see what opportunities may exist in line with it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I wonder if Councillor Lyons-Buckett would be willing to add universities to her list of potential agencies to collaborate with, because it strikes me that this would be a nice PhD or honours project for somebody who would possibly then come with their own funding and habitat pods, and would also give us then the answers to how effective this is. Obviously Macquarie Uni has done some work on it, but how effective this is long term, and the areas that I'm particularly thinking of are those where the habitat is so denuded that it doesn't come back within a year, and so there would need to be a follow-up, because otherwise I think your little house is going to disintegrate, which would be, you know, it's quite— Symbolic of the housing market, I think, but yeah, homes are hard to come by, particularly when everything's been burnt out.

Yes, happy to add

That. Councillor Kotlash, happy to accept that as a seconder, thank you.

Thank you. Any other councillor wishing to speak? Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Look, this is a great idea, and it brings to mind now we have to find out whether we can get some sort of biodegradable water sources, because I remember in the last, in the bad fires up around my way, Kurrajong Heights, private individuals were going out and putting, you know, 90 mil stormwater pipe, I guess, fitted into and strapping on trees, because there just wasn't any water around anywhere for native animals or for any birds and the like. So I'll throw that down as a challenge to whoever, whatever university can come up with a biodegradable water source as well, and we'll have everything covered. But well done on this one, and it'll be interesting to see if we can get some participation, because we're going to have another fire, no doubt. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett? No. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour: Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent from the room is Councillor Calvert and Councillor Conolly. I declare the motion carried. Item 7.1.1, response.

Responses to Councillor questions taken on notice. There's one question from Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you for the answer. Are you happy with the answer? Excellent. Councillor Zamprogno?

Madam Mayor, could I just seek clarification? In July, Councillor Kotlash posed a question on notice relating to funding and the value we get out of HRCC. The answer to that question does not appear in this business paper. May I ask whether that question was withdrawn or ruled as out of order?

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone? I'll just confer with staff. General Manager

I think the answer for that is neither, Councillor. I think there's still work ongoing on that. Okay.

Thank you, Councillors. That was the last item on the agenda. There are no confidential items this evening. I thank everybody for their attendance and I declare the meeting closed at 8.46 p.m. Thank you, everybody. Good night.