12 March 2024 - Ordinary

Good evening and welcome to Hawkesbury City Council's meeting for the 12th of March 2024. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of the country. I'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'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I'd like to advise in accordance with clause 5.3.3 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary. If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting.

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Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, General Manager. I'd like to welcome everyone in the gallery today and those watching our Council meeting online. Thank you for your participation. Are there any apologies or leave of absence? We do have one apology from the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Barry Calvert, and I can see that everyone else is in attendance. Can I have someone move to accept that apology? Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Sheather. All those in favour? Unanimous. Thank you, Councillors. Are there any declarations of interest?

No. Terrific, thank you.

Can I have someone confirm the minutes of the last meeting, please? Thank you, Councillor Veigel, seconded Councillor Reardon. All those in favour, please raise your hand.

Those against, or everyone's in favour of the minutes? Yep, excellent, carried unanimously. Thank you.

The first items on the agenda are those subject to public address. There's one item with registered public speakers. That is item 4.3.2, Place Plans. I'll call on our first registered speaker, Mr Lionel Buckett.

I've got my glasses so I can read.

I'm here to talk to the Place Plans thing. I'm part of the Blue Mountains Hawkesbury Community Bushfire Alliance. We're the residents that caught in the burnover from the Scat Mount Wilson backburn. I'm also the president of Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club. I'd like to thank the Mayor, Councillor Marn, for all her help with the Back to Build campaign, and Barry Caldwell, who's not here. I also want to thank him for chairing the RFS apology and reconciliation meetings, and Councillor Kotlash for attending the events, and the former Mayor, Councillor Conolly, for supporting our successful application for federal funding for the upgrade of our disaster staging area at the club with the $811,000 grant.

And we thank you all for attending the SOD turning event last year to celebrate this and letting you know everyone is invited back to the formal opening, which should happen in the next few months. We're still working our way at the end, bit of work. We also acknowledge and thank all the councillors for directing council administration to do the last part of the 2015 housekeeping LEP by correcting the administrative mistake that left Eco Tourism out. All your actions have helped us build back better. I'm here tonight to request the Place Plan report be deferred until the April Council meeting so we can have time to discuss it and get back to you with suggestions to consider for possible improvements.

We were not specifically including the initial consultation as either a listening post or a community forum or anything else. The executive summary of the report, page six, says the report outlines how village centres can invest in and ensure and place resilience in their DNA. On page 17 of the report, list at point A are retail, bushfire and flood readiness, improve water storage, and fire-resistant upgrades to community halls. And the readers given the impression that this will be part of the Place Plans. However, none of this is included in the report except for Kurrajong, where in between the six pedestrian crossings is an emergency service centre located in the IGA. As the Bells Line Road Business Council survey shows, 97% of our community wants emergency evacuation areas and other lifesaving infrastructure to help us better manage natural disasters.

We request the report be deferred to the next meeting so the Community Bushfire Alliance can provide further information to Councillors for you to consider, including as essential disaster infrastructure in the plan.

So thanks for hearing me. And I'd also like to say, as President of the Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club, I note the Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club name appears on attachment three. In the draft Place Plans community engagement and consultation activities, pages 45, and I've checked, and the club has no record of, or recollection of, any consultation occurring. So unless Council can provide evidence of our name, our name needs to be removed from the list at the end as being consulted with.

So that's what I'd ask you to do, defer it so that people have the opportunity and businesses have the opportunity to look at the report and get back to the Council.

Thank you. Is that all? Yes, I'll just see if there's any questions. Councillors? No. Thank you, Mr. … Oh, sorry, Councillor Dogramaci. Yes,

Thank you, Madam Mayor. You mentioned about the public consultations. Is it possible that if I could have some kind of a list about the people that you have actually consulted?

Well, I think it's a problem with how the Council is doing consultation. So the Currumbin Heights Bowling Club, there's 11 directors. They would love to be consulted on places plan, I'm quite sure, and I think a lot of the organisations throughout the Hawkesbury would be the same. They'd want to be, because this consultation that I referred to as not happening, I think it's an email consultation. So for us to look at whether we were consulted by email, we've gone right, the secretary's gone right through the emails to look for the email. And I really don't think that's proper consultation. It's not a great way of doing consultation. Do it email and, you know, you could use a telephone or you could visit the clubs and the sporting groups and all the public organisations and ask them what's important to them.

You'd have some kind of a record or something like that Like, you know, when you send an email, you've got, you know, some kind of a paperwork, some details, somebody, you know, I mean, you cannot just come in here and say that you had a public consultation of a thousand people or one person. Is it possible that

You could? Yeah, yeah. Well, there should be a record of it. But I'm saying, I think that this is widespread, that council's saying , I don't know if it's whether the consultancy business has broken down the old way that the council used to do consultation or what's going on, but there are a lot of people and a lot of organisations wanting to be consulted that are saying they're not being consulted.

Can I come and see your people and then to see your directors maybe to see some kind of an idea? Yeah. Can I? Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

Any further questions? No. Thank you, Mr Buckett. The next registered speaker is Fiona Germain. Just going to myself organise, about to slip off. Fiona, sorry, Jill.

All

Right

Good evening. Good evening. I'm here on behalf of the Bells Line of Road Business Council, and if you don't know about the Business Council, our vision is concentrated on the Bells Line of Road region to build a really vibrant and prosperous corridor for the visitor economy and residents and businesses that populate the area. One of our main roles is to actively collaborate with our local governments and really improve those processes of consultation. So we're talking about the place plans. And look, we've only had that document, the final report, for two business days. Our next networking meeting is scheduled for March 19th. So, I mean, I've bought a bunch of our quarterly newsletters, which are due to go out this week, and we're actually advertising our networking meeting on that.

And the place plans are slated to be discussed in our forum at that meeting, so that provides a really great opportunity here for consultation with the business community, a relevant business community there. And due to only having that place plan report for two working days, we request that councillors defer the acceptance until the next council meeting in April, so that we have the opportunity to review it with our businesses and give feedback directly to you, our representatives. And then after this, you can decide whether you, Director Administration, to take on board any of that feedback and make any changes or inclusions or leave it as is. To that note on community consultation, we note that on Attachment 3 of the place plans, the Bells Line of Road Business Council does appear under the community engagement and consultation activities on page 45.

And we say we have no record of consultation. Again, we have looked through our email accounts and we have talked with our eight board directors, and there is no recollection of that between us. So we ask that the Bells Line of Road Business Council be removed from that list. The business council and businesses would like the opportunity to be proactive in this space and provide feedback to our elected representatives, so you can decide the merits of our input and direct your administration to make any amendments of that as you see fit. And with regards to deferring this report, we do note that we had correspondence. It was myself with the general manager regarding this report to come out in either March or April meetings.

So as such, we don't see great difficulties with deferring it until April. We weren't given any indication that that would be a huge problem. And for clarification, which will help us when we go forth to our business community, we would just like to know, and I mean we can table this, I don't know if that's needed, we would like clarification on what is the reference document that prompted the report. Was it the planning circular PS21026, or was it the State Disaster Mitigation Plan? Because we note that that's referenced on page six in the Plan to Build Back Better. So we would just like clarification on that. And further to that, we just have one more note. We're almost done. On page, if we turn to page 28 of the document, sorry, everything is slipping off here.

If we turn to page 28 of your Place Plan report, the response states, Where private property is located, the proposed infrastructure labelling has been moved to better reflect proposed future plans. The Bilpin Place Plan map labelling has not changed, and the proposed public toilet still remains at the Grumpy Baker private property. That was just a final note there. So thank you for listening to my request for the Bells Line of Road Business Council.

Thank you so much. Any questions, councillors? No.

Thank you so much for your contribution. Councillor Conolly.

Move that we defer consideration of this item until the April Council meeting.

Thank you, Councillor Veigel. Councillor Conolly.

I'll just, I think the speakers have outlined it, but I think that given there's nothing immediate coming from these place plans that we can see, and that there's a significant group that feels they haven't been consulted, I think it makes sense just to wait a month and do it again.

Thank you, councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I need to make the observation that when we exhibited these place plans, including the one for Bilpin, in May of last year, if my recollection is correct, we resolved to have another go around then. So it was formulated starting in about the middle of 2022. It was exhibited in May of last year. We then voted for a further extension to go back to the relevant communities for more consultation, and certainly the speakers that have just spoken to us then are at the very peak of the community movement in one of the areas for which a place plan was being formulated. I'm trying to get my head around the fact that these people were not consulted. Either they weren't consulted, in which case their grievance is legitimate , or we've had two goes at this already, and I'm wondering why we just can't get on with this.

I don't mind deferring one more month, because like Councillor Conolly says, you know, it's not urgent, but anyway.

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

Oh

Councillor Reardon. Yes, Madam Mayor. I think it makes sense if we defer this so their concerns can be addressed

Great, thank you, Councillor

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks. Could I get a question—an answer, sorry—to Ms Germain's question about the reference document that prompted the report?

Director of City Planning.

Yeah, look, apologies. I'll need to take that on notice.

Thanks. I think it's actually a really good question because I'm not at this point really sure what these documents add. There's— the opening pages, I think, contain a lot of really useful content that aren't specific to the Hawkesbury, and I'm not sure that then when we move into the actual place plans for each of the towns that they meet the talk, that they meet the remit, the talk of vulnerability and resistance. There's— and I'm not sure that there's a point to having documents that aren't backed up by any legislative teeth from us as a council. There's talk in here of a regional food bowl and historic and cultural destinations, rural landscapes, et cetera. There's no point us putting stuff like this into place plans if we don't have the legislative tools to ensure that this is a reality.

We've thrown out the Kurrajong-Kurmond plan. We've taken the views and Vistas protections out of the LEP. We still haven't got the LEP back. If we don't have an LEP, and we won't have, thanks to previous actions in this term, or Metropolitan Rural Areas protections from the state government, then the burgeoning tourism corridors and relaxed rural lifestyle that's referred to in this document will be nothing more than a memory. Page 22 talks about preserving cherished views, and I'm at a loss to see how we will do this. Up to page 27, we've got this utopic vision that we've got no capacity to actually deliver under our own documents, under our own LEP, but which should provide justification for investment into our towns.

It's clear from submissions what most of the respondents want. They want maintenance of natural areas and town centres, better amenity, protection of what makes us different to our neighbours. And then there's a whole lot of really specific stuff that people want for their towns that we don't really see in these documents. And the comments that are in the report, they're justified, where we say these are high-level documents, and that's great, but people won't keep telling us this same stuff over and over again. We need to act, not just consult. And as we've heard from the two speakers, they don't feel that they've been consulted with properly either. I know the comments from Celestino and their strategic land holdings and their desire to deliver some of these things, but they can only deliver some of these things if they take away some of the other things, and we need to be mindful of that.

Many, if not all, of the cherished assets that have been cherry-picked for this report are man-made. There's a real lack of imagination and vision in these documents. There's some useful bits and pieces around footpath proposals and things, but I want to see if these are active desire lines, if these things are what the people of these towns actually want and need. Has anyone stood at the school gates and asked parents and students where they want to walk and what footpaths they need in centres like Wilberforce, for example? There's good stuff in here, but it feels really formulaic. I'm not convinced that if this goes out for a month that it's going to come back to us any better. What I'd really like us to do is to defer this for a proper targeted consultation, not just whacking it up on the Your Hawkesbury, Your Say website, but to really drill down to these local groups.

Now, if these two groups have been quoted as being consulted with and don't feel that they have been, then how many other groups in this document haven't been adequately consulted with? What targeted consultation can we put on this so that we do this once and we do it properly? I really don't know the point of these documents. I don't know that they add anything. I fear that they are going to end up with all the other documents in the Deputy Mayor's drawer and not actually get us anywhere.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and much of what I did have to say probably echoes what Councillor Wheeler has just said. But I am happy to defer it, but I would actually, I was going to speak against it had the motion in the business paper been moved . I'm quite disappointed that councillors were not given this to look at when we had a briefing. I mean, I think it was not good that we had a briefing where we didn't have this in front of us to be able to actually see and refer to, and I don't think that even enables us to be properly informed, let alone the community. But in theory, much of this is great. The intent and the objections in the introductory sections are great. But there seems to be a major disconnect between its intention to be about disaster preparedness and increasing social connections with what is actually in the plan.

I mean, it is like having two separate reports. For example, on page seven, it lists what the plan will aim for, and that includes identifying lands for protection from encroaching development, in identifying lands for sensitive infill development, for key view protections, etc. And I can't see that these plans can do this. I can't see how they could do this unless they were to correlate directly with what's in our planning instruments. And we know, as Councillor Wheeler said, for starters, our DCP doesn't include any provisions around key view protections because they were removed by half this Council. Then we've got our LEP. We're not sure where that's up to exactly. So how these plans are purporting to increase the resilience, I just can't see it.

There's no supporting social infrastructure plan around it that would, you know, sort of support those notions that are included in it. And it's simply like two different reports, the plans and then all the blurb about it. The suggested resilient place features include as number one, to preserve rural character and lifestyle. But the plans don't show how this is achieved. It's not necessarily what we're seeing in reality because we're seeing outcomes from, you know, from either courts or from council decision-making, etc. And that doesn't necessarily correlate with that. The proposed outcomes do, however, reflect what our community says is of value to them, and we know that from recent surveys, customer satisfaction surveys.

But that doesn't always align with our strategies or the decisions that are made. The feedback indicates that the respondents didn't necessarily understand the high level of this plan. Issues like no parking could be true, or it could really mean there's just not a park outside the shop I want to walk into that I've walked into for 50 years. And that's when we hear about things like no parking. That's what that might mean. So I'm not comfortable with this document sitting as a guiding document for the future. I don't consider it's visionary at all. It's briefly touching on it with nothing really in front of us is not good enough. I don't think we should be making a decision, and I agree with Councillor Wheeler that deferring it for a month is unlikely to make much difference.

It's not reflective at all of our future, and perhaps more studies will enhance it and do that. But I don't even know if this current approach—maybe we should be going town by town and digging deeper, starting at the grassroots and building it up with that community to get something that's really viable and really tangible. The other thing that troubles me in it is it doesn't ever actually identify in the plans which assets Council has control over itself or which assets Council actually owns. So how are we—I mean, I've seen things like proposed parking and that's someone's private property. I think how are we allowing something like this to sit at the top of what we may be doing underneath that and tying it in with our other strategies?

I mean, there are some glaring inaccuracies and anomalies in it which need correcting, and of course, have we seen it before? We may have been able to draw those. But having something like a proposed cycleway to Kurrajong Heights, I'm sorry, but I just think that putting things in that are simply not viable—how on earth you would build that? You might build a funicular or something. You're not going to build a cycleway and have people riding up and down it. So I think that even though it's visionary, we really need to have it contain things that are achievable and possible into the future. So I assume it has the support to be deferred, but I would actually prefer a completely different approach to really encapsulate from the ground up what those communities really see as the vision for their town centres, and to actually make them resilient if we can.

Any other councillor wishing to speak?

Right of reply, Councillor Conolly? No, thank you. All those in favour of the motion on the board, please raise your hand. Those in favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Jurek, Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor McMahon. Those against? Councillor Lines-Buckett and Councillor Wheeler. I declare the motion carried.

Moved are those on block. That's items 4.4.1 and 5.1.2. Do I have someone to move that way, please? Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Reardon. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno and Councillor McMahon. I declare those items carried.

There is one other item on block, but that is an item to be moved in confidential.

The next item is item 4.2.1, six-monthly progress report, 23/24 Operational Plan. Do I have someone willing to move that way?

Councillor Sheather, seconded Councillor Veigel. Councillor Sheather. Yes

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Just in relation, there's a lot of things itemised in there, but there's a couple that's not. Laughtport Ferry, for instance. Packer Road's in there, but not the ferry. Is there a reason that it's not there, considering the position the ferry's in?

General Manager.

Quite simply, Councillor, it's not reported against in this particular plan because it wasn't outlined in the Operational Plan when it was adopted.

Packer Road was there?

Yes.

Thanks.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Councillor Sheather is right, there's a lot of detail in this report, almost too much to do at once, really. And I urge people to read it and give us, as councillors, feedback on it. There is, however, a lack of detail, I think. I'm pleased that items like the floodplain risk management strategy is considered to be on track, but I'd like to see it in some more detail. There's also concerns from the St Albans community about the study area being too small, which has resulted in community members being asked to complete their own studies, which is expensive, onerous and, frankly, unreasonable for most people. There's a whole lot of other stuff in here. The volunteers Christmas party, lovely onshore, would have been nice to include the councillors so that we could also thank the volunteers.

Change to the setup meant that a lot of people felt snubbed. The people who weren't included in that group of volunteers but have volunteered for council for many years were missed and were quite unhappy about it. Some of the information in here is a little bit out of date. Clean Up Australia, the cultural plan, the EV scoping, signage. I want to make note on the public record that I find it really unsatisfactory that there is no longer a council rep on the Peppercorn board following its merger with Active Transport. I think that's a real backward step for an organisation that still takes money and uses the facilities provided by this council, but no longer contains a member of the elected body on their board.

I'd like some details of some of the items that are on here: the litter project, the nutrient offset framework, and the property strategy. There's a lot of reports here, for example the property strategy, that are being presented and adopted by the executive leadership team, and I'd like to see these come to council. We are the governance body. We have a legislative responsibility to be aware of the runnings of this council. We need to see more of this information. A report that outlines it in a couple of paragraphs isn't sufficient.

Finally, we will see the reconciliation action plan by June this year. Hooray. I note that there are additional actions that are possible in this report due to the involvement of the heritage committee, and that shows the benefit of having a strong and active committee maintained. The environmental work is largely collaborations and policy work and grant applications. What we really need is more active work on the ground if we're going to make any difference to the environmental problems that are plaguing us. It states here that the LEP should go through gateway by the end of March. Look, it's about bloody time, frankly. It's a completely toothless document held up for what will be an entire council term, and I can't really see for what.

We've got 51,000 for tree planting. I think that's excellent, but I hope it's for more than the trees that are listed in the document. There's a reference to weed management and council-managed weeds. I note that Hawkesbury River County Council is now providing Councillor Kotlash and I and the rest of the members of the board with numbers of requests from their constituent councils for weed management actions, and Hawkesbury Council is currently at the bottom of the list for requests. I suggest we change that because that's labour that we are already paying for, and we should take advantage of.

Excellent to see that 35% of our fleet now consists of hybrid vehicles. Under Section 3.2.2, the draft Economic Development Strategy, changes in employment, I'd really like us to debunk the idea that a very high percentage of the LGA actually works here. I don't think this is accurate, and I think it's an inaccurate conclusion from census data using business addresses. It affects the way we set up some of our economic frameworks and some of our social policy frameworks, and I think we need to have better data on that. And the continuance and growth of agriculture. Look, this requires an LEP and state government legislation that commit to maintaining the metropolitan rural lands. It's more than tourism; it's the food bowl, and it behoves both us and the state government to maintain that.

And I think that we need to start doing some greater advocacy to the state government on that piece. There's also a section 4.1, which should be about elected councillors' engagement in a regular program. This report's about the staff's work, and that's terrific, but it's not the same. We need, I think, to lift our game on engagement, town hall meetings, media engagement committees. These are all things that can be used to consult better with the community, as we've heard from the two speakers this evening.

Your time has expired, Councillor.

Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just a question first, or a couple of questions. Is the recent survey, the customer satisfaction survey we were briefed on, is that going to be publicly available?

General Manager.

That's publicly available on our website now.

Oh, okay, great. Are we going to tell people that?

I'm not sure that we've got a deliberate communications campaign around it, but it's there.

All right, great. The other question was—oh, well, I'll ask that during when I'm speaking. I think after reading this report, it was quite—it was sort of bamboozling. But yes, I was left wondering whether we're actually reaching the four outcomes listed on page nine from the CSP, because the report doesn't give us any specific detail on projects to enable us to actually know what's happening where. We know our community feels they don't get enough or the right information, and that's why I asked about the survey, because that was quite apparent in that satisfaction survey, that people don't feel they're getting all the information. But as a councillor, I don't feel like I'm getting all the information either, because I can't really see what's being done in many areas.

There's a lot of projects. There's a lot of working groups, which must be internal working groups. There's monitoring going on. But as councillors, we don't necessarily have any input. We mainly hear about these things mostly after they've happened, mostly after they've finished. And I'm actually left questioning what our actual role is these days because— Whatever it is, I don't think we need 12 of us to be doing it because it seems to be diminishing on a weekly basis. Particularly in the area around sustainability and waste, I don't know how we ever get an opportunity to feed into that. When we have a briefing around something, there's already something written up and done.

You know, people approach us about things, they ask questions, they have ideas. We don't have any two-way dialogue on it. We're given something that we either have to accept or perhaps amend, but it's always after it's done. We used to have a waste committee and we used to have a sustainability committee, and through both of those, we had an opportunity for this dialogue to go back and forward and to put input from the community and from councillors. And that let us keep abreast of what was happening, and there's so many things happening in that space. Now it's sort of reduced to a column in a six-monthly report. So unless it comes as a subject of a briefing, in which case it means it's usually ready for the next council meeting, which is coming up just after.

So it's sort of taking away those opportunities to really refine things. And I think, like something with the Place Plans, even though that's not relevant to either of those committees, but with something like that, we suddenly get a document and then we hear someone hasn't been consulted or they're not really what we thought they were intended to be. So I just feel that we're missing this actual possibility for engagement that we could have. We are representatives of the community, and we should be able to be funneling into these plans and projects and working groups what our community is telling us about. There's a lot of waiting. We're waiting on so many things, and I hope that the projected dates for the important things like the LEP and the Reconciliation Action Plan will materialise as is written in this plan.

We're almost at the end of the council term, and we still don't have our major planning instrument in place, an operational, and we've had two whole terms and we still don't have a Reconciliation Action Plan. It's good to see a large proportion of actions are on track, but I'm not always sure what exactly that means, because, for example, we're monitoring the pools to review operations in line with upgrade opportunities, but I don't know what that means. So that means that then we've got to specifically ask a question to say, what does that mean? Because we have no context around those various things. The North Richmond West Invest project early 2024 planning, I'm not sure if that involves stakeholders.

I've heard otherwise. And then I don't know what the Urban Development Monitoring Program is, what it's monitoring, who's on it, what it does. The Urban Greening works, where are we doing this? There's working groups working on all sorts of things, but we don't know who they are or who's on them or what they're actually doing.

Finalising and implementing the Climate Change Risk Assessment and Adaptation Plan, it's listed as complete, but what was done? I don't know what was done. What, were all the actions in that plan implemented already? If it says complete, that's what I take that to mean. So the other thing I've got concern around is the Hawkesbury Nepean System Coastal Management Plan. How do we How do we hear about that? There is no avenue for us hearing about that. I only know it's there because I happened to ask a question about it. We haven't had a briefing on it. We haven't had any input into it, and it's really important. I've had a number of people who have contacted me about the river health, particularly their concerns with the stuff coming in from South Creek, from the development upstream, and we've not heard anything about it.

So I would just like some more context around some of these things. I know we always seem pressed for time, and I know the WestInvest has taken up a lot of our resources and time, but I still think as councillors, we shouldn't read a report and then be wondering what on earth that report is talking about.

Thank you, Councillor. I just might reply to a little bit of that and say it's a shame you could only find so much negativity with a report that has many clear deliverables, and perhaps if you stopped focusing on all the negative issues, you could offer some solutions to that range of problems you've addressed. And I'd love to see that in writing from you, if you'd like to email that through. Councillor Wheeler, do you have a question? I do. I have three.

Do we— the Director of Planning and I had a discussion about some additional signage on site for the 11 storeys of the Girrabin project, and I'm wondering if there's been any further movement on that.

Director of City Planning. Yeah,

Thank you, through you, Madam Mayor. There has been. So obviously the sites have been identified as part of that project. What we're doing now is determining the availability of funding to actually install those signs, and it's anticipated that we'll be able to update the Chamber with regards to the costs and the source funding, if not in late March, by mid-April. Excellent,

Thank you.

Could I just have a memory refresher on the date that the State Government has mandated FOGO, please? Director of Infrastructure.

Through you, Madam Mayor, my recollection is by June 2030.

Gosh, that's a long way away, isn't it? And a final question, and look, this may be an amendment, I think. Could we— could councillors see the additional DCP chapters that are referred to in the document and receive a briefing on the LEP amendments? And I'm happy to move that as an amendment if that's required.

Director of City Planning.

Yeah

Thank you. That can certainly be arranged. Thank you.

I'll second the amendment. I don't think it was an amendment. It was just being—the staff confirmed they'll do it.

Any other councillors wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. Excuse me. In relation to the item we spoke about earlier tonight and this one with public consultation and the response we got, we had it in a briefing, and I did ask the question. Excuse me. About what, how many people were involved with Council in relation to that response. Are we aware of any consultants the public were using in relation to development, like DAs, or organisations that have continual rapport with Council from our residents? You know, business houses that work on behalf of the community and come to Council on a regular basis. Were any of those involved with that consultation, or are they involved usually?

I'll just see who would like to answer that. General Manager.

Through you, Madam Mayor, are you talking, Councillor, in respect of the Place Plans development or Council more broadly?

When we go for public consultation and there's an opportunity to pick out, and people who spoke earlier said that, where we're looking at communication with Council to achieve an outcome, we've got businesses that work with Council on a daily basis. Do we include those or give them the opportunity to express concerns that they may have or questions that we might have for them?

Thank you. Through you, Madam Mayor. Yes, I would say so, Councillor. I think each of our teams have direct engagement and networks into their aspect of the community, if that makes sense. And I think, despite the commentary that's come out tonight around the engagement on the Place Plans, and particularly you can actually see in the report, it said direct email contact had been made with, in that particular example, a list of 10 or 15 community-based organisations who they felt were a particular stakeholder in that particular instance. I think that's one example of it. And for example, I know in development assessment, they've got some key users who they will liaise with from time to time on different things. So it's fairly typical that we would have those sorts of stakeholder engagement pieces.

Thank you. In relation to—there's an action here, page 19. It's in relation to section 711 and 712. We're reviewing those policies and stuff at the moment. With the 711, which I believe took over from section 94, is that right ? And I get back to the bugbear that I'm on about all the time, sport, that isn't included. What things are included, or can be included, in section 711 or section 712?

General Manager.

It's a bit nuanced, Councillor, and I would rather give you a fulsome response, having aligned myself with the legal framework. But generally speaking, both of those funds take money as a result of development to fund—and it has to be a nexus, usually, between the development and an increased demand on council's infrastructure. So it may well be public open space embellishment. It may be a new piece of road infrastructure directly related to the fact that there is more people living in a particular location. I'm happy to take that one and provide it to Councillors, like I said, in a more fulsome way, but that's generally the nexus.

I was going to—Is sport one of those things? Because it hasn't been for a long time.

Public open space certainly is, yes.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. The comments that were made by the Councillors that spoke— There's always opportunity, I guess, for Council to pick its game up, and I would hope that the comments aren't taken in the sense of negativity. I think that the expression of Councillors and directions is, in a way, trying to have better outcomes. Reading through the documents, and I went through them, and I guess with some of the comments that Councillor Mary-Lynne Buckett spoke of about not being on board, I guess, to a degree, with some of the issues. And I don't know how we do it, but I too feel frustrated when you read some of this stuff and you're not up to speed with it. The staff are busy, and so is everybody else.

But we're dealing with our community, and we're putting things in place that I guess we haven't got a handle on to the degree that we'd like to. And so the comments that I make, it's not about negativity. I'm quite happy to listen to people if there's a way that we can communicate better, or so that if the community are asking us questions and the like, that we've got a handle on what's going on. And when you look at these pages, I mean, we've got a whole document that covers a massive amount of things in our community, and it's hard to be on top of everything. But some of the stuff that is in here is extremely important. And one of the things that, again, Councillor Mary-Lynne Buckett brought up was the Hawkesbury River, and there is a water— Project being done for the last few years, and there's a website that we can have a look at it.

But, and I've looked at it, but I can tell you South Creek's worse today than what it was yesterday, and a lot worse than what it was when it started. And there's nothing that we've achieved from it apart from there's information saying it's not good. So things like that, if we're going to put things in place, we need to look at what we expect as an outcome. And if we're not looking for an outcome, don't do it. So I guess they're the sort of things that concern me. And, but again I'd say that, you know, it's been talked of in relation to trying to get the best outcomes. The 12 councillors around here, and all of them, I would hope, is on a positive page, and would like to work however we can to achieve that.

Thank you, Councillor. Those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Durick, Councillor Lonsbucker, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno and Councillor McMahon. I declare the item carried. The next—

Next item is 4.2.2, 2024 National General Assembly of Local Government. Do I have someone wishing to move the recommendation? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

I’ll move the recommendation

In the business paper. Seconded? Councillor Wheeler. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think I do believe that there’s been an extension. I did raise this last meeting. I believe there’s been an extension for putting in the questions because there were another couple of questions to go in. Can I just have that clarified, please?

Thank you. Director of Corporate Services.

Through you, Madam Mayor, we’ve confirmed the date only a week or so ago, that the date in the report is the correct date for the submission of motions.

So we can still put in one for the next meeting?

Well, no, we’re saying that the submission of motions is for up until the 29th of March, so the next Council meeting is not until April.

Okay. Okay, we were under the impression that it was the end of April. That was received in an email, and we did have another question to include. So we’ll have to maybe just work that on the floor then now. I might defer to Councillor Wheeler to perhaps put forward a question around the active transport dilemma that we were going to raise one on. But I will also raise a question that was raised by a speaker here last time, which was about asking the Productivity Commission to look at the feasibility of continuing with three levels of government. So — Can I please amend the motion that I moved to add an addition to that, which would be a question to put in by Council, for which the background I don't have, but I'm raising it because somebody came in here and asked us to do it, and it wasn't captured into there.

The question would be if the federal government—where is it, the ALGA?— that ALGA requests the federal government to ask the Productivity Commission to look at the feasibility of continuing with three levels of government.

So you'd like that to be a point three as a motion? I

Would like that to be a question to go to the conference. Yes, but the point

Three is to put that motion to the conference. I'll just get some advice. Director of Corporate Services.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Look, we've just confirmed on the website that it is open to the 30th of April, so that's—

Thank you. Yeah, we did all receive an email about it some time ago. I thought that was it. So that being the case, Madam Mayor, could I please confirm if we could then bring our questions to the following meeting?

Director of Corporate Services.

Or do it by another mechanism, rather than just come out with them on the

Through you, Madam Mayor, potentially what could happen there is the councillors could submit their proposed motions to the General Manager by a certain date, and then we could get those back up to Council in April.

Thank you. I'll change my point three then to, instead of saying the specific question, to just say we put further questions to the General Manager by

The 4th of April or something. The Tuesday before ? No Early—well, next week is fine. Next week. Okay. Thank you

I'll explain why, but could we have it in four weeks, please? Sorry, or the 30th of March. Just that the person that we need to consult with around the motion is going into surgery today, or has already been into surgery and will be offline for three weeks.

General Manager. Thank you through you, Madam Mayor. I would really like to see that no later than the 28th, so that we can prepare the business papers. Yeah.

So point three is to submit motions to the General Manager by the 28th of March.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So just clarifying, if we proceed now, we can vote on the other two parts of that, I guess. And just the point three will be what's coming back, no need to revote about points one and two. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I don't really have much more to say than that, other than to say, as I have said before, that I consider it a very valuable conference, and I think what needs to be included that wasn't there was that as a part of that conference, or it may be considered separate, but it is a part of it, is the Australian Council of Local Government, and that's normally held on the last day, and that is where councillors get to directly question ministers from the government.

And I think last time Councillor Sheather, Councillor Wheeler and I were there, and we weren't registered to speak, so we couldn't stand up and ask to speak. I would just ask that for the people who may end up going, that they are registered to speak at that what is like a giant council meeting questioning ministers. Thank you.

Thank you. Just before anyone else speaks, I will highlight that Tuesday the 2nd of July is a council meeting. It is in our diary as a council meeting. It was that month we decided to have two, one at the start and one at the end, just letting you know that.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'll just fill in the gaps around the motion to ALGA so that it doesn't arrive as a big surprise in people's inboxes. Councillor Lyons-Buckett and I met with the Director of Planning and the CEO of Peppercorn Transport yesterday regarding an issue that I'm finding it quite hard to articulate because it's so complex. And when the Director of Planning and I attempted to write a motion for presentation today, it became very clear that it was more complex than we had initially anticipated. So it really is about the gap that exists between the funding for clients of the NDIS who require transport, that fall between the gaps that exist between the NDIS, DVA and aged care transport, which makes it extraordinarily difficult in an LGA like ours that is spread over such a large geographic area, where our transport service is largely funded by aged care.

And so we have this group of, in this case, visually impaired people who can't access transport to get to the shops or the doctor. And what we would really like to do is draw this to the attention of ALGA and also the federal member and the relevant minister, hopefully in a question time at the National Council, so that we can really highlight that in some areas like ours, and we suspect others like Gunnedah and other regional areas, this is really stopping members of our community from living a full quality of life. So expect something that actually— Articulates that problem better than I have been able to at this point. We simply didn't have enough time to prep it formally . But we certainly can get it, I think, by the 28th of March.

It is imperative that we be registered as speaking delegates. It was incredibly frustrating for the three of us last year to sit there and listen to other council laws from all over the country articulate their problems while we had to sit there and watch. You know, so to hear Blue Mountains talk about the impacts of flooding on them while we just sat there and pretended that all was fine. You know, so this is, we really need to be able to stand up. We need at least two speaking delegates for that session, preferably more. I think Councillor Sheather actually got up and spoke, even though he wasn't supposed to because he was just so fed up by the end of it. But you run the risk of being told that you can't speak or, you know, being said we were certainly sent to the back of the line.

So it is problematic. There's concurrent sessions for rural and regional councils. There isn't a peri-urban session. We were able to articulate that concern to the local government minister when we met at Glossodia recently. But it means that councils like us on the peri-urban fringe need to cover both bases and be in two places at once. And so we need additional speakers to do that. Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett? Not necessary. Oh, sorry, Councillor Dogramaci, you did have your light on and I jumped the gun. Oh, sorry. Then I'll go back to right of reply.

Shall I go ahead? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. My question is from a business point of view. Last year we had the same meeting. I'm wondering that ALGA... Are they, well, they are the top people that, you know, organise this kind of meeting. What does it stop us to apply to have this meeting, you know, somewhere in, if we have the room, or alternatively that, you know, if we arrange it so we could make some money out of it?

Thank you, Councillor, but they are a separate independent body that operate nationally for all of the councils, and they hold it in the capital city of Australia every year. So that's not something that an independent council would host. It's their own entity. They're their own entity.

So we have absolutely no way of approaching them, you know, to have this— We are

Not the national body. They are. No? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you

Councillor. No right of reply necessary. No, thank you. All those in favour, please raise your hand. One— sorry, once we vote, then we'll nominate councillors. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. I've just remembered, for every vote so far I haven't said the Councillor Calvert was absent from the room, so can we record that for every vote so far, please? Looking at an empty chair and forgetting. I declare that motion carried. Now, who was interested in attending the conference?

Councillor Sheather, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Lyons-Buckett and Councillor Wheeler. Anyone else? Okay. We'll put those councillors' names down as those wishing to attend. Just keeping in mind we have a council meeting the Tuesday night. I haven't seen the agenda or anything. General Manager.

Councillors, we're going to bring you back a report on the meeting dates for the latter half of the year because of the ALGA conference, but also due to the declaration period following the local government elections in September has meant that some of those meeting dates later in the year need to be adjusted, so we're going to bring a report back soon.

So

That's four councillors attending. Good luck, do us proud. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is item—

4.3.1, draft Hawkesbury Active Transport Plan. Do I have someone wishing to move that way? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'll move the recommendation in the business paper plus an additional 0.3 that I circulated earlier this afternoon.

Thank you. We'll just wait for that to go on the board, but councillors have seen it. Happy to second that. Thank you, Councillor Conolly. Councillor Wheeler, you can start speaking to it.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Look, I've been wanting to bring this as a notice of motion, that 0.3 as a notice of motion, for some time, and have been really aware of the sensitivities around roads. And, you know, it's great for us to be telling Transport for New South Wales what they should be doing with their large road crews and much larger budget. But, yeah, I get that we're not, you know, across the roads to our community's satisfaction either. I'm not bringing this, the 0.3, because I would like us to have a lovely cycleway around—not just because I'd like us to have a decent cycleway around the LGA. I'm bringing this because 0.3 is really a safety and social equity issue in the areas where people rely on these cycle lanes, and in particular the one that I'm acutely aware of, because I drive it regularly, is the road between Windsor and Wilberforce, where people use that road as their main form of transport, either walking or cycling, and it's just not safe.

You know, it's unattractive and covered in weeds and is unpleasant, but the real issue is that it's full of potholes. And each time Transport for New South Wales resurfaces Wilberforce Road, they only surface The road, the car bit, to use the technical term, and they completely ignore. They either ignore the cycleway or they spread bitumen and gravel halfway across the cycleway, which makes it an even greater hazard than it was before they'd touched it. At the moment, it's really difficult to use. It's covered in weeds. I did request through both HRCC and the Director of Infrastructure that we contact Transport for New South Wales and ask them to do something about the weeds. And I note that they've sprayed it with glyphosate, which has done absolutely nothing to fix the sight lines and the accessibility for people using that cycleway or walking along Wilberforce Road.

And particularly at night, it's extremely difficult to see if someone is just ahead of you as you come round a bend. It's also got a quite fantastic collection of listed weeds, which clearly is not an issue for Transport for New South Wales. Active transport is a really important thing that we should be able to better deliver in the LGA, and I think this plan gives us the opportunity to apply for funding to start filling some of these gaps. It's very much a social equity issue. It's also a health and safety issue, and it's a matter of community building. We get a lot of cycle tourism coming through the LGA, and that's terrific, but our own residents should be able to move through these spaces as well.

There's some really interesting stuff in this document, particularly I find around the greening up of cycleways to mitigate the problems that we have with heat, and that's one of the difficulties of cycling out here is in hillier areas, it's quite hard going. But down on the floodplain or just above where most of us live, it's really, really hot for six months of the year, and that's deeply unattractive if you've got to go out and expend a bit of energy and work up a sweat. No one wants to arrive at work smelling like a drain, and that stops people cycling, nor do people want to invest in an electric bike that makes that ride easier if they've got nowhere to store it or no showering facilities at the other end.

And so this is part of a big picture, I think, that we should be looking at around transport, particularly as the cost of living bites and people are wanting to shed the second car or spend less on fuel. I think we have the chance with this active transport plan to do something really good for the future of the LGA, and we should embrace it. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Sheather, I can see you trying to put your light on.

It's telling you not to speak. Is it not working at all

Oh no, mine's working. Do you want to come and sit here?

Don't ignore the signs, Mr. .. Can you lean into another microphone? Only for recording purposes, you'll need a microphone. Oh yeah, just go sit in the Deputy Mayor's chair.

Yep, there you go.

Yeah

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Yeah, I've been here before. Just with the comment that Councillor Wheeler made in relation to the road verges, I really appreciated the part three. When we cross Jim Anderson Bridge, for instance, and most of our cycleways, we sweep our streets on a regular basis, but the main roads don't. And if you look in the cycleways along any of our main roads, you'll find pebbles that are bigger than the tyres on the bikes. So they ride right on the white line, or even on the roadway, which is frustrating. It must be frustrating for the riders because they get pipped at all the time. And this part three of the motion is really important, I think, that we push it, because if we want people to get on bikes, we want it to be safe.

And the very roads that... We've had the money to spend on to do that, aren't safe to ride on because they're not looked after. The weeds that have grown on, like the Jimmy Anderson Bridge, I went across yesterday, and there's , I don't know the last time it was cleaned, but it's pretty grubby for coming into Windsor. The other thing too, that when we're looking at cycle lanes, and I went through the business paper there and I didn't see it in there, but the bridge at Wilberforce is probably one of our narrowest bridges around and probably the most heavily truck traffic roads in our city. And the comments again that Councillor Wheeler made in relation to people, you have to walk on the roadway to get over that bridge, and we need to be, it's not one of ours, it's the Roads and Traffic Authority, but we need to be looking very much into the future with planning to address those issues.

It at least needs a footpath alongside of it, not something like we did at North Richmond, an ANZAC bridge alongside. I don't think they require that sort of bridge, but they need something that keeps them off the road. And just on that bridge, I spoke to the GM the other week about it. There's been a big washout there. It's been there like since early January that hasn't been addressed yet, and again it's an RMS problem. And it could be detrimental to the bridge. Thank you.

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

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I want to thank Councillor Sheather for his comments. Look, Pebbles, shoes, clothing, rocks, eskies—you could probably find many of the things that you needed on a daily basis on the Jim Anderson Bridge, actually, and many of them there for quite some time. Buttsworth Creek —what I really want to thank Councillor Sheather for raising is the Buttsworth Creek Bridge on Wilberforce Road. It is just no longer fit for purpose, and we really need to make some representations to the State Government for this to be looked at. The volume of heavy vehicle traffic on Wilberforce Road and over that bridge is now far greater than it has been over the last couple of decades, certainly in the time since I've lived here.

And there is no pedestrian area at all. The white line on the side of the road is hard up against the handrail of the bridge. There is nowhere to go. If you cross that bridge, you have to run. And if you're cycling, you have to put yourself into the volume of traffic. I wouldn't do it with a child in a pram, for example, and yet people have to. We're not talking about people here who cycle out of choice. We're talking about people who cycle out of necessity, and their needs are simply not being met by Transport for New South Wales on these areas. It would be great if they could be brought out and put on a treadly and made to travel from Wilberforce Caravan Park on a 40 degree day in the middle of a hot afternoon, with heavy vehicle traffic thundering up and down that road, and just have a good hard think about just what your day would be like if every day you did that into Windsor and back home again, because it's five kilometres of really hard, dangerous going.

It's not reasonable, and it needs to be addressed.

Thank you, Councillor. Just before I put the vote, there's an idea for someone with a notice of motion perhaps, not just Buttsworth, but also the two bridges on South Creek on both Windsor Road and Richmond Road, which are state problems and are complete eyesores as entrances to our LGA. So put your thinking caps on. There's an idea for a motion. Okay, Councillors, those in favour of the recommendation as it appears on the board, please raise your hand. Those in favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno, Councillor McMahon. Absent is the Deputy Mayor. I declare the item carried.

The next item is 4.5.1, expanding customer base at the waste management facility. Do I have someone ready to move that way? Councillor Wheeler, seconded Councillor Sheather. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. Look, I think this is a really sensible and forward thinking report. I want to direct my comments towards two issues. One is to just make a brief comment about the costs that are listed here for Hawkesbury Council relative to other sites. There's a lot of, I think there are a lot of furphies going around about council being far more expensive around issues like mattresses. There certainly are councils that will take mattresses for free from the side of the road. They are councils with a level of development that people who live here tell us they don't want. It's one of those great catch-22s where you can't have all the things if you don't have all the houses. So if you want ten rubbish collections every year and your mattresses taken away for free, then by all means move to somewhere with far greater density than we've got, because that just simply isn't economically viable with our rate space.

I always wonder why people would like ten rubbish collections, and I always wonder as well why they think their fellow ratepayers should pay for the removal of their rubbish. Really, the manufacturer should be the one paying a whole lot of these costs.

I think we probably need to do some media pieces around the costs at our site relative to other sites, and I understand that St Mary's site is a different case. The thing that I want to focus on at the moment, though, is the polystyrene collection. I'm really pleased that Council adopted my motion to provide polystyrene collection as a trial, and that this has come out of it. It's one of those real problem waste products. It's low weight, it's high volume, and it's entirely reusable when put back through a chemical process and back into the manufacturing chain. The system that we trialled was obviously too expensive for home users. The free collection of up to 10 pieces won't appeal to everybody because you've got to go to the tip.

But it will provide an excellent free service for those who are motivated enough to dispose of this problem waste responsibly instead of just dumping it into their red bins or into a skip. What we do need to do, I think, is advertise this and also inform our frontline staff across the organisation so that the uptake is better . I think people are genuinely really appreciative of the community recycling centre, and this is an excellent free addition to that centre, and that's how we should be talking it up, but not just our customer service staff downstairs, but tourist info, the library, all of those places where people come into an interface with Council and talk to our staff about stuff that they think we should do, the staff who need to be informed so that they can pass on what I think is a really good outcome for the LGA.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Councillor Sheather, over to the Deputy Mayor's chair. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. With increases like the mattresses or the polystyrene, that sort of stuff, are we putting in place the opportunities for additional cameras and stuff like that for, I guess, to [unclear ] our rubbish tips along the roads and stuff? When you get places—

Sorry.

Yeah, illegal dumping and stuff. You get areas like Packer Road and parts of East Kurrajong and across it, because I expect for a while that we will get additional dumping. And, you know, every time there's any big increases in tip fees or the like, and with what's happening with tips in other parts of the state and the remoteness of us, I guess, in the sense of our roads, we can expect dumping not to go away. So are we looking at how we might accommodate those sort of problems?

Director of City Planning. Certainly,

Thank you. Through you, Madam Mayor, the regulatory services team has been working with the waste team on increasing surveillance in hotspot areas. We have also sought funding through EPA that's been available, and the surveillance devices policy that came to Council late last year also included provisions for the installation of still cameras in hotspots for the very purpose of increasing surveillance for illegal dumping.

Yeah, just another question, Madam Mayor. Has the outcome been successful? Like, we're not wasting our time putting a camera up there. Like, the follow-through, is it working? I'm not one that wants to go around with a book fining people, but people that dump stuff like asbestos and mattresses and stuff like that, our community is paying for that. At the end of the day, we're going to clean it up, and it's not fair. So the question is, is it working, or do we need to be looking at further options, I guess?

General Manager. I don't mind answering that, Council, through you, Madam Mayor. To the issue of the current changes that we've got in place around the surveillance devices, we're still just waiting for the finalisation of that policy, so I couldn't speak to the effectiveness of that as yet. What I will say is that the Hawkesbury Local Government Area has an extreme problem in respect of illegal dumping on scales of significant magnitude, both on public land and on private land. And so I would say that a large proportion of our regulatory services time is spent on these type of matters and indeed liaising with the Environmental Protection Authority where those illegal dumping activities reach such a magnitude that we're not even the regulator anymore.

So as to their effectiveness, I really couldn't probably speak to it, Councillor, but other than to say that we've got a lot of work on on that front.

If there's problems when we go through this process down the track, and the additional funds, can that be brought to Council? Because it might start out as being— A bit light on, but it doesn't take long for word to get around that if we're a soft touch, then we're going to pay for it at the end of the day.

Was that a question, or that was just a comment? Yeah.

Well, just if there's issues like that that could be reported to us, it doesn't, you know, I don't care if it just comes in from the GM of Friday like she usually does. Great,

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak?

Just to carry on with Councillor Sheather's question, has there been no prosecutions of illegal dumping in our LGA? And if so, what's it set at? Are we setting the fine rate at a local level, or is that coming through a state level question

Through you, Madam Mayor? Thank you.

I might refer that to the General Manager, who's got a jack of all trades at the moment.

Through you. So penalties for non-compliance with either the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act or the POEO Act, Protection of the Environment Operations Act, are set under legislation. So if councillors were to issue a penalty infringement notice, that's set by the legislation and the statutes. What is then flexible, however, if the activity is so significant that Council considers it warrants prosecution through the court, in those circumstances the penalties can be exponentially higher and really are at the discretion of the magistrate or judge in those sort of circumstances. As to whether there have been any successful prosecutions, I think I can think of at least one that I'm aware of in recent years, but — What I was alluding to earlier is there is a threshold at which Council no longer becomes the regulator, and I can't remember the exact figure.

It's like 200-something or other, and where the EPA actually becomes the—takes over on those matters. And I will say we have had a number of those matters.

Thank you. Just— I'm aware of the EPA takes over. Do you believe the EPA has got the bite to protect the LGA from illegal dumping? To say to the point there, I know of issues, and we've spoken about this locally, but it seems to be a very long string and a long time before they act. And it has been what you said, a very large amount of illegal fill in certain areas which hasn't been certified, and it's probably unclaimed. So the question to me, just to repeat it, is the EPA supporting local government, and specifically the Hawkesbury, in these prosecutions?

I think many of your observations, Councillor, are accurate. What I wouldn't like to say, though, is that the EPA haven't been helpful. I think they've got the same resourcing constraints, mind you, that councils do, and that they've got only a limited number of staffing and resources pulled many, many different ways across many, many different jurisdictions. So it's my genuine belief that they're working as hard as they can, but there is a resourcing limitation there, I would say.

Any other councillors? Councillor Dogramaci.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was going to ask the same question as Councillor Veigel, and— Although we were told that the penalties are so much, do we actually have a figure?

General Manager.

I'd happily take that one on notice, Councillor. It will be set in the legislation. I don't know it off the top of my head.

Okay. Another question. What kind of power do we have to add on top of what EPA says , you know, for illegal dumping? I mean, are we in a position of further penalties if individuals were caught?

Not where the EPA is the appropriate regulator. Where Council is the regulator, we have got entire control over that process. Not where the EPA has that regulatory function.

Okay. And who cleans up those illegal dumpings?

Depends on the circumstance. So minor roadside illegal dumpings, for example, often our works crews will clean those up. Often our environmental health officers will need to attend before the clean-up to identify whether there is any asbestos contained within the illegal dump before our works crews then come along and remove it. What the courts do have is powers to require the offender to clean up as part of any penalty. They do have the authority to determine and will frequently require clean-up as part of those as well. And indeed Council's regulatory team, where we're the regulator, we have powers to issue clean-up notices as well.

They will cost on us besides asbestos, like, you know, mattresses or whatever, we have to pay, don't we? Or our people will have to clean it?

I think either way, Council are the ratepayers paying, either we're cleaning it up or where our regulatory services team are having to use their time, money and resources in following up clean-ups on private land. Okay,

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillors. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was just going to add to that of what's just being discussed. Some time ago, I raised around the first response to these dumped piles, and I don't know if anything's progressed in that, but what sort of becomes apparent is that there's a lot of shifting from agency to agency. If it's on the side of the road at Colo, then it might be the RMS, and then they will say, no, it's actually on National Parks land. And because there's often a delay in waiting so long for anybody to ascertain who will pay for it and whose land it's actually on, that often is what leads to the accumulation of rubbish on that site. So when you go out somewhere near the bridle tree at Colo Heights, you'll see something dumped, then two days later it's grown about not just the brass, other things there.

You go back and there's a whole lot more of rubbish, and then I don't know if that has progressed, but that was always an issue in the past, that it took so long to ascertain whose responsibility it was that that enabled an accumulation of the dumped goods.

Thank you. If there's no other Councillors wishing to speak, right of reply, Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Madam Mayor. So I

Think this discussion highlights the real issue that we have with what's considered to be problem waste, and I think... Some of this is about changing the narrative around waste, and I think it's been useful to have this discussion about the costs and responsibilities of council because, you know, when you look at the stuff on social media where people say, Oh, well, no wonder people dump their mattresses. I think that there needs to be a realisation that it's the community who pays for this stuff to be cleaned up, either directly through rates or through missing out on stuff that that cleanup money could be spent on. And that's a real shame for our LGA. I think for a while we assumed that the rubs all came from outside the LGA.

That was also a pretty popular narrative. Oh, people come to the Hawkesbury and they dump their stuff, and yeah, I'm sure some people do. But what we learnt in COVID, when people's movements were heavily restricted to LGA, was that the rubs were actually people who lived here, you know, and the stuff that was left at Colo, for example, at Colo Bridge, which became a real problem spot, or Yarramundi, they were our people. So there's this really unfortunate attitude that because council charges, rightly I believe, for waste management at our council facility, that people can avoid that by just dumping willy-nilly, and that that's council's fault and not the fault of the people who do it. I think we need to be really clear that people don't just dump because of the cost.

You know, people who genuinely can't afford to go to the tip usually are much more innovative and will cut their waste up into smaller pieces and dispose of it in the red bin, which is, you know, a much easier and cheaper way of dealing with your waste. People dump because they don't care and they think someone else should be responsible for their stuff. We do, I think, need some increased surveillance because we also have this difficulty of having to prove that people have done the deed. I would like us to have a greater discussion around this, particularly around two aspects: rejoining the RID program, which we pulled out of a couple of council terms ago, and perhaps a discussion around amnesties for problem waste, and something like mattresses could be part of that discussion, or a further discussion with perhaps with the EPA around problem wastes like asbestos.

And when it comes to the issue of asbestos, I think we have to be really clear that the community has been handed a really appalling legacy for a waste that a corporation profited from, knowing that it would leave a deadly legacy in the community, particularly in parts of the community who can least afford to clean up. And they did that knowing for decades that they were doing it, and they were let off the hook. We've talked about the EPA, Councillor Sheather's question about the EPA not having enough bite. They've got plenty of bite. I mean, if you look up the— do a quick Google search of the maximum penalty for dumping. The maximum penalty for an individual for dumping liability waste like asbestos is a quarter of a million dollars.

It's a substantial fine. The EPA can issue an on-the-spot fine of $7,500 for illegal dumping. So there's plenty of bite. The problem is that it doesn't have enough dogs. Because they've been gutted over the previous decade, the EPA simply doesn't have enough people on the ground to catch people doing this stuff. And that's a problem that is shared by council. These are resourcing constraints that people are taking advantage of. I think we can do what we are doing, and I think that they're positive ways forward. What we have to do is change the narrative around people's responsibility for dealing with the stuff, that by and large, they buy from the shops and dump because it doesn't serve their purposes down the track.

Thank you, Councillor. All those in favour, please raise your hand in favour of Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Collash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Amprogno, Councillor McMahon. Abstains, Councillor Calvert. I declare the item carried.

The next item is 4.5.2, Beyond 2026 Waste Management Facility. Anyone wishing to move that

Way? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Reardon. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you,

Madam Mayor. I think this is a great report. It's very comprehensive and it really identifies and explains the strategic opportunities that we have in this space, which is, of course, a very, as the city's growing out, of course, we have a growing issue with waste, and I think that it's very pertinent that we get this all in order ahead of time, as is being done now. It's also really important that the public understand the issues around waste management facilities. Some of this has been alluded to in the previous item that, you know, various people don't understand how it all works and how waste works, but particularly how rare it is for council to operate its own and for the issues that come with that that make it quite different from perhaps other facilities that they may come across.

So I think that it's really well set out in this report, explaining that. I don't know how we translate that, though, out to the community because they may not read that. But I think it's very well articulated to get an understanding just of how it operates. It does also set out, of course, that there are many challenges in this area, but it's really good to see the depth of investigation which has identified the opportunities within it. Seeing the risk levels attached to the various recommendations that came out of that report was really good, and a really good level of transparency around that too, because seeing that there are so many risks and then going through the process of identifying and looking at that, and I think that what the recommendation has arrived at at the end of the report is a really sensible way forward at this stage.

What I'm really looking forward to is the further That investigations into resource recovery that we can get onto and do further down the track because I believe there's a lot of opportunities there. My only thing would be how we keep up this level of info into the future. I hope we continue to get this sort of level of detail around it when various stages are met because it is probably, well, I don't know, but I consider it one of our biggest sort of functions. It's also one of the biggest things as a councillor that we have to deal with, people asking questions about. So it's really important to be across it and the future of what we would be doing, which has been something that has been questioned, you know, for all the years I've been on council, we've been talking about what's going to happen when we get to the end of those cells.

So I have appreciated that report and I think that I look forward to it going forward and see what can happen next.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I too want to commend the staff on this really detailed report and also the detailed consultation process that they've engaged in with us. It's been really welcome, dare I say, I've quite enjoyed it. It's a really interesting position, I think, that council occupies as the only council with a tip in metropolitan Sydney. And it is a cost sink. Could I just ask exactly how much we gave to the EPA for the privilege of burying our own waste in our own hole with our own staff and our own vehicles last year? Director

Of Infrastructure.

Through you, Madam Mayor, it's approximately three million dollars a year.

Three million dollars a year, and I think we last year, I think we got back a hundred thousand dollars from that fund that is supposed to be returned to councils to help with our waste management. Generous, very generous indeed of the state government in that instance. And for people playing at home, that's part of the reason why it costs so much to go to the tip, because the state government is siphoning off $3 million out of the Hawkesbury's coffers every single year. Every year, and has done for decades and will continue to do so. What this does, I think, is position us really well for the future. We could take the easy option that many councils now have of building a transfer station and sending all our waste away.

We know that there is no away, though, and for most councils, that away is rapidly turning into an incinerator on the outskirts of Goulburn, and that's really not the actions of a forward-thinking state. What we've got here, I think, is much more powerful. It gives us an opportunity to lead on waste management and to ensure that our waste is handled well instead of just sending it out to pollute another LGA. It sets us up really well for future partnerships and sophisticated resource recovery innovations. I think this is a really good way forward for Council, and I thank the staff for the time and effort that they've spent and their commitment to a forward vision for both the LGA and the waste that we generate.

It's an inevitable thing that we deal with, and I think this is the best way forward to manage this responsibly. So thank you.

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

The next item is 5.1.1, Heritage Committee.

Councillor Wheeler. I'll move the recommendation in the business paper, Madam Mayor.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett seconded. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. This is quite straightforward. I think I have brought it up previously. We had a really, really useful discussion in the last meeting of the Heritage Committee about the livability plans for Windsor, and the committee's main focus was making sure that things that needed to be done as the project evolves were articulated clearly early in the works. So we've learnt a few things, I think, from the Richmond project, particularly with regard to heritage. And because we had the opportunity to both talk with the council staff and the consultants, thanks to the council resolution at the end of last year that allowed us the online meeting with the consultants, members of the committee were able to really drill down into what was likely to happen in Windsor and what the impacts would be on heritage buildings.

There remains concern from the National Trust that That some of the consultation and the consultation with the Heritage Office has not been clearly articulated or clearly represented in the business paper and/or in the reports that have come to the Heritage Committee. I think we can probably move on from that and ensure that consultation remains open and transparent. We had a very good discussion, I think, with the staff around what is needed for the project, largely with regard to the substrate up through the town centre and adjacent to heritage buildings, but also particularly in the consultation with the Dharug members of the Dharug community. And it's become very clear that minimising disturbance and doing some research with the assistance of the local studies librarian and the Dharug community around what disturbance has occurred previously and what depth of disturbance is likely to occur in stage two of the Windsor Livability Project allows us to minimise any further disturbance, but also to have on-site Dharug consultants.

And it's become very clear that the consultation with the Dharug community needs to be with members of the local Dharug community, not with the Land Council or some external body, so that it's not a box-ticking exercise. This is a real, meaningful consultation with that community who have been shut out of consultation so frequently in the past 200 years. There has also been some interesting conversations around the Green Hills, the town of Green Hills, or the pre-1810 town of Windsor. So Jan Barkley-Jack's PhD thesis, which was only submitted early this year, shows the original town centre, and it does show that our friend Macquarie did jump on the bandwagon, in fact, that Rickaby was the one who mapped quite a lot of the early stages of what we now know as Windsor, and Macquarie just jumped on it.

So Rickaby appears to be our first property developer, sold off some areas for development, perhaps a little bit ill-considered when we look at the low placement of some of them, but certainly that area around Macquarie Park and up into the bottom of what we now call Windsor. And there's a call for some of that history to be better marked out as part of this project, be it with sandstone curbing, which we have a great stock of now at the depot, and I'm sure the director of infrastructure would like the space back, and some other mechanisms, perhaps with the marking out of early roads or roadways. So I think it's all quite doable. But the goal of the Heritage Committee was to articulate this as early as possible.

We now know that the mall area probably won't start until 2025, so we've got time, I think, to get this right. So the Heritage Committee was appreciative of being able to articulate its concerns and give its advice, and I think we should take it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? No, right of reply? Not necessary? Thank you. Those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent

Is Councillor Calvert. I declare the item carried.

The next item is 7.1.1, responses to Councillor questions taken on notice at the Council meeting 13 February 2024. Any responses, Councillors?

Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was just wondering, of the answer around Packer Road, the total design and planning fees of around $60,000, is that it? Is that designed, or is there a lot more, or is that half, or what sort of proportion would that be? Director of Infrastructure, sorry.

Through you, Madam Mayor, that is the vast majority of the design investigation. The remainder of such fees, or such expenses, I should say, would be in the setting out once the works commence, and any requests for information or guidance required from the contractor as the project progresses.

So the bulk of the—what was it, four million or three-point-something million—the overall cost?

The overall project value, so not the contract value. The overall project value was 4.8 from memory.

Okay, and the actual cost was three-point-something. Is that correct? I'm just wondering what the actual construction cost is as opposed to the ancillary costs.

Yeah, so through you, Madam Mayor, the construction costs, including geotech advice throughout and survey setout and so forth, would be approaching the 3.8, 3.9 million. Okay,

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

It's time to move—

It's time to move into confidential. Can I have someone move that way? Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Veigel, second that. All in favour, please raise your hand. Yes. Carried that unanimously. We'll go into confidential. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you everyone, we are now back in open session and that is the end of the meeting for the 12th of March. The meeting has ended at 8.17 p.m. Oh sorry, the General Manager has to read out the confidential session. I'm too eager. Thank you, General Manager. Thank you, Madam Mayor. In regards to item 8.4.1 regarding the contract for the management and operation of the Oasis Aquatic and Fitness Centre, whilst in closed session the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Kotlash, seconded by Councillor Reardon, that Council: one, pursuant to section 55 3 i of the Local Government Act 1993, Council does not call tenders for the management and operation of the Oasis Aquatic and Fitness Centre upon the expiry of the extended contract term on 30 June 2024, on the basis of extenuating circumstances as outlined in this report; two, Council extends the term of the contract with Y NSW through a deed of variation for the management and operation of the Oasis Aquatic and Fitness Centre for 12 months commencing 1 July 2024; three, the General Manager be delegated authority to execute any documentation to include any deed of variation associated with extending the term of the contract between the Council and Y NSW;

and four, authorise the affixing of the seal of Council to any documentation in regard to this matter if necessary. For the motion were Councillors Conolly, Djuric, Dogramaci, Kotlash, Lyons-Buckett, Veigel, Reardon, McMahon, Sheather, Wheeler and Zamprogno. Absent for the vote was Councillor Calvert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, General Manager and thank you, Councillors. I declare the meeting closed at 8.18 p.m. Good night.