11 June 2024 - Ordinary

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Hawkesbury City Council's meeting for the 11th of June 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 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 5.3.3 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. 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 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 also requested that any person participating in or attending the meeting this evening has their mobile phone, can they please either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you very much. We have one apology tonight, and that is from the Deputy Mayor Barry Calvert. We do not have any confirmation of an apology of that sort from Councillor Dogramaci, so he will be marked as absent this evening. Any declarations of interest, Councillors? Oh, sorry, we need to move those — the one apology and the absent. Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Reardon, all in favour? Yes . Thank you, Councillors. Declarations of interest. Councillor Wheeler.

I have a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in item 15.3.1.

Thank you, Councillor. I will declare I also have the same less significant non-pecuniary interest in item 15.3.1.

Any other declarations? No. Thank you, Councillors.

Can I please get a confirmation of the minutes from the last meeting? Thank you, Councillor Reardon. Oh, sorry,

Councillor Wheeler. Madam Mayor, I

Have

A problem with the minutes of the previous meeting. Yes. On the, at the last item, it states that I was absent from the meeting, so that's item 15.4.1, and it states here that I was absent. I was not absent. I was excluded from the meeting because the technology didn't support me attending the confidential session via Zoom, and I'd like that noted.

We'll make that change. Thank you, Councillor Wheeler. Someone happy to move the minutes with that change, please. Councillor Reardon, seconded Councillor Vigal. All in favour, please raise your hand. Favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Vigal, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent from the room is Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare the minutes carried. Agenda items subject to public...

As you can see, councillors, we have one item with a speaker present and one with a written submission that is tabled. We'll take the item with the speaker present first and then just go in order of the run sheet. The first item, therefore, for debate is item 10.2.2, the Operational Plan and Resourcing Strategy. We have one registered speaker, Matilda Julian. If you'd please like to come to the microphone. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor and councillors. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Hawkesbury Environment Network, otherwise known as HEN. I'm speaking on two specific items that we were surprised to find had no funding allocated to them in the Operational Plan. The first item is the continued development of the Koala Plan of Management and specific funding for the next phase of its development. We've been informed by council staff that the first phase or report should be finished by the end of this year, and so we were expecting to find at least a small allocation of funds to continue its progress. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The second item is funding to implement council's Urban Greening Strategy, which was adopted in August last year, and at that same time a motion was passed to provide funding for it.

Again , we were disappointed to see that there's no specific funding for the Urban Greening Strategy. With regards to the Koala Plan of Management, councils, as I understand it, have been in favour of its development since it first came to be mentioned before council. And so we hope that again this evening, you will all vote in favour of supporting its progress and in doing so protecting our koala population. It all began some two and a half years ago when half of this council voted to opt into the Rural Boundary Clearing Code. There was and still is incredible concern from community members about the impact on wildlife and specifically koalas and their habitat. To allay these concerns, a report on the methodology and costs of preparing a koala management was requested.

More than a year or so after, in June 2023, a report did come through to council and it resolved at that time to allocate $100,000 from the 2022-2023 budget to go towards this first phase of the plan, which is high quality vegetation mapping. This is the item that is currently listed in tonight's operational plan. I do, I emphasise that this particular funding and the item listed in the operational plan is from funding that was initially allocated in 2022-2023 budget, and that since that time no further funds have been promised or allocated. Our concern is that come to the end of the year when the first phase has been completed and council staff are hoping to undertake the next phase, which is koala habitat mapping, there will be no allocation of funds for that to happen.

It has been now more than two years since council opted into the Rural Boundary Clearing Code, and in this time I've personally seen devastation of habitat corridors across fence lines. I live in Bilpin, so one might assume that such clearing is for asset protection. But it saddens me to say that the clearing is, in almost all cases that I have seen, for reasons such as aesthetics, neatness and practicality. One area in particular that I have seen cleared used to have regular koala sightings. We know that Hawkesbury koalas are not only vulnerable, but they are very special, being the most genetically diverse in all of Australia. One could say that we hold the fate of the koala in the Hawkesbury.

They face incredible risks every day crossing roads, avoiding dogs, attempting to move from one patch of habitat to another to find food, mates and shelter. We and this Council has the power to help mitigate these risks by choosing to allocate a small portion of the next year's budget to the second phase of the Koala Plan of Management. The second item is an allocation towards the Urban Greening Strategy, which this Council adopted last year. At that same time, I believe almost all councillors here tonight also agreed and voted in favour of putting towards funding for the implementation of that strategy. We've got that operational plan before us tonight, and regardless of last year's motion, unfortunately, there's no specific funding for that strategy.

The first page of the Urban Greening Strategy states that a coordination role is required for effective implementation of the plan. It also states that a steering and working group are to be set up and to ensure that Council's budget and plans are reflective of the strategy.

We know how beneficial the impacts of implementing the strategy will be, particularly in a warming climate. We know, for example, that South Windsor is hotter than it should be by three to six degrees, and that actions in the strategy will help cool it down.

Ms Julian, sorry, your time is up if you just want to finish on that point, please.

Thank you. In conclusion, I am asking Council to vote tonight in favour of putting money towards a second phase of the Koala Plan of Management and to also put some funding towards implementation of the Urban Greening Strategy. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Any questions, councillors? No, thank you very— oh, sorry, Councillor Sheather does.

Have you had any response from the staff in relation to your request?

I did provide a written submission in relation to the operational plan, and as I understand it, there's been no material changes to the plan. There's been some details changed, but as I understand it, no material change.

Yeah, but have you got any documentation from our staff in relation to your comment or not?

Documentation. Has there been a response to your request?

In terms of my submission on the operational plan, no. Okay.

All right, that's all. Thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you, councillors. Councillor Conolly,

Moved that way. Move the recommendation, please.

Second, please. Councillor Reardon, thank you, Councillor Conolly. Councillor

I start by asking a question just in regards to, in particular, the Koala Plan of Management. There's only brief comments in the summary of submissions. I understood, and I just wanted to check my understanding, that that work will be completed later this calendar year, and then further options will be identified. Will we have a better idea of what's required by the time we do the September quarterly budget review?

Director of City Planning. Yeah,

Thank you through you, Madam Mayor. That's correct. We are actually working through the process of developing vegetation mapping using the existing layers available, and that was following advice from DPI, following which information will be presented to a briefing and also a subsequent Council meeting to talk about next steps, prospective costs, and also prospective grant funding that may be available once that vegetation mapping has been completed.

And I couldn't see in the submission—just missed it—but when I read the submission summary and I can't see it now, any reference to where the urban greening strategy is up to and what funding might be required. Could we get some advice on that, please?

Director of City Planning. Yeah,

Thank you again through you, Madam Mayor. Look, the urban greening strategy is in part being undertaken through the Infrastructure Services Open Space Program. So some of the funding that's actually being allocated to Public Works is also to essentially develop the green canopy that's been identified through the urban greening strategy. It's certainly staff's intention and current action to seek grant funds to further implement the urban greening strategy that was committed to when the strategy was adopted. And whilst it's not called out explicitly in the plan, there's an extensive planting program happening as part of the Open Space Program.

Thank you. On that basis, I'm still happy to support the recommendation in the business paper. I think there are important valid points that have been made, and I think it's really good to have an organisation that keeps Council accountable like that and points out what we've adopted and haven't funded. I, in the briefing we had, I expressed my... I don't know if the right word is, lack of comfort with the idea that we're adopting a budget that's got such a variation to what we put on exhibition. But in a short, it is essential that these changes have come in so late that that change in the bottom line and those significant changes. There's no other way to do this other than to either re-exhibit and not have a budget by 1 July, or to move ahead so we can have business as usual and, you know, I guess flag to the community now that we're going to have to make significant changes potentially in September.

So on that basis, I'm happy to support the recommendation.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Reardon. Yes,

That was my understanding with the Koala Management Plan also. Great,

Thank you so much, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the item? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm just typing up an amendment for the staff, so I'll speak against the recommendation as it is, and then I'll send the recommendation through to the staff. What we've heard from HEN is something that I find is actually really troubling. We've had members of the community, and HEN is an umbrella organisation that covers environmental organisations across the LGA; they're not a single entity themselves, where they've gone through the process, Council has put this document on exhibition. The purpose of putting something on exhibition is to ask the community what they want from the document. It's a form of accountability and community engagement. And then it's come back, and effectively we are resolving to rearrange the information so that it looks like we're doing something.

And I find that galling. Yeah, for the community, I find that doubly galling , that they would go to the bother of putting in an extensive application submission telling us what they need from us, and our solutions are to add in, for example, the Western Sydney Health Alliance partnership adds an additional action: encourage and enable our community to participate in a healthy lifestyle. We haven't done anything. We've just put in a heading.

Hen writes this lengthy submission, and we've added a section entitled Environmental Sustainability within the works program snapshot to highlight, not to do things, to highlight things . That's not the same. When the community asks us to actually actively do something, they expect that we do it, not add in a heading that makes it look like we might do it. That's not valid engagement. We can't expect people to engage with us if we don't take any notice of what they say. There's , I find that there's information that's lacking in here as well. I'd like some information, for example, on our carbon emissions. We have a 2030 target. We've just reinvested heavily in gas. We've got six years to hit our 2030 target.

I've got no idea where we're up to. What's in the operational plan that tells us how we're meeting those targets? What's the point of having an urban greening strategy when we haven't put any money towards executing the urban greening strategy? We can't— there's no point in having— this will be the policy term of Council. We've got a policy for everything. But at some stage, we have to actually engage in some activity. So I can't support the operational plan in its current form. We still have that lovely arrangement where the— where land of the highest value is subsidised by ratepayers with land of the least value, but clearly we don't talk about that anymore. But what I find really troubling here is effectively a rearrangement of the same spend without any commitment to delivering what the community wants.

So as soon as I've typed this up, Madam Mayor, I will send it through as an amendment.

Thanks. I'll need you to do that so that we can get a seconder, unless you want to read it out. Have you got the words in your head, or we can't really continue to

Debate without it. I do

Sorry? Speak against the amendment, against the motion.

Yeah.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I largely agree with what Councillor Wheeler has just said. I had a question first, though, and I'm just wondering what underlies our decision to go with the maximum 10.5% interest rate on overdue rates . I hadn't seen that before. I hadn't heard of that before. Can somebody give an explanation around that? Chief

Financial Officer. Through you, Madam Mayor. So the Minister advises what the maximum rate is, and we put that in as a recommendation, but it's up to Council as to what percentage they apply. Okay,

Thank you. Well, I may ask Councillor Wheeler to include reducing that in her amendment in a moment, because I think that's excessive to go with the maximum rate. I know that we have had issues with people delaying their rates. It's hard times. There's hard economic times at the moment, and I think it's overly punitive to be Using a maximum rate of 10.5%, which is much beyond any other interest rates, and I don't think it's necessary. I think it's overwhelming for people who are struggling to keep their heads above water at the moment, and I don't think it's necessary to have it so high. I agree if it's an incentive for people to actually pay their rates, but I assume that people not paying them are doing so because of financial struggles, and they may not be accessing the actual hardship recovery because it may not be that severe.

But I think if they're thinking that they're going to be slogged with a 10.5% interest rate, I don't think that's going to incentivise them to come forward and pay. I had a few other questions around the budget. I notice in the Sealing Gravel Roads section, Packer Road isn't included. Are we to assume Packer Road is going to be finished by the 30th of June? Is that correct?

Director of Infrastructure.

Through you, Madam Mayor, Packer Road has approximately nine months' construction time, which section of the OP are you referring to?

I'm referring to the section that lists the sealing of gravel roads where it says Greens Road only. I

Said that's a new project. So the project that is Packer Road, as it's continuing and has already commenced, doesn't appear in that section. Okay,

Thank you for that. Another question I had, and this is really just for information around sort of figures that are within there. There's a figure of $80,000 that's in the amendments for Gravel Road Dust Suppressant Program. I'm just wondering if you can explain what does that look like? What does $80,000 give us in terms of gravel road dust suppressant?

Certainly, through you, Madam Mayor, in the dry period... Which is a long distant memory now. At the tail end of last year, we received a lot of requests for, or concerns, complaints around dust issues on our unsealed road network. Whilst our priority is on getting out and fixing existing roads, a small amount was identified and committed for investigating various options to suppress dust in a cost-effective way, with a view to hopefully finding a technology or a practice which is both affordable and effective to essentially apply to our gravel road network to limit dust. Okay,

Thank you. So 80,000 is enough to do that, is it?

Through you, Madam Mayor, it's for the purpose of looking at trialling technologies rather than undertaking more of a program. Okay,

Thank you for that. I'd just like to echo a couple of things that Councillor Wheeler said regarding when we have submissions and when we have people mentioning, you know, sending us in information about what they consider priorities within our budget. And another thing I was going to raise was around sullage costs. Every year we have people putting in questioning and asking about sullage, and I think this goes to a little bit like the Koala management situation. We've had various resolutions over the years around working towards long-term solutions to deal with pump-out and what we're going to do with these people who are slogged every year with a big increase in what their pump-out costs them.

And I just feel that there's no information anywhere around what our long-term strategy is to ever combat that ever ongoing increase where people are now paying thousands of dollars a year for pump-out with no sort of change in place. I understand it's a difficult issue. But I think our advocacy has dropped right off around it. We were pushing about seven or eight years ago, we were pushing to try and get solutions done , and we've just let it go. And it's hard for people to see upgrades happening around new development areas where everyone's getting, you know, in places neighbouring our LGA, they're all getting services, and yet there's no services coming to a large proportion of our community that, you know, are having increasing costs every year.

And I think that's becoming harder to bear for many people in that regard. The other thing I had a concern around was the additional money for the West Invest, West whatever it's called now program around Turnbull Oval. And I did question this previously, I think, about where the almost four million dollars of ratepayer money that a majority of this council decided to contribute, where that ever appears in the budget. Now I see in that program there's just a design phase amount being done. So I'm assuming, if someone can confirm this, that we're pushing that almost four million dollars down the track to pop into another budget somewhere along the way, because I couldn't see it in there anywhere.

So is that correct?

Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, that's correct. So at this stage, because it's very preliminary and there's a lot of scope consideration, so we would put it in, so we budget for what we're likely to deliver during the next year. Having said that, they are built into the long-term financial plan.

Okay, so I understand with the other projects because they're fully funded by WestInvest, the fact that this is half and half WestInvest and ratepayer money was what had actually concerned me. Just to look again at looking at this operational plan, when I was reading through it, I was also reading it in conjunction with two other strategies that we've got here tonight, which are the Economic Development Strategy and the Community Engagement Strategy. And I was trying to reconcile in my head how they all came together, how we're engaging the community, but are we translating what the community is telling us? And are we really putting the money into the areas where we say we're trying to generate and boost the local economy through economic development?

So I might raise some things around that in those other strategies when we speak of that. But I really, I feel there's a disconnect between all these various documents, and maybe somebody can explain it better to me, but I couldn't really bring them all together into seeing how they all sit together and how they properly intersect each other.

Thanks, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler, are you ready to read your amendment?

Yes, the staff should have it.

I haven't included a number for the interest rates. If Councillor Lyons-Buckett would like to give a figure. I think we were at 9% previously, is that right?

Councillor, could you please let us know what you've changed in terms of the current recommendation?

Sure. So the first bit, if we could just have that scroll down slightly. So item 1 has changed. The report regarding the exhibited draft Operational Plan and resourcing strategy be noted with the addition of $100,000 for the next phase of development of a koala plan of management and $50,000 for the implementation of Council's urban greening strategy, with this funding to come from the lower than projected emergency services levy. And then the only other change is at point 7, which is Councillor Lyons-Buckett's concerns about the interest rate.

I think we had it set at 9% previously. I agree that that is high.

Do you want to give a figure? Well,

I'd be interested to know how, I mean, I don't know the percentage of overdue rates we've got and how that would translate into a quantifiable amount of money.

Could we ask, through you, Madam Mayor, how many ratepayers we have who are required to pay that level of interest?

Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, the percentages of last year was 11%. We're anticipating that would be lower than that this year. We've had a fairly stringent increase into the debt recovery side of things. To just add some further information on to why the 10.5. So the Office of Local Government has a formula, and they've based it on certain percentages deemed to be an incentivise for payment over the Central Bank's forecast in terms of bond rates. So it's 6% above, so that's where that 10.5. So the increase has happened over since the 9%, so that's why that's built in, because that's what they determined to be enough of a penalty to be able to incentivise people to pay.

Can I also ask, is that 10.5% charged on people who have claimed hardship or just people who are late

Payers? So for those that have put in a hardship application, usually there's a waiver period or a payment arrangement where the interest is either waived or reduced during that hardship application process. So we determine, we negotiate with the ratepayer how long it will take them to catch up, and then we usually adjust the interest accordingly.

So do we know then what proportion of those people that are charged interest are people who are late payers because they're too embarrassed to ask for a hardship, or they're just people who think that their money would be better sitting in the stock market than in Council's coffers?

The majority would be those people that are potentially not aware. We do advertise. It's on our internet quite frequently that there is a process. However, we have also had experience where because we weren't doing debt recovery associated from COVID, that people were just sitting on it as well. Given the economic conditions, more people are probably suffering hardship than they were before.

Could we go back to the 9% that we had previously? So 7 would be Council adopting interest rate of 9% on overdue rates and charges. I think that it's probably still a margin above the bond rate, just not the full— That's Council's discretion. Not the full slug. If Councillor Lyons-Buckett is happy with that.

Seconder? I'll second the motion.

The amendment is now on the board.

Any Councillor wishing to speak? Councillor Veigel.

Question, if I may, Madam Mayor. Those who have got an overdue rate, is there a timeline before the interest rate kicks in on the overdue? It's 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, or straight away, as in past due date?

It's generally about six business days, but it is simple interest and it's only on the arrears, so it's not compounded.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. If we could scroll up to point 1, please, where it says that we allocate $100,000 and $50,000 respectively, and it says with the funding to come from the lower than projected emergency services levy, can you just give us some indication if we make that decision to allocate those funds, will it come out of that pot of money, or how will that impact on the whole of our budgeting structure ?

Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, I guess the main outcome is that in order to provide a balanced budget, the roads program was reduced. So in terms of the overall budget delivery, and in terms of the data we've received about the community's expectations, that certainly was more that direction. However, the emergency services levy would be where we would reduce that amount. We have the defined figure there, and it is lower than the budget projections, so we would allocate it on that. The only other advice I can also provide is that, you know, depending on what the findings are, in terms of that koala mapping, could change in terms of what we can deliver next year. So obviously, allocating $100,000, it might not be all able to be spent prior to the end of the financial year. So that's the only other thing to put into the picture.

Thank you. On that basis, whilst I agree that we need to spend more funds on koala mapping and greening, this is my patch. I mean, I'm well aware that that would be money well spent. What I'm not comfortable with is making the decision to spend that much money in this context. I think that I'd be more comfortable with us amending the recommendation in the business paper to say that we will actively look at the next quarterly budget if we can... You know, have some of those discussions about how this funding might be included into what we're doing already.

My understanding of the mapping that we resolved to get done was that was going to put us into a position where we could actually get more funds from the state government. And that is , please correct me if I'm not right, we have funded that. So that's happening, and that's going to be finished at the end of this year.

Okay. Do you want verbal confirmation? Yeah, sorry. I'm just trying to unpack. I don't like doing budgeting like this on the hop, and I think, I mean, you know, I think we should have been, I think this should have been brought up before we put our plan on public exhibition. But it doesn't matter. This is, that's the community has told us something. I just wanted to— Have a mechanism for us to take that on board and have a sensible discussion about how that will change in future. I'm not that happy with changing it like that tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Happy to support Councillor Will as amendment because when we considered our urban greening strategy some time ago, I commented at the time that it was an aspirational document that had zero ability to affect any meaningful change because it wasn't backed by the resources to execute. So I think that it's entirely appropriate through this process to kickstart that process with a sum of money, which probably isn't enough to complete this process, but it's certainly enough to keep faith with the community that expect us to execute on an urban greening strategy.

Can I ask a question, Councillor? Question for clarification. Sure.

I thought we were just told a minute ago that the urban greening project was being undertaken and we had allocated funds not necessarily under the banner of environmental sustainability. Could we just have confirmation that that urban greening strategy is taking place and will take place, please? Director of City Planning. Yeah

Thank you. Through you, Madam Mayor. Look, that's correct in that the open space program does make provisions for the planting of trees, and where that will happen is in accordance with the urban greening strategy, and it's all about achieving the desired canopy coverage. I don't actually have a breakdown of the specific funding that's allocated in the 24-25 budget in terms of planting, but we could take that on notice.

Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. I'll speak against the amendment. I think, for me, it's a really easy decision because the options we have before us are we can commit to this right now, or we can wait until we have more information in the next budgetary review, compare it with other priorities, make this exact same decision if we want to, and given the status we've been advised of both projects, it would make no difference to the delivery at all. So on that basis, I don't understand why it would be advantageous to go ahead and do this right now. Look, I just had to sort of refresh my memory of the actions in the urban greening strategy. A lot of them were planning-based rather than actual works on the ground, so I would want to see where do we get up to with that as a bit of a status report before we decide if we're going to spend money to continue planning, or we might want to spend money to plant and do other things in the infrastructure space.

Just, I don't have a huge problem with it going to 9%, the interest rate, but to put it in context, I just had a quick look. I know off the top of my head the ATO rate's about 11.5 if you're late on Commonwealth tax. The state, I just looked up the state rate, is 12.3 if you're late on state taxes. So we would be being very generous if we were, you know, a full three and a bit points below what the other level of government are charging on late fees. And obviously, as we've heard, there's an element of the market rate, and there's also an element of penalty rates. So, and I guess, I don't, I mean, I guess if it's 1.5%, it's not huge, but the only question I have was, is there a budgetary impact of going from 10.5 to 9%, given I'm assuming we've factored in some income from that?

Yep. Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, the budget is based on what we were seeing at the time in terms of the number of defaults. So potentially the rate dropping might be offset with increased numbers. So we're seeing higher numbers than we expected. So there would be a budget impact, but it would be likely to be immaterial.

Any other councillors wishing to speak on the amendment? Councillor Sheather. So you're

Light on? No?

Okay. So you're against the amendment. You can speak against the amendment.

Councillor Wheeler

Thanks, Madam Mayor. So I'll speak to the amendment. We won't get much of a go at the quarterly review because this council will go into caretaker mode in late August, and no one will be here in September. So I don't know when you think you're going to do all the stuff for the Koala Management Plan or the greening. We will just end up being the policy council. We'll have written lots of policies; we'll never actually have done anything on the ground, and that'll be really something to be proud of, won't it, when we look back at what this council has achieved. So we've got a policy to plant trees, but no money to plant trees. We've got some mapping of koalas, but nothing to move into the next phase to actually save those koalas from decisions made by this council that has allowed, as you've heard from the Hawkesbury Environment Network, to continue to remove koala habitat.

I notice on X, formerly known as the platform formerly known as Twitter, that on the 6th of June the Sydney Basin Koala Network posted, A koala on the move in Kurrajong Heights in the Hawkesbury today. It's been nearly a year since Hawkesbury Council committed to mapping koala habitat after significant pressure from the community. We're still waiting.

That's not a rare thing. There's a NationBuilder petition and information sheet, Koalas in the Hawkesbury update, progress report March 2024. Koalas are classified as endangered in New South Wales. Our report does not indicate the situation will change and is indeed likely to get worse. And then there's two pages where it outlines all the problems with koalas in the Hawkesbury, and further, how this council is failing to address those issues.

When will we do that? When? Will we just cross our fingers and hope the next council does it? We've got $153,000 — not plucking this money out of thin air — there's $153,000 of clear savings from the emergency services levy that we could spend on these two things.

The urban greening plan, it's more than just putting some trees in our existing public spaces. We removed a whole lot of trees from Bligh Park. We're continuing to remove trees from Bligh Park. We couldn't replant them, though, because we didn't have any money. Well , here we've got an opportunity to allocate some money, but we don't want to.

We've got some koala mapping that will be finished by the end of the year, and then we hope that we might get a grant to continue with the Koala Plan of Management . We could put $100,000 towards that tonight, now, money identified from savings in the budget, but we don't want to do that. We're hoping that we might find that at the quarterly review. We know what'll happen in the quarterly review. It'll get sucked into something else. When will we act, or are we just going to wait for it all to fall apart? Are we? wring our hands and say, ‘Gee, that was a shame.

Wouldn't have been nice if a council had done that.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Kotlash. Can I ask a question? Yes, you can. Councillor Wheeler, through you.

I suppose so. Councillor Wheeler, you've just indicated that $100,000 could go to the Koala Plan of Management. You do realise that that's not going to be works on the ground; that's going to be planning, and that's acceptable. I mean, you've just said we haven't done anything, but we really do have to know what we're doing before we can put any— Anything on the ground. So is that your contention , that $100,000 would be spent on another plan? Happy for a quick response, Councillor.

The Koala Plan of Management will allow us to act. At the moment, we're just going to have a bit of vegetation mapping. That doesn't translate into a KPoM. The KPoM has actual legislative and conservation powers behind it. That's what they're for. We are listed with a handful of councils in New South Wales with core koala habitat and a really significant koala community who don't have a koala plan of management. It's not a nothing document. It's a really important thing that provides protection for those animals and their habitat.

Thanks, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the amendment? Councillor Sheather. Question ,

Madam Mayor. Sure . In relation to the comments by Councillor Wheeler, if there was allocation of funds, where would that put us in relation to the resolution of Council and how we're dealing with it on the move?

A bit more clarification, Councillor.

Yeah, what's the money, that money, how would it be spent in moving forward, and I guess the speed in which those things can move on? Okay

General Manager.

Thank you. Through you, Madam Mayor. I'm not exactly sure if I've got the question right, Councillor. The substance of what's being discussed is that the fine-scale vegetation mapping and the work that is ongoing at the moment, approximately due to be completed at the end of this year, that's funded, may indeed have some savings from that $100,000 because some of that work is now being done in-house . What is what I guess Councillor Wheeler's motion does is quarantine that extra $100,000 for whatever tranche of work would come next. Why it hasn't been included in the budget is we don't know what that next tranche of work comprises at this point. And I guess what's been suggested in the report is that that be considered at a quarterly budget review once we've got the, we know what that scope of work is, and also what grant opportunities there may or may not be at that particular point in time.

In terms of where the current savings from the emergency services levy are, as the Chief Financial Officer has indicated , the roads program was, you know, was compromised in effect to bring about a balanced budget. And so that's where those savings were going to be redirected to, but we're entirely in Council's hands as to what you wish to do with it.

Yes, thanks, Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, I'd ask Councillor Connelly if that's the intent of Council, that would he mind putting another item on the motion to indicate that that's exactly what it is, so there is funds available, the public's made a submission, and that we will follow up on that.

We'll just have to vote on the amendment first, and if that's the case, we can ascertain that depending on the outcome of the amendment. The amendment's the one on the board right now. Can I foreshadow that amendment? You can foreshadow that, yes, Councillor, thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on the amendment? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll speak in support of the amendment. I think that this is what we have a responsibility to do because we're calling for our community to engage with us. We're calling for them to tell us what the priorities are, what they want us to do, what directions, and how we abide with the strategic plans that we have put before this community, which our community strategic plan very clearly states a number of objectives, particularly around environmental protection and protection of our very valuable and iconic flora and fauna that we have in this area. I think pushing it down the road is, we're doing that all the time in here, and I think it just, it's not sustainable to not ever make a decision when we have an avenue where we could be making a decision.

I wasn't aware that the money from the savings were going towards roads. I didn't read it as saying that. But I think for this amount of money, I mean, we spend a million, we've got a million dollars in there for events. So I think that as good as having events and everything is, we also have responsibilities. If we're calling on people to come to this area, that we want to make this area a place that's livable and lovely and green to visit, with its wonderful bushland and national parks and so on, we have got to put some money where we're saying we're trying to do these things. It just doesn't add up that we're just leaving it always for more information and another decision further down the road.

We've been trying to get koala mapping done here forever. I mean, I remember it being talked about in the early 2000s. I don't know why it's so hard. For a community that you heard Matilda speaking of has a very, very special koala population, why is it so hard for us to actually take some action to protect that and to support what the community and people from those environmental groups are telling us are important and that we should be prioritising? In terms of the interest rate, I think, thank you, Councillor Conolly, for those rates from the other levels of government. I actually think they're all too high. I think being punitive with people doesn't, it can cause people despair, I would think .

I don't know how that's incentivising them to think you're going to be charged a lot more, but I'm happy with the 9%. Well, I'd be happier with 5%, but 9 will do . So I'll support this amendment because Councillor Wheeler's right, our term here is almost finished. We promised that we were going to pursue various things. We went with our community strategic plan that originally was done back in the term before. We reinforced that. We held true to those directions and objectives in there, and we haven't delivered on very much in there at all. And so I think that this is one example where we can commit to something to ensure that that is not just going to be pushed into another council and then having to go back to square one and start all over again.

So I'll support the amendment.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the amendment that hasn't done so? No, we'll put the amendment. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Durick, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno. Those against, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor McBarn, absent are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dr Romarci. I declare the amendment lost. The motion is now on the board. Councillor Kotlash, you foreshadowed a change to that. Yes, thank you, Madam

Mayor. I could have actually done without having that up again, but anyway. Well , I've foreshadowed an amendment, but I will ask Councillor Conolly whether he would add a point nine to the effect that we take on board the feedback that we got from HEN on the koala strategy and the urban greening projects. And by the end of term, we commit to having dialogue to work a way forward and whether there's any— Funds that could be accommodated or used in that regard in the next quarterly budget. Get all that

Done. Can I suggest something slightly different before you depart? Okay.

Yes,

Councillor. What about that the September quarterly budget review includes a proposal for Council's consideration to provide further funding to the Urban Greening Strategy and Koala — sorry, right name — Koala Management Plan. Thank you. Rescinding

That, Patrick. We'll just wait for those words to come up on the board, but I think everyone. Sorry, Councillor Reardon, you're happy with that as the seconder? Yes? Okay, thank you. Councillor Kotlash, were you saying some— Yeah, that was— thank you, rescinded beautifully,

Thank you. Were you continuing to speak? I am committed to this work. I want this to happen. It just can't happen the way I think it's been talked about. We have to have a good, sensible way forward. That's our responsibility. I know we have responsibilities to do more work in the environment, and I think we're on the right track. But, you know, and I hear the submission from Hen and I agree with it, but we just have to do it in the proper processes. Thank you. Thanks

Councillor. Councillor Conolly, do you just want to check 9 on the board?

Yes. Okay,

Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on the motion that has not spoken on the motion? Councillor Sheather. Yeah

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm glad to see that go in there.

There needs to be a process. I'd just like to start to clarify, Councillor Mary-Lynne Buckett indicated the 150,000 that was over from the— From the fire building, had the levy had been directed towards other funding already? Has that been the case?

Yep. Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, no, there's no been reallocation at this stage

Sorry, could I just clarify that, Madam Mayor? I based that on what was said, that they took money from the roads budget and it would be going— Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, no, so that was balanced before the ESL was known, so we've reduced it, so that's why we've highlighted it, that, yeah, the money from the roads was taken out to balance the budget. So therefore the normal priority would be that we would reinstate what we can back into that budget.

Yeah, but it hadn't been allocated at that stage. I just wanted to clarify that.

Can I just clarify? When I asked, it says in here, when I asked last week in the briefing about what money was available, I was told that I asked that additional information be put in the business paper. On page 65 of the business paper, it says updates received during the exhibition period. The following information was provided to Council: the emergency services levy was advised and is $154,000 lower than projected within the draft. We've just had a discussion that basically said that the upshot of that seemed to be that I was stealing that $150,000 from the roads budget because it had been allocated, and now all of a sudden it's— so when I want it, it's allocated, and when somebody else wants it, it's fine. This doesn't make any sense

To me. I'm happy for the General Manager to clarify, please. To

Clarify what the Chief Financial and myself had indicated was that the business papers, correct, you've been presented a budget with an amendment, with a suite of amendments articulated in it that suggests that there is a saving of $154,000 to the emergency services levy that will be accounted for at the September quarterly budget review. What we had indicated, or what I had indicated and indicated in the briefing session also, was that the roads budget had been compromised in order to bring about a balanced bottom line. Okay? That the natural and logical place for that money to then be reinstated to was back into the roads budget. So my apologies if that wasn't clear, but that is the intent.

Anyone else wishing to speak on the motion, please? Oh, you're still? Want more to say? Thank you, Councillor.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. With the attachment three, item 10.2.2, when we get—there's background in relation to its infrastructure into assets per dollar-wise per resident, and we've got Blacktown, quarter of a million people, the Hills pretty well the same, Penrith pretty well the same, Hawkesbury 70,000. Blacktown's $10,000, $11,000 and $12,000, and Hawkesbury's 20. Why wouldn't we have somewhere like Wollondilly or some other rural council that has similar area or population? Rather than look at it in relation to cities of great wealth and population, I don't need an answer to that, but in future I think that if we're going to argue how we sit as a city, there needs to be some relevance in relation to population and area.

With the funding that we spoke about, and with the Sports Council, where we spoke about additional funds, the processes we're going through, that is going through the quarterly reviews and the likes, and I've been asked to pass on to the Council and the staff that they're extremely happy with the discussions and moving forward. Knowing full well there's going to be some budgetary changes and a lot of frustration, I guess, in the future to bring this to a better structure, I guess, in the sense that the responsibilities that Council now faces, and being the Sports Council 3575 of Council, they need to conform in every way. And while the process in the past has been acceptable, processes change and we've got to change with it, I guess.

So anyway, they're extremely happy with that process. There's a couple of items within the business paper, one of them... is Redbank and the charge we're imposing. I had a look at the area that we're talking about, the drainage, and it's about 300 metres long.

And if we're going to spend the amount of money proposed on that, we need to seriously think about how we conduct our business and the likes. It's a small area and I think it should be further discussed. I know we've spoke about the options, but the method, I guess, and how we're going to work and do that, do those works that's required, because it's a lot of money and it's proposed more money over time. So I'd like the staff at a future date, maybe in a briefing, to discuss what methods or things we're going to do to utilise those funds on that particular piece of land.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak on the motion that hasn't? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, I have you listed as

Open. Yeah, I did speak, Madam Mayor. I just had a question. It was about the quarterly review, or quarterly budget as it's now being called. Could I just have some clarity, please? I've always understood that the process was to set an annual budget, basically that's how the budget was going to be for the year, and the quarterly budget review was a review of how that was travelling each quarter. But here tonight I'm hearing people speaking about as if we do a new budget every quarter. It's been called the quarterly budget. So if we decide to have a complete change of tack and spend a whole lot of money down the track, we might do it in September or we might do it in December. Isn't the idea that we set a budget and we review it, not that we come three months down the track and decide to do a whole new round of things? Have I spent 12 years here misunderstanding what the process is?

Chief Financial Officer.

Through you, Madam Mayor, the quarterly review is an opportunity to test the budget assumptions. So obviously the budget's assigned with a whole range of assumptions. As further information comes to light, like as we've had during the exhibition period that will continue, we're yet to have any advice on the financial assistance grant. So that can obviously change the programs quite significantly. Also, a lot of strategic documents are prepared and then you have the next stages. So the quarterly review is also an opportunity to take the next step based on those information requirements coming to light and understanding better pictures in terms of the way forward. So it's an opportunity. It's not obviously a whole redo, because unless you're getting a lot of extra income in, it's not a redo.

Plus, a significant number of grants, obviously, that we're having at the moment is leading to some changes during the quarterly review. So it's a lot of a bigger process than it was before.

Thank you. I do understand that, and I understand that it's for the favourable and unfavourable changes from the original budget. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. I guess to clarify, that's what the intent of that point is, is that as I indicated when I first spoke, I am somewhat uncomfortable adopting a budget when we know the budget already has had changes quite recently that mean that some of it is just not accurate anymore. However, it is the 11th of June. For us to go and re-exhibit now is impractical. For 28 days, come back and adopt it in July provides uncertainty and is not practical. So on that basis, we just have to push ahead with adopting the budget we have and then making the changes in a considered way in the next review. I'm sure it's not the intention of anybody, but I found the idea, the concept we were discussing quite disrespectful.

We had staff saying to us— You know, the current obstacle to progressing the strategy is not funding. The current obstacle is that we're at a different stage of the work. We need to wait and see what the next stage is and identify what funding and actions are required. And then we have people sitting here saying we're not doing anything, and we're never going to do anything, and nothing's ever going to happen, as if our staff are lying to us, and if they had more money they could do more and faster. Point of order, Madam Mayor .

What is your point of order?

Councillor Conolly is impugning improper motives. I did not accuse the staff of lying. My comments were not to the staff. My comments were to the inaction of this council, not to its staff.

Can I just answer the point of order? I literally said at the start of this, I'm sure it's nobody's intention, but I found it disrespectful. Yeah,

Thank you, Councillor. Please continue.

I found it disrespectful, and I'm suggesting to people with an open mind that other people might perceive it the same way, whether you meant it that way or not. That we've had professionals sitting here telling us the current obstacle is not funding. The funding allocated tonight of a random number will not make this go any faster, and we're just completely ignoring that advice and suggesting that if we don't make this funding happen and allocate this random allocation of funding as been presented to us, that therefore it's going to go slower and not happen, and I find that quite disrespectful. To say that this is a policy, it's all about policy and there's too much policy, and then to suggest we spent $150,000 on more policies, that to me is nonsensical.

None of the actions of the Urban Greening Strategy are about planting trees, not a single one. They're about updating our policies to make other people plant trees or keep trees that are already there. What has been said to us tonight is that through the infrastructure services, we're already going to improve canopies by looking at it when we look at our own projects. And we have no idea where the Urban Greening Strategy is up to, as far as I know. I don't think we've had a report back on which actions are completed, so we wouldn't know what that $50,000 was going to achieve, which actions have already been completed, and which actions require $50,000. Again, we just picked a random number and then suggested that if we didn't allocate it, therefore nothing was happening, and I find that really disrespectful and hard to have a genuine conversation around.

So I'm quite pleased that council's made the decision, I think, to go ahead with the motion.

Thank you, Councillor. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Bygott, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly , Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Durick, Councillors Improgno, Councillor McMahon. Those against? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, absent are Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare the item carried.

As I said, Councillors, there's a written submission, but we'll just go in order now as per the run sheet. Item 10.1.1, withdrawn planning proposal, Belmont Park Estate. Now, bear with me. Even though the item is withdrawn, we do have to move a motion as follows, that as planning proposal LEP 001/24, Belmont Park Estate, Grose Wold has been withdrawn, Council not consider the matter. Do I have anyone wishing to move that way? Councillor Zamprogno second, Councillor Reardon. All those in favour, please raise your

Hand. Madam Mayor, I've got a question.

Yes, Councillor.

Was the applicant aware that this recommendation was likely to— I mean, with the discussion, there's a lot of work involved, was the applicant made aware that this was on tender hooks?

Director of City Planning. Yes,

Through you, Madam Mayor. Yes, they were.

Thank you, Councillors. We'll vote on the motion. Madam Mayor,

I was prepared to move that motion so that it could be the subject of some discussion.

Thank you, Councillor. Please proceed.

All right then. I appreciate that the applicant has withdrawn this application. That's their prerogative when they have business before Council. It's worth observing that several inches worth of documentation had been provided and as we were working our way through that, on the assumption that we would be making some public comment and some decision about this tonight, I felt quite confident that the Chamber could come to some decision. And that these matters would be aired because they are of considerable interest to the broader public.

Point of order, Madam Mayor. Would it be possible to have the motion on the board so we can Just if we can have the motion on the board so we can understand if any of this is relevant to the motion we’re considering

Thank you, Councillor. Is that possible? Thank you.

Very well. The remark I was going to make, Councillor Conolly, was that we hope that matters make their way into the chamber so that bad arguments can lose in a fair fight in the public square and that people can see that that’s occurred. And certainly the question of development over the river is of significant public interest, and I wanted to ask a question of management, if I may, and that is to say: is there a difference between this being presented and, say, for example, defeated at tonight’s meeting, if we voted against this? Is there a difference procedurally for the applicant between this coming to the chamber and being voted down, or simply being withdrawn and resubmitted at another time?

My understanding was that if it was defeated here, the only avenue open to that applicant would be to take it to the Land and Environment Court. Does this process , does the withdrawal of the matter negate that? Manager.

Andrew. Manager Strategic Planning.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So if the applicant hadn’t withdrawn the application for consideration prior to tonight’s meeting and the matter was subsequently decided by Council to not proceed, then they have rights to a rezoning review through the Department of Planning. It’s not a Land and Environment Court process . It’s a process through the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, but— They have withdrawn, so that means there's no more consideration of the matter, and if they did want to pursue a future application, then it basically starts from scratch again. So obviously that would involve obtaining advice from the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel, of which, you know, the business paper highlights a number of issues with the proposal. All right then, I'm satisfied with that answer. Thank you.

Is that all, Councillors? No right of reply necessary then. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon, absenting Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare the motion carried.

Sorry, councillors, I was to do items on block there. Items on block not in confidential, items on block outside of confidential are items 10.4.1, 10.4.2, 10.4.3 and 10.4.4. Can I have someone move that way? Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Reden. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reden, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash , Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler. You're not supporting the items on block? No, Councillor Zamprogno? Well then you need to let me know what item because I have to pull it out.

Items on block mean it's unanimous. So if there's something you're not supporting, I have to pull it out. Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon, that's absent from the room, and Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare all items on block carried.

The next item is planning proposal reclassification of 1905 and 1913 Bells Line of Road, Kurrajong Heights. There is a written submission from Peter Lonergran that you have all been provided with that has been tabled. I don't— I'll just read that out, I guess, for the public who have not seen this written submission. It states, The owner of Lot 4, 1897 Bells Line of Road, would like it noted in the planning proposal application that Mr Lonergran of Esteen Farm, 1897 Bells Line of Road, Lot 4, DP 58287, which adjoins Lot 3, has farmed both lots continuously since 1978, maintain the land and fences, and use the land in accordance with the zone. The owner supports the planning proposal with the above factual and historical note. End of submission.

Do I have someone willing to move that

Way? Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Kotlash. Councillor Conolly. Oh

Only very briefly to say that unfortunately this has been a really, really long process. We're getting towards the end of it, hopefully, so happy to support to continue on the way.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm assuming that the intent of Mr Lonergran's submission was to have that specific statement noted somewhere within the planning proposal. Is that correct?

I thought it was in lieu of making a verbal submission tonight at the meeting.

Okay. The last sentence says the owner supports the planning proposal with the above factual and historical note. So you think he's just telling you

That? Just telling us that information, as if they were speaking at the speaker's podium. That

Would be my

Interpretation. Okay

The reason I ask is that I had read all the various documentation around this, and it has been a long time coming, and I do support the planning proposal. I was just wondering what process—it says that any negotiation about who would be to purchase any or all of that specific portion would happen after the planning proposal. But given that another property owner, the Lonergans, have come forward and said that, you know, they have maintained sections, and it does sort of intersect with where their property is next to the Tutti Frutti property, I think, is there a process to ensure an equitable opportunity for both landowners to be able to be involved? I think it's two lots there anyway, lots two and three.

So how will we address this after the planning proposal comes back to ensure— I don't think that would be a—it may be a council decision. Just while it's in the chamber, I just want to ensure that there is a process that acknowledges this information, that there are two property owners there, and that both of them should be involved in any negotiation. Obviously not to assume that one person had any claim over all of it once it's rezoned.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? Oh, there was a question. Sorry, it was a question. Yes, I'll just refer to

General Manager. Yeah, I'll take it. Thank you. Councillor, look, that's a perfectly reasonable question, and it's something that our property team will certainly work their way through as part of our normal due diligence when we would be entering into an arrangement for leasing and licensing of land, I think.

Thank

You.

Any other councillors wishing to speak? No, right of reply, Councillor Conolly? Not necessary. Those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillors Improgno, Councillor McMahon, absenting Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare the item carried.

The next item is the 10.2.1 Draft Communication and Engagement Strategy. Do I have anyone wishing to move that way? Councillor Sheather, seconded. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather. No, nothing necessary. Anyone else wishing to speak on the item? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, I would like to speak on it, and I'm very happy for it to go on public exhibition. I've got a question up front, though, first, and that is the question I have asked many times over the last seven years: where is our RAP up to?

Director

Of City Planning. Yeah,

Thank you through you, Madam Mayor. Look, it's currently with Reconciliation Australia. I think the last email correspondence that we had with them was probably about five and a half weeks ago, and we have made phone calls and further emails to follow up on its whereabouts. But it's certainly our intention to proceed to bring that to Council post this feedback. I believe this is about the fourth or fifth time that it has been sent back to Reconciliation Australia for amendments. Okay,

Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy for this to go out on public exhibition and to have some feedback. I encourage people to give feedback because, of course, it's all about engaging with the community. So it's the community that we want to hear from, and we've got various examples in the business paper of how people have considered the engagement is going. But I think people should take this opportunity to get in now. Don't wait until it's a survey coming further down the track or until you're making a complaint. Speak up now and say what it is about engagement with Council and what sort of things you want to engage with Council. This is the opportunity to do it now. I think it's really good to see within the document the acknowledgement of the need to understand the audience and the diversity of the communities, because we know putting information out to this community involves going to people in very different situations and locations with different needs and expectations as well.

I did think the survey was still quite low in numbers, although I know survey numbers have specific benchmarks, and I think, though, considering how easy it is now to do a survey, like basically people are doing surveys left, right and centre. So I'd like to see more people engaged, and that's why it would be good for people to comment on the specific documents. I think the thing that, a couple of things I think, when people say things to me like, Oh, I don't, I never hear about that, or I wasn't asked, or whatever, I think there's a few issues around that that we really still need to take on board. And I mean at the heart of all of that is that information in of itself is not necessarily useful.

It's the comprehension and understanding of the information we give people that is really important. So when people only pay attention to things they want to hear about or in line with their specific ideologies or beliefs or their expectation, it's often very hard to overcome that confirmation bias and actually get information to people that we want them to really understand. And so, I think that when we're measuring engagement, it's not just about whether people have received it or clicked on a website or clicked on a Facebook page. It's whether they've received the information that they require to be able to actually do something with it and whether it satisfies what they've been looking for.

I think it only touches very briefly on the role of councillors in terms of being part of the communication strategy. And I think that it's a really important thing. We're residents as well. We're part of the council. We represent different sections of the community. Use us. You should use us to be helping getting this information out. I think oftentimes when we've all supported something, it would be good to use all of us to get that information out because, you know, it can sometimes neutralise any political divisions that are around aspects. I mean, the mayor is the official spokesperson, but that's for speaking on behalf of council. When we're looking at selling a program or an initiative or something to the community, if you use all of us and we've all agreed, then that reaches out to the people that may support one group of people and not another, and they understand that it's a whole of council decision.

And I don't know that we've necessarily done that with some issues where we've seen some sort of kickbacks that come back. Other things I noticed in there that I think we sort of would have to really look down the track at dealing with is the lack of engagement of people over 65, hilariously called seniors for those of us in that sort of age bracket. But there's massive changes coming around things like AI and technology and so on. We're going to have to at some point understand how we move with that time and how we keep these people informed. I don't know how you do that, but that's something to look at. And I think that having people involved goes beyond box ticking and tokenistic engagement.

And one thing that did bother me was it's around the understanding. Again, it's on page 25 about DAs. We have an official structure of how we notify people, but with so much complying development these days, people have works starting next door to them and they haven't even known about it or whatever. So as well as just saying about notification, we need to educate people that this may happen to them, that just because they don't get a letter doesn't mean that they're not going to have something spring up next to them. And I'm wondering if there's a deficit in that sort of information that we're getting to the public that actually tells them what may happen. You might not get a notification about something, but something may happen in your neck of the woods and you're not necessarily going to know about it.

So I think that is another area that we can look at. And I think that was about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I think this is one of the better documents that has come to us in recent times. I'm not sure that all of it belongs in the strategy, and I speak about the results of the survey. I think they're probably a point in time, and perhaps they could be pulled out and sit maybe in an appendix rather than sitting in the middle of the document where they sort of chunk it up a bit, I suppose. And I'm talking about the stuff around sort of pages 35 and 36, and that block of information, like the focus groups, page 38. There's really interesting stuff in here. I think the fact that 40% of the community still want direct mail as their primary contact, I think that's probably a surprise.

Maybe it shouldn't be, but I think it probably reinforces to us that a hard copy of something that arrives in the mail has more official weighting often for people than something that springs up in their social media. And maybe it's that very permanence, that in your face, it's sitting on the desk, I'm going to pick it up 15 times before I get around to paying my rates. Although, you know, 9% interest, maybe I'll get a bit swifter at that. You know, I think that tangible contact is really interesting that that still has so much weight. A few things that I think could potentially be added around things like Council's commitment to engagement. We've talked about the under-engaged audience. One of the groups that's missing from there is people with disabilities.

I think often they do struggle to engage, and we sometimes, yeah, they don't necessarily engage through the standard pathways that we rely on.

I really find this whole brand and corporate speech in here uncomfortable. We're a service organisation. We don't have competitors. Our people either deal with us or they go without. So I think it's fine that we are recognisable and we are strong, but I don't think we have to be a brand. We are a government entity. I don't think we need to brand position on page eight. We are a service organisation, not a brand. I don't, yeah, the talk of corporate objectives.

I find that grating. We are, we are here. We are what our ratepayers demand of us. We are not a business entity with shareholders and a profit motive. We are here to serve the community. One of the— there's a couple of other things that I think would be, and also the army of ambassadors. I think we could probably demilitarise that language and just talk about our ambassadors. Following on from Councillor Lyons-Buckett's comments about development applications, we've got in the engagement, on page 25, we talk about how we will engage, notification letters, publishing. What I would really like to see, and I know we've talked about it, I think perhaps in the previous term of council, we talked about adopting that policy of a yellow notice on properties that are going to have a DA.

If people don't— we have loads of times we've had people come to us and say, I didn't even know this was happening, you know. And I think about that Communications Tower in Bowen Mountain, for example, where only a tight group of surrounding residents was informed and the rest of the community had no idea until someone put that information out. If we were to do what many other councils across Sydney did and put up a yellow notice saying, This is going to happen on this site, I think people would pay attention and it would cut out some of that

Angst and that shock. Page 26 and 27, I would like to see First Nations stakeholders specifically included in that table. And I note that there's going to be a focus group with Murrawa, which I think is excellent.

That'll probably do me, I think. I'm really interested to see what submissions are on this document. I think they— I'm hoping that people engage with this, but I think the focus group stuff shows that we've had some really useful engagement, and I think the stuff that comes out of the specific engagement with Colo and St Albans is really interesting and useful as well. Thanks.

Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Mayor. It is a good document, and I'll be very brief. It's on page nine, and it talks, Our approach will guide the following principles: it's accessible, proactive, timely, inclusive, supportive, transparent, diverse, meaningful and clear. If we can achieve half of those, in the community's eyes, we'll be way in front. And I think the document's been put together well. The people that's been involved with it, and I've made comments in relation to some of our staff that work regularly in that area, is excelling. I guess in these areas we need to step up a bit. I know through some of the things we discussed tonight, there's protocol that hampers that. And the only other thing that quite often I make comment about some of the statistics in the papers, and I note that this one— has gone to particular care in quite a few places to rectify that problem, and I appreciate it.

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

The next item is item 10.3.1, Draft Economic Development Strategy. Do I have someone wishing to move that way? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded.

Anyone? Councillor Veigel? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Look, I’m happy for this document to go out on public exhibition. I’ve had quite a few concerns with it, specifically around perhaps missing areas of engagement, amongst other things. But first of all, I just had three questions, if I could just ask those first. The first one is, what stage is the Regional Economic Development Strategy for the Parkland Councils at? Does anybody know that?

General Manager.

Thank you. Through Madam Mayor, it’s very close to completion. So a document had been tabled at the most recent Mayoral Forum. The mayors had asked for that to be revised and some amendments made to that, and there was a workshop held less than two weeks ago. So we’re expecting that a revised document will be presented, most likely back to the next Mayoral Forum for adoption, hopefully.

Would it be going too far to ask if the Hawkesbury is featuring in that, or, I mean, is it going to be relevant to our process here?

The way in which the document is structured is not on a geographic basis, but certainly there are a suite of common economic drivers across the Western Parkland City around, in particular, things like agribusiness, defence, small businesses, a couple of those key things that tie quite neatly into the Hawkesbury, of course. The prevailing message that the Councils have been trying to get out of that economic development strategy is one of actually around infrastructure and the criticality of providing good public transport and road networks in and out of the new Western Sydney International Airport, and the criticality of that in terms of the economic benefits that flow from that for our communities.

Thank you. That's good to hear. The next question was on page 11. It refers to proposed development at the Richmond RAF base. Is that something that, for example, is part of that more regional strategy, or is that something—what sort of development is that referring to?

General Manager. I can probably take that one as well. That is not part of the regional development strategy. That—and I shouldn't talk out of school because I'm not exactly across the nature of it—but as I understand it, that a very significant contract has been entered into, or is about to be entered into, for a wholesale redevelopment with additional squadrons and the like out at the RAAF base. Okay

So it's related to aviation. It's not like development of that site. Okay, thank you. The other question I had—I think I might have another one, but this one—is the Hawkesbury really still the number one producer of perishable vegetables? Is this true?

Director of City Planning.

Through you, Madam Mayor. Yes, it's understood that that's correct. Okay,

Thank you. I'm a little surprised at that, but I am pleased to hear that. I'll speak to the motion about putting this document on public exhibition, and again I call on the public, particularly those in the business sector, to really give us their feedback. My concern around the level of engagement was that the Chamber of Commerce I know is representative of some businesses, but I couldn't see anything that specifically was directed at businesses west of the river, who generally aren't in the Chamber of Commerce, and the many businesses in the gig economy or the farm-related agricultural-based businesses that are around. There didn't seem to be any particular focus on those particular groups.

We mention a lot in there around pick your own or tourism-related sort of cellar door and that sort of thing, but I didn't see their feedback in there, and I'd be interested in that. Another issue was there's a—I'm wondering with the conclusion around the Hawkesbury underperforming and less bounce back from pre-pandemic levels, there was no explanation as to why. And there's a couple of things that came to mind around that, which was, is that related to our overall economy or are there some external factors? Are our strategies to be investing money in holding events for people to come not delivering ongoing benefits to the local economy? And is the delay in delivering the Liveability Project having some sort of impact?

Because I know we've lost shops in, you know, there's more vacancies in Windsor at the moment. They're just questions to hopefully get some feedback on before this is adopted. document that's adopted. Something I'm very passionate about, as you would know, is EV infrastructure, and it's 2024 and we still don't have that, which of course, we don't have that locally in public places, and I know some could be coming from the state government, but it does reduce the number of people in electric vehicles using this as a route to travel by and as a destination place to come to.

It also says that the largest sector here is construction. Now, I'm assuming that means that just in terms of employment, people work in construction, but they don't work in the Hawkesbury because there's not a lot of construction in the Hawkesbury. So I think that's a little misleading because it sort of says that the largest sector here is construction, and I think we need to distinguish whether that's somebody's actual employment or whether that is actual economic activity that's taking place in the Hawkesbury. I'm a big advocate of maximising our availability and use of employment land, and particularly for ensuring the protection of agricultural land on the floodplain in particular, where we've got many opportunities , I think, to come.

There's identified challenges in marketing to visitors. I don't know what that is. Is it our name? Is it that people don't know this is the Hawkesbury? I don't know why that is an ongoing thing . And similar to something Councillor Wheeler mentioned in the other thing, but do we have to have included things that say rise of foodie culture? Can we please not speak in these bizarre terms all the time and, you know, call it what it is, cuisine or something like that. I mean, rise of foodie culture just doesn't really— I don't know. It doesn't make me think that I'd want to go somewhere just because somebody had put that. There's a lot of opportunities I think that aren't included that we have around our cultural sector.

We have a really vibrant cultural sector. We've got so many talented people here. We've got so many opportunities with our really vibrant cultural areas, as well as sports tourism, because I think we've got really good sporting facilities. But to hold big tournaments and so on, we don't have adequate accommodation that suits a whole lot of kids coming to play basketball or coming to play cricket or whatever. So there's probably some other—definitely we need more accommodation variety and those sort of things, I think, go into the economic development. The other thing is, if we're marketing for our scenery, and we touched on this with the issue just previously around the koalas, if we're making a big push about that, then we've got to be shown to be protecting that.

For too long in this council, we've had this thing about that housing development will be the answer to boosting a local economy. But we know the Productivity Commission has found that that is not the case. That's not what boosts a local economy unless that's where people want to live. And we know from all those various reports that have been coming out that people want to live close to transport links and services, not away from their employment and not away from where they can get access to those sort of things. The other thing is establishing what tourism actually is and what people accept as tourism in their local area, because we don't really have comprehensive plans around that, and I think that leads to the land use conflict that we're seeing so often in our tourism areas.

Councillor, your time has expired.

I know, and I've had enough whole page. Oh well, never mind.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. Madam Mayor, I wasn't super impressed by the strategy, to be honest, and I , in two minds about whether we put it on exhibition because that's the last chance we can do anything with it, that make a submission myself as an individual, or whether we hold this up to the next term. But there's just, to start off with the actions, I've just gone through and highlighted all the actions that I don't think that Council is the best place to deliver, of all the local stakeholders, and I'm not likely to achieve anything. Some examples: continue to provide information to new and prospective small business owners on available resources and support via the e-business newsletter. I get the e-business newsletter.

It's cut and paste everywhere else's newsletter that I also get of what things different organisations are offering. Establishing, investigate the establishment of co-working and startup spaces, desperately needed. It seems unlikely again that Council is going to be the provider of that. I would be thinking we would be looking how we can facilitate a private operator of that. It seems incredibly unlikely we're going into that business. Hold two annual business events. Obviously, you know, trying to be very in tune with local businesses, and well I do, I can't get to all the local business events that are already. There's already so many local business events. I don't think we're going to invigorate our economy by Council holding its own business events as well.

Establish the systems to support local businesses to easily access state and Commonwealth government programs. That's, to me, that's insane, that Council. So you're going to have a Commonwealth government going to put a grant out there, and that's the job of the local council to help the business access the Commonwealth grant. That's duplication and crazy to my end, to my thinking. Investigate what new opportunities to access overseas markets are created by new Western Sydney Airport. Hopefully there'll be huge, huge opportunities , but again I don't think any serious investors are sitting around waiting to see what markets Hawkesbury City Council identifies to go and make an investment in.

It's just not, I don't think how the world works. Review local industry needs and interests in strengthening the network. Identify the next steps and investigate relevant state and federal government grants. Again, it doesn't seem like we're going to be the leader there or going to provide any real value. Build upon the pilot business mentoring program. There are already state government-funded mentoring programs that don't have any particularly good outcomes that I can see from my experience with them or any of the reporting. Design and deliver a program of workshops, business 101 seminars, and skill development. Again, local business is not looking to Hawkesbury City Council to teach local business how to be business people.

There are state government-funded programs for people who don't know what they're doing, but that's not what we need council to focus on. Develop a prospectus for an investment prospectus. Again, I think this is like from the 80s. Like, no one's waiting for a prospectus to decide where they should invest. The world doesn't work that way anymore. You don't decide where to invest. You look for an opportunity and you go for it, and oftentimes that's not geographic anyway. Support local manufacturing, agriculture, and industries through existing channels. Nothing wrong with that, but again, it's not going to do anything. And then on the evaluation framework, sorry, I'm trying to race through this.

The output we're going to measure is the number of initiatives delivered assisting small businesses, which, as you know, from all those strategies, I think half of them don't actually assist local businesses in a meaningful way, and we're going to measure that about success of how many we do. Same with number two. Most of these are a number of initiatives. Some of the ones that I think are quite relevant are the ones that actually focus on council's operation and how council interacts with local businesses. So improvement of processing times for development applications, very important. Satisfaction rates of visitors to Hawkesbury LGA by survey, that could be useful. But, you know, the number of e-newsletters, the number of town centre improvement projects, that's quite relevant.

But I also think, as identified in the strategy, sorry, that retail is not a huge part of our economy. Tourism is not a huge part of our economy and never will be. And yet we always focus on, when we talk about economic development, we focus on retail and tourism, ignoring the fact that we have mainly tradies in this area who have their business address in the Hawkesbury and work all over Sydney, and we have a lot of professionals. And I think the most important thing that I would think, you know, without having done all this work, would be for those groups of people that they have reliable internet connection and the ability to get around quickly, as well as those co-working spaces. But I don't think that that's for council to do.

So I don't think this is of huge value. I'm sort of open to putting it out there and then making a submission. But I wouldn't want anyone to think this is our— this is what us as an organisation is our best shot at this, because I don't think it's very good at all.

Thank you, Councillor. Madam Mayor. Yes.

I'm happy to withdraw my motion if Councillor Conolly had an alternate motion on the basis that I do agree with a lot of what he just said. Councillor.

I wondered if we're— sorry. I wondered if we're better off deferring consideration for a month and trying to see if we can fix it. But then I'm not— I mean, to be honest, like I feel like, speaking a bit out of school here, we've paid a lot of money for someone to do this for us to then have to go and fix it. We can do it. I'm not sure, but maybe that's the best way forward.

I'm happy to do that if we want to alter the motion to that, or I'll withdraw mine and Councillor Conolly can put that in.

Just one moment, I'm just getting some advice.

Just some advice from the general manager. It's probably going to take more than one month to do those kinds of edits. If you wanted to maybe defer it for two months, that's just some advice, but it's up to you what you want your motion to be.

Can I ask a question? I assume we've— I know we have used a consultant for this report. In the event that council is just, you know, quite unhappy with the outcome, do we go back and pay for them to have another shot at that?

General Manager.

Through you, a consultant was certainly brought on board in the infancy of the initial preparation of the plan. Most of the recent edits, and I'll get the Director of City Planning to check me if I'm wrong, but most of the edits recently following the workshop we had with councillors have all been made by council staff, as best

I understand it.

Yeah, so it's something that we can do. But as I indicated to the mayor, I just think there's probably more than two weeks' worth of work in it by the time we prep and get it done, that's all.

So what I might just ask, so we know what's on the floor. Currently it's the recommendation, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, did you want to move something differently, if you wanted to change that? I'm happy. Or we can just make it an amendment.

Or we can make an amendment. I'm open either way. I was a little keen to get some public feedback as well, given the time constraints, but I'm certainly happy to work on it before it goes out to the public as well.

Thank you. Councillor Conolly, did you wish to move an amendment to that effect?

Yes, I guess the amendment would be defers consideration to a councillor workshop, or not necessarily to a councillor workshop, to enable councillors to provide further feedback.

Thank you, Councillor. Do I have someone to second that amendment? Councillor Veigel, thank you. Anyone wishing to speak on the amendment? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'm speaking for the amendment. I wasn't able to support the original motion. This document needs a lot more work. I think it's, I find it quite simplistic. It's a bit cookie cutter and— It's a really good proofread. There are some real non-sentences going on in this report, and that's, I think, disappointing. I know that our staff are under the pump, but if it's not ready, don't give it to us. You know, page 17, Town Centre revitalisation. There is a strong interest in and resources that are being directed towards—these are not sentences. This is , I think this document is a bit outdated in its focus, and it lacks that cross-organisation complexity that I would expect to see of something of this magnitude.

We were talking about this stuff eight years ago, and I would like to think that we've moved forward since. There's little mention here of Council's advocacy role for infrastructure, for example, and that's one of the key things that holds up business. You know, the fact that people can't get to work, you know, in a timely fashion , that public transport offerings are really poor. They're not key responsibilities of Council, but advocacy for improvement is a key responsibility of Council. That's not here. Some of the things like, there's missing detail around, for example, there's a quote from business owners on page 17 around insufficient business lands. There's a lack of suitable office or retail space.

We've gone over this already. We knew back in 2019 that much of the retail space in Windsor, for example, was inappropriate because it's too large. You know, it's old-style supermarkets that don't fit the shops and office space that we need. We just keep reinventing the wheel and not moving on. And, you know, the thing that's really missing for me here is this discussion of how we improve these things that are raised in the actions table across various— Pieces of council's role. So, things like, and Councillor Conolly raised some of the actions here, but we've got really simplistic outcome measures like the DA processing times or the number of DAs is one of the outcomes. What I'd really like to see is much more complex outcome measures.

We've got information earlier in the document that talks about the need to provide housing, suitable housing to keep young people here to stay in our workforce, and that's a workforce issue for council as well as a workforce issue for businesses in the LGA. But just ticking the box on the number of DAs being passed doesn't necessarily fill that. I'd like to see us measuring whether we've got DAs that are going to increase our housing mix across the LGA that will allow young families to buy a two-bedroom apartment or a three-bedroom house, where we know we've got this abundance of offering of four- and five-bedroom properties that are largely unaffordable to young people. Where is the complexity in this document?

There's an outdated spelling of the Dharugan. We've been told by Aboriginal communities that that spelling is old, the spelling on the library. We need to get our heads around that and alter that spelling. It should not be coming in documents to us now. That needs to move on. Our unique attributes are so much more than these sort of clichéd statements. Where is art and culture? Where is sport? Where is the Hawkesbury's unique place as the peri-urban backyard of Sydney, surrounded by this sea of development? That's what I want to see from this document, how we fit into that jigsaw puzzle of peri-urban Sydney and how we can exploit that to grow businesses in the Hawkesbury. We had these conversations before we started the livability program.

We were on track. I know we've been derailed by COVID, by natural disasters and all of those things, but let's get back to where we were. We were better at this on the— Four or five years ago. Thanks.

Thanks, Councillor. Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I can't help myself. I've got to tell you my favourite quote again. Measure what is important. Don't make something important because you can measure it. And this evaluation framework on page 24, sorry, just smacks of this. It's going sort of on , following on from what Councillor Wheeler was saying about, let's figure out what is really important and let's figure out how to measure it properly. If you have a, for instance, number six is number of e-newsletter editions per year, and apparently the outcome is improved number of website hits. Well, that's not going to measure, that doesn't measure that. And if we want to get an idea of whether we are stimulating the business community, website hits is not going to do that.

So it just needs to be mindful about what we actually want to figure out and something that we can actually modify and tweak and develop on. You know, you can hit on a website page and stay there for six seconds, but that's not what we're wanting here. So that needs to be reworked and on that basis, I'm really happy that we're going to defer

This. Thanks.

Thank you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll speak in favour of the amendment. I was keen to get it out to the public because I thought there were missing, missing sectors of particularly the business community, and I was hoping we would get that feedback. But I'm just as happy to work more on it because I did think there was quite a few things missing, and I'll just continue on. There was also, I thought that we would have more about opportunities to pursue partnerships around the circular economy, for example. Which is mentioned in there, but not really an action about how we might do that. And we know that council is going to have to transition certain sectors of operations, such as the waste sector. And we need to define what our role is as a council in contributing to the local economy, anything connected to that, which there are many opportunities around it.

The reason I asked about the regional planning was I'd be really interested to see that, to see what we could leverage off that in terms of what might be applicable to our specific local area, even though I know it's not done geographically, as the general manager has just said. But because there's a hierarchy that we sit within state plans and regional plans above us, I would be really keen to tie it in with what we've seen, what is included in that. I agree with Councillor Wheeler. Some of this stuff, I mean, things are moving pretty fast in local economies. They're changing all the time. We all know that retail patterns have changed. Things like shared workspaces, that would have been a really good idea, you know, seven to eight years ago.

We've moved on with new technology and because of COVID, and we've got more home-based businesses. So, you know, now we have to be thinking about shared networks within the virtual space, not within the physical space necessarily. And a lot of those things will be just driven by the needs of people. So I don't know that for us to have to outline them all is necessary. I really want to hear from, you know, both businesses, but also from our community about what things they think would really stimulate economic development. I just think we've got the opportunities there, and I think for me, the thing is really trying to define our actual role in that. So in terms of new technology, and I just think that this is just going to be the biggest challenge for businesses, for government organisations, for even us as individuals.

In the coming years, the, you know, the adoption of AI into Just about everything is going to make really fundamental differences, and I think that we really need to be putting some effort into knowing, you know, what's ahead of us and how we adjust and how, as a council, we are part of an economic development plan, I guess, or movement to ensure that we're not just sitting on things from the past, but that we're offering people things that have moved forward. And I think that is really important, even though, of course, we value our heritage and our past and our history, we've still got to operate within the current economic climate, and that is a challenge, a really challenging thing to do, and that needs to be done by involving everybody.

The one thing in there that I think we really need to look at is presentable town centres, and I think that Richmond is looking great. It's thriving. It's, you know, I do see individual businesses out looking after their business, cleaning up. It looks much cleaner, and I think that we know that there's an impact around that when, you know, when things start to look a bit nicer, everyone pitches in. But all our town centres should be inviting, and that is a big integral part of boosting economic development. I'm keen then to work more on this. I think probably a really good definition , a more defined set of objectives about what we're actually wanting to achieve from this would help the councillors maybe in our input, because I think it spans, you know, as Councillor Conolly said, if it's spanning into tourism and spanning into all sorts of things, that's not necessarily at the core of what economic development is about.

And I look forward to further work on it.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? No. We'll put the amendment. All those in favour of the amendment, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Connelly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Durick, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor McMahon. Absent, Councillor Calvert and Councillor Dogramaci. I declare the amendment carried. The amendment becomes the motion. Is anyone else wishing to speak? Right of reply, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

It's me again. No, not necessary. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

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

The next item is 14.1.1, responses to Councillor questions taken on notice at the Council meeting 28th of May. Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I've got a few. Question 3 regarding Mitchell Drive—sorry, yeah, Mitchell Drive and Ian Street, Glossodia. There seem to have been quite a lot. I noticed that the business paper states that we've had one complaint from a resident.

Have we checked that that's the only person who has an issue? Have we proactively gone to see if people are happy? I know it was long-awaited works. There was a bit of a lynch mob out the front when the Director of Infrastructure and I met with them some years back. They were very excited that this work was going to finally start. How sure are we that they are happy?

Director Infrastructure.

Through you, Madam Mayor, it's not our practice to go and seek individual comments back from residents once we've finished a job.

So we had quite a lot of complaints on social media during the work. Did any of those come to Council apart from that one that's mentioned in the business paper?

Through you, Madam Mayor, I can't recall the negative comments on social media. The complaint that came through was following the completion of the works, not during the works, and my understanding is that it related to one of the driveways that was reconstructed as part of the Kerb and Gutter works.

Has that been corrected now?

I'd have to take that on notice.

Okay, thanks. Just regarding—so question 4, Kermond Road. That's great that the bit between Geeks Road and Reserve Road is being... It's being looked at. That's getting increasingly narrow. What about the bit between Reserve Road and Goricks Lane? Is that on the— do we know where that is on the works plan?

I'd have to take that on notice, Councillor. Thanks

Again , that's getting narrower and narrower. It's quite a high traffic spot. And the Woodberry Reserve security arrangements, I understand that it's the contractor's responsibility while it's under construction. What security arrangements are in place, and I'm happy for you to give me these outside of the meeting if it compromises security for them to be put out publicly. But what security arrangements do we have for that site after it's been handed back? It is reasonably secluded in that it's not on a main— lots of our parks are on a main thoroughfare. People drive past them. This is tucked away. Do we have— and I know that there's residents' concerns about security in there.

In terms of the security post-completion and what is or is not in place, again I'd have to take that on notice, and then as you've alluded to, my preference would be to not necessarily disclose that publicly. Sure,

That's fine. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. If that's all, can I have someone please move into confidential? Councillor Kotlash seconded, Councillor Reardon. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Declare that carried. Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Calvert absent. We'll move into confidential. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillors. We are now back in open session. Before the General Manager reads out the outcomes of the confidential session, Councillor Wheeler, could you please read your— whoops, a daisy— could you please read your declaration of interest, please?

Start again. I have a less than significant non-pecuniary interest in item 15.3.1, the acquisition of 6 McKinnons Road, Wilberforce. The nature of the interest is that I am a member of the Communications Brigade of the Rural Fire Service. The reason for no further action is that it's below the threshold for significance.

Thank you, Councillor. I also declare an interest in item 15.3.1, less than significant non-pecuniary. I am a member of the Hawkesbury Communications RFS Brigade. It is a non-pecuniary interest as I am a volunteer. I'll now hand over to the General Manager to read the outcomes of the confidential session.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. In regards to item 15.3.1, acquisition 6 McKinnons Road, Wilberforce, whilst in closed session the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Kotlash, seconded by Councillor Veigel, that Council acquire the property known as 6 McKinnons Road, Wilberforce, Lot 3 in DP 598774,

For

The amount detailed in the report, as agreed between the parties, subject to satisfactory environmental studies or reports being received by Council. Two, Council's General Manager be delegated authority to determine if the environmental studies or reports referred to in part 1 are satisfactory. Three, should the General Manager determine that the environmental studies or reports received as referred to in part 1 are unsatisfactory, the matter will be reported back to Council. 4. Following acquisition of the property, Council classify the property at 6 McKinnons Road, Wilberforce as operational under Section 31 2A of the Local Government Act 1993. 5. Council's General Manager be authorised to execute any documentation in association with this matter, to include any contract for sale under the seal of Council.

6. Details of the resolution be conveyed to the affected landowner together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of the resolution until such time as the appropriate documentation to put such a resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties. For the motion were Councillors Conolly, Djuric, Kotlash, Lyons-Buckett, Vargel, Reardon, McMahon, Sheather, Wheeler and Zamprogno. Absent for the vote were Councillors Dogramaci and Calvert.

In respect of item 15.3.2 regarding appointments to the Local Planning Panel, whilst in closed session the Council resolved

On the motion of

Conolly, seconded by Councillor Vargel, one, in accordance with the approval contained in correspondence from the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure on 27 May 2024, appoint Anthony Hudson as Chair of the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel from 1 July 2024 until 30 June 2027, and appoint MaryLynne Taylor and Grant Christmas as alternate chairs from 1 July 2024 until 30 June 2027. Two, select the following expert representatives for appointment to the pool of expert members of the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel for the period of 1 July 2024 until 30 June 2027: Paul Berkemeier, Graham Brown, Gary Chapman, Stephen Davies, Marcia Doheny. Christopher Hallam, James Harrison, Glanis James, David Johnson, Elizabeth Kinkade, Paul McFarland, Philip North, Heather Wharton, Sue Weatherley, Greg Woodhams.

Three. Advise the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure of the appointments to the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel. Four. Select the following community representatives, subject to satisfactory probity checks, to the pool of community members of the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel for the period 1 July 2024 until 30 June 2027. Katrina Hiltbrunner, Preeti Karan, Wayne Mitchell and Laura Scriven. Five. Delegate authority to the General Manager to finalise the appointment of the recommended community members in accordance with the requirements of the Local Planning Panel Fact Sheet, Panel Members Selection Guide for Councillors.

For the motion were Councillors

McMahon, Vargul, Reardon, Conolly and Kotlash. Against the motion were Councillor Sheather, Djuric, Lyons-Buckett, Wheeler and Zamprogno. Absent for the vote were Councillors Dogramaci and Councillor Calvert. Ah

And that was resolved on the casting vote of the Mayor.

In regards to item 15.4.1, divestment of Windsor Sewerage Scheme.

Whilst in closed session, the Council resolved

On the motion of Councillor Kotlash, seconded Councillor Conolly, that Council: one, note the report on the divestment of the Windsor Sewerage Scheme. Two, enter into direct negotiations with Sydney Water for the divestiture of the Windsor Sewerage Scheme. And three, receive a further report on the result of negotiations with a view to considering a final decision on the divestment of the Windsor Sewerage Scheme. For the motion were Councillors Conolly, Djuric, Kotlash, Lyons-Buckett, Veigel, Reardon, McMahon, Sheather, Wheeler and Zamprogno. Absent for the vote were Councillors Dogramaci and Calvert. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, General Manager. As that is all of our business for this evening, I declare the meeting closed at 8.55 p.m. Thank you very much. Good night.