23 July 2024 - Ordinary

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Hawkesbury City Council's ordinary meeting of the 23rd of July 2024. Thank you all for being here. I just firstly like to acknowledge our Indigenous heritage. Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Dharug 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 now call on the General Manager to give us some advice.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the public attending the meeting this evening, though in bars, in the event of an emergency, you'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our Warden. I'd like to advise that in accordance with Clause 5.33 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting and live stream 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 gallery can be seen in our live stream video, and if you do not wish to be recorded in the live stream, please move into the foyer and we will turn the foyer speakers on for you. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, and the recordings are stored on Council's record management system and uploaded to Council's website. Meetings of the Council may be separately recorded with the prior authority of the Council. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you'll 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 to any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Finally, it is requested that if any person participating in the meeting or attending the meeting this evening has their mobile phone on them, could you please either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, General Manager. We have some visitors here tonight, the young people from the Hawkesbury Sister City Project . It's good to see all these young faces here for a change. We get tired of looking at all the old faces around here, so it's good to see you here.

I speak for myself, yes, I will. Now, one of the parents has requested that they would like to video when their student speaks. Now, in order for them to be able to do that, Council has to approve that recording. So I'm going to ask if someone would like to move that. Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Conolly. All those in favour, raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon , Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, and Councillor Calvert. So yes, the person who is doing the video is fine to go ahead and do that. I'd just like to read a little bit first, and then we're going to actually give certificates out to these fine young people, and to a few people who maybe aren't that young either.

The Hawkesbury Sister City Association Youth Ambassador Exchange Program has recommenced this year after a break during COVID. We will be sending six students from the Hawkesbury to Temple City in the USA, and six students from the Hawkesbury to Kiyotamba in Japan. We are also receiving students from our sister cities in reciprocation, with four students coming to us from Temple City and six students coming to us from Kiyotamba. All the 22 students are here with us this evening. It is a pleasure to welcome you all to Hawkesbury City Council. For those of you from Temple City and Kiyotamba, welcome to the wonderful Hawkesbury. Since 1988, hundreds of students have participated in exchanges between Temple City and the Hawkesbury through the five-week homestay program.

The programs that the Sister City Association provides have given many students like you the opportunity to experience different cultures and develop skills and knowledge that will be treasured for a lifetime. Building friendships between people and nations is the motto of the Sister Cities program, and I hope many of you have made long-lasting friendships through your recent journey. It is with much pleasure that I commend the work and dedication of the Hawkesbury Sister City Association. This year marks 40 years of the relationship between Hawkesbury City and Temple City, and I would like to present you with this certificate to mark this special occasion. I congratulate you on your milestone and hope that you continue to inspire many more generations to build friendships between people and nations.

I'm going to get up and give you your certificates now, but after that, if there's any young people or members of the association who want to say something, you have an opportunity straight after the certificates are given out. So I think I'm moving over there, and your names will be called, and please come out, and I'm happy to meet you.

Thank you.

Okay, firstly. From Colo High School, Ava Bennett.

Congratulations. Great certificate.

Also from Colo, Finn McKinnon.

Good on you.

And from Temple City, Megan Draper. No

Sorry, from Colo High School, going to Temple City.

Also from Colo High School, Chloe Johnson.

Good on you, Chloe.

From Windsor High School, Lauren Clark.

Good on you.

Also from Windsor High School, Lily Prah.

Well done. Thank you. Now I believe there's going to be a one-minute speech. No, later. Okay. People going to Koyatamba from Windsor High School, Sienna James

Well done .

Have a good time.

From Richmond High School, Asher Sullivan.

Good on you.

From the Centre of Excellence in Agricultural Education, selective high connected to Richmond High School, Onif Achig.

Good

On you, Matt.

Matthew Warren.

Adam Singh. Agam Singh, sorry.

And Savannah Miles Tio

We have a photo first, and then a speech, I believe. Someone's giving us a speech now. So if you'd like to file out, see you

Later. Enjoy your trip. Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, councillors, mayor, and fellow students. My name is Asha Sullivan of Richmond High School. I'm an ambassador of the Hawkesbury Sister City Association

Speaking today on behalf of those participating in the Kyoto, Japan exchange of 2024. I would like to thank

The Hawkesbury

City

Council

For

Their ongoing support of this program and allowing us the opportunity to learn and experience Japanese culture, furthering the connection between our sistering cities. We are proud to be representing our Hawkesbury community and to be the first cohort continuing this program after a several years break due to COVID. We cannot wait to show off the beautiful Hawkesbury to our new family members, then to begin another adventure when travelling to Kyoto later this year. This program offers an incredible opportunity for young people to make international connections, learn about themselves and others while being embedded in another culture and way of life. This is an invaluable life experience made possible by our generous council. I speak for everyone when I say we are extremely grateful to be selected to be a part of this program. Thank you

Hello, my name is Lily Parahot and on behalf of myself and the five other students travelling to Temple City, I would like to thank the Hawkesbury City Council for funding and supporting the Hawkesbury Sister City Association. This program has been around for 40 years and has positively affected everyone who has taken part in it. The program allows kids in the Hawkesbury to meet new people and learn about their different culture, language, countries and lifestyle. I'm very excited to learn more when I travel to Temple City in September and create new bonds and friendships with the people over there. Once again, I would like to thank the Hawkesbury City Council for supporting this wonderful program because without your ongoing support, this program may not be available for the youth of the Hawkesbury. Thank you.

So would students from Temple City and Kiatamba like to come forward, thanks.

From Temple City, Livia de Paula.

Congratulations. How's it been?

Good.

Kylie Fung.

Kyle, sorry

Christy Wong.

I should

Put my glasses on, make it easier. Pearl Seah.

Did I get that right? Shay. Pearl Shay, thank you.

From Kiatamba , Arka Inaba.

Daichi Tatsumi.

Well done.

Buka Wok.

Woki. Thank you.

Kentaro Komeda.

Well done.

Mamika Yamane.

And Nina Konishi.

Thank you.

I would now like a couple of

People to give a speech, and

They're

Ready

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nina Konishi. I came from Japan, and we are very much excited to be in Australia. We have been preparing since April, and we are really looking forward to it. We would like to try hard to learn something new and different culture. Thank you very much.

Hi everyone. My name is Pearl, and I just wanted to start off by thanking Hawkesbury City Council for inviting us and welcoming us here. And thank you to the Hawkesbury Sister City Association for also welcoming us. I'm really excited to be here. I wanted to share with you a few things that we love about Temple City, our hometown, because it's such a vibrant and colourful place, and it's actually, like, very similar to the Hawkesbury, in that your Hawkesbury Fair is very similar to Livia's favourite thing about Temple City, our Camellia Festival, which is essentially a competition between bands, and we have a big parade where we have floats made of camellias and other flora in the area. Kyle's favourite thing about Temple City being our taco spots in different places, like our pharmacies, parking lots, district office, all of those places.

We love our taco spots in Temple City. Krista's favourite thing about Temple City is definitely

This program.

And my favourite thing about Temple City is also this program, because without it I wouldn't have met Ava. I was about to say her Japanese name, Aba, because they don't have Bs in Japanese. I learned Japanese today, by the way. Anyway, thank you for inviting us here.

I'd now like to present Carolyn Bergman, President and Treasurer of the Hawkesbury City Sister City Association. With a certificate to mark the 40-year relationship with Hawkesbury and Temple City. Yeah

I'll just try and keep this quick, a little elevator speech. Thank you on behalf of the Sister City Association. Without the funding from the Council, this wouldn't happen, and particularly with the continuing support after our little hiatus because of COVID. It's very exciting to see everything coming together, and I think it's just really hit me tonight seeing everybody here, how wonderful it is, and seeing the kids, and they spoke very well. And, yeah, so that's it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Yes, it's a great program. I had the privilege of being on the committee many years ago, and they did great work then, and it's great to see they've bounced back after COVID, and it's now full steam ahead. And I hope all the young people here are having a great time and will have a great time. It's a great experience. So thank you for participating. I'd now like to invite everyone, all the young people

And the delegates—sorry, the three delegates, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett and Councillor Sheather—to come out here, out there for a big photo. Big photo's out there. Little ones here, apparently.

The item is apologies. I have an apology from

The Mayor.

Apologies. Mr Deputy Mayor, Chair, I wish to make an item of urgent business and to make the case for urgency.

Okay. Can you wait till I finish moving the apologies? Sure

Moved by Councillor Kotlash, seconded by Councillor Sheather. Anyone against the apologies? Declare it carried. Councillor Dogramaci, yes. Yes,

Thank you very much. I realise that the business paper has been finalised, I understand that, and any item or motion to censure or considered if urgency is established. And I'm sure that , well, this is a test. I said urgency will be established because I rely, and this will be the test of integrity, honour— Councillor

Dogramaci, can you just tell me what it is you want to move?

Yes. Since you are the Chair, my argument that the matter requires a decision, and I'm sure that in this room that you know it better than anybody else

Before the next— I do know that

I'd like you to tell us what it is you want to move, okay?

Why are you laughing? I think we need to call an ambulance tonight and the brain surgeon because someone is suffering from some kind of mental— Sorry.

Councillor Dogramaci, can you just tell me what it is

You want to move? Yes , sure. We have one more meeting, and ordinary, and I'm sure that Section 9.3(b) of the Code of Meeting Practice clearly states that, and I'm here to propose we suspend the standing orders, as I believe the community would expect. From us to debate in this chamber whether the mayor , our mayor, enjoys the confidence of the chamber. And I'm sure that everybody knows in this room what happened, what transpired in the last week or so.

Sir, don't go into that, Councillor.

And I don't think that, you know, you need a seconder to hear this. So

You want to move that council has no confidence in the mayor, is that it?

Yes.

Why didn't you just say so? Does anyone wish to second that? Councillor Zamprogno. What you have to do, Councillor Dogramaci, is now tell me why you think this is an urgent matter.

It is urgent because it doesn't matter whether the mayor, he or she or anyone. We are representing 70,000 people in Hawkesbury. It doesn't matter whether we heard whether it's true or not. I didn't follow it in 100%, but 70,000 people expect more from how we run this council and how we respond to—

Councillor Dogramaci, the question is why is the matter urgent?

This chamber has lost the confidence of the mayor.

In your opinion.

And it has lost the confidence. Her position, I feel that, you know, she should resign.

But that's not the question. The question is why do you think this is urgent?

If you can't

Convince me that

It's urgent— Well, that's what I'm saying, that, you know, the recent conduct of the mayor, her arrest by police and using council resources— Point of order,

Point of

Order . You shut up. Let him decide. You shut up. You're talking so much. He is the chair,

And

You shut up as well. You always do this. Councillor Dogramaci,

If someone moves a point of order, I have to

Listen. Well, you

Are in charge in here.

I am, and you better—

And he does this all the time.

I've told you, if someone moves a point of order

Okay. So basically that's it, her ability to focus 100% as a mayor. Which, her role, which the community expects in this chamber, and with regret, I think, you know, this is a difficult subject and we should consider debating. Okay, so

You say it's urgent because the mayor can't focus on her job, is that—

Not only that, only what happened. I mean, anyone could be arrested, but she is a mayor. She is representing us. I

Know all that, yes, but why is it an urgent matter that can't be put off to next—

Well, because we have only one more meeting.

Well, it can happen then.

Well, I think that, you know, we should sort it out now, so either she will resign.

No, you have not convinced me that it's urgent. You've been going on about all things about the mayor, and that's not the issue. The issue is why is it urgent, and so far you have failed to answer that question.

Well, I'll give you one last chance at it.

One last chance. Why is it urgent?

Well, it is urgent because we've got only one more meeting, and then we'll be as caretaker. That does

Not make it urgent. My decision, Councillor Dogramaci, is this is— you have not convinced me that this is an urgent matter, so therefore we will not discuss it tonight. Thank you.

Am I correct to say that

You are biased in this decision?

You're

Not correct to say anything. The matter is closed. We move on to the next item , which is—

Are there any declarations of interest? No. Councillor Dogramaci, you're not declaring an interest? You've got your light on. Sorry.

Confirmation of minutes. Would someone like to move the minutes? Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather. Is anyone against receiving the minutes? No. I'll declare it carried unanimously.

Up to, which is item 10.3.1, draft Hawkesbury Floodplain Risk Management Study and Plan. We have one guest speaker, Mr. William Sneddon. If you could come forward, please, Bill.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for allowing me to address this. I've been reading Floodplain Management Committee notes for something like 20 years, and finally this is the one that we really have been looking for, or needing, or I've been looking forward to. We had the Molino Stewart report from about three council meetings ago about flooding on the lowlands, and this lot is basically finishing that off. You've had put before you solid engineering scientific evidence, etc., regarding the issues on the floodplain. Now that we know that the dam wall is not going to be raised, we need to get on with living on the floodplain in an appropriate manner. And these documents are the basis of doing that. Raising the floodplain—sorry, flood planning level for domestics to one in 200, and industrial to one in 100, seems to be like a very safe move to me.

The dilemma with the Hawkesbury parallels the Hunter, where I originally come from, in that we can have long periods of dry weather, and I've seen people regularly at council, the old environmentalists, fighting with council staff that they hadn't seen a flood where they were wanting to build below the then one in 100 level. They hadn't seen a flood for two or three years. The staff must be completely mad. And I even saw somebody attempt to, if they'd had their way, probably grab a female staff member by the shirt and pull her across the desk for giving her the wrong answer about not being able to build on the agricultural block where they were obviously living in a shed and doing their agricultural farming.

So this lot now gives you serious information. It's the basis of getting along in a long-term manner. We now also are following this. Our serious sets of reports. We now are following along with the basis of the state and federal governments are getting us to live on the flood plains appropriately and build in appropriate places. We have so many places in the Hawkesbury that are below even the 17.3 metre. It's just crazy. And the nine floods we've had in the last four years, as the mayor had remarked in the last couple of meetings, they're only littleies. They're not the big ones. I have the one in 100 flood line across my back fence at South Windsor in Church Street. Regularly I used to get phone calls from people living out of the area to look at Rickaby's Creek and tell them whether to come home from Parramatta or not, or could they stay for the afternoon and finish a shift .

So I'm very much in favour of that. If I was a baker, I'd tell you this is about the best thing I've seen since sliced bread. We're really getting on with it. A couple of other things come to mind: the bee's knees and the duck's guts. So I recommend that you get this out to the two months comment period. It will be a different group of councillors making the decision. Some of you may not be there. I'm also expecting to hear screams and howls from various interest groups. I remember the first dammit committee when they posted the one in 100 flood level at the Pitt Town Windsor Road lights intersection, and there were screams of blue murder from the real estate people, and the sign and the flood level came down within about six weeks from memory.

So there will be a whole lot of people unimpressed and unhappy, vested interests, etc. But we need to get on and do this. Also there's the potential for buybacks for people living in the low-lying area, so it's not going to be a happy outcome from quite a few people, I would imagine. But we need to do this. This is serious engineering, and as a trained scientist, I'm very happy with what I'm seeing here. And I'm also going back to my high school geography days. I also, as a food technology student, went with the first lot of environmental engineering students from Hawkesbury Ag College in 1979 in SES flood boats down to Wiseman's Ferry and back, seeing all of the features and how it all pointed out.

So whilst I'm not a flood engineer, I certainly have some local and personal knowledge of what's going. So I commend this report to you. It's excellent. It's something that I've been waiting to see for 20 years. So we need to get on with the business, and also to keep our 70,000 residents, as Councillor Dogramaci has reminded me, out of harm's way. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Stedman. Are you happy to answer any questions? I'm very happy to answer any questions. Does anyone have any questions? Councillor Sheather?

Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Mr. Stedman. I was probably involved in putting that sign-up, I guess.

I carefully mentioned no names, sir. The warning I had on my speaking sheet.

Thank you, Mr. Stedman. You're talking about safety of the existing residents. How do you think that this is going to make them safe?

Well, if nothing else, it quantifies the situation. This takes any personal opinions out of it. It's solid engineering data. You also have allowances for climate change heights, raising the heights suggested for Sackville by six metres, etcetera, variously others up to North Richmond. This is reflecting real-world estimates in the current world situation . And we've got to remember, even though the Warragamba Dam wall is not going to be raised, most of the flood signatures can come from a completely dry dam wall from below the dam wall, Colo, Grose, etcetera, all the overland flooding from the South Creek development areas. All the flood signatures have changed in the last two or three floods, and I've seen them from my place at South Windsor.

I have never, in the last two floods, I have never seen Rickaby's Creek come up so fast, and it virtually didn't rain in the Hawkesbury. One or two days. Previously it would take five to seven days or more. So things have certainly changed. These documents are a serious piece of planning for this council . Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions? No , thank you, Mr. Snedden. Thank you for your interest and your support of this document. Thank you. There is a recommendation on page 24. Does anyone wish to move that or something else? I'll

Do that.

You move the recommendation. Councillor Wheeler, are you seconding that? Councillor Reardon, do you wish to speak to the matter?

I just think it's a very good report.

Okay. Any other speakers? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor . I'm very happy for this study to go on to public exhibition because I think the engagement with the public and the feedback that we can get from the public is an extremely important step in this process, and it's crucial that we enable all the people who are impacted in various ways to be able to review this document and to be able to feed in to give us either their concerns or their support for what's in it. I'm not going to comment on the content of it aside than to say that my only caution would be that I would have an issue with it coming back to a very newly elected council to be adopted by a new council that may not have workshopped it, that may not understand the various implications of its adoption.

So I think that to be mindful that it's going out over a period of time, that will mean it won't come back to this particular council, and I think that that's something that we need to be mindful about . I'm hoping that a clearer picture in that interim time, that a clearer picture around regional land use will emerge to tie in with both the state and the local flood plans, and that at some stage, hopefully our LEP will resurface from the depths of where it is now as well, so there can be a comprehensive suite of documents across all of planning around flood-related issues and planning issues. So the sooner the better we get all that done is really good, given that we know, you know, how much information we've compiled, or hopefully we've compiled, from the various flood events that can be fed into this study .

These studies are expensive. It's expensive to get this done. It's been a long process, and I think it's really important that we get it right. It requires a coordinated response and a response that covers all the various facets of what is included in the study. So I think at this point, because we're at the end of a council term, I'm happy for—there's various things in there—I would hope that the community give us their feedback around, and I'm happy for it to go on public exhibition at this point.

Further speakers? Councillor Zamprogno.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. This is a very substantial report, and I want to take this opportunity to invite the public to be very active in providing their feedback over the next eight weeks when this goes on exhibition. The thing that gives me the greatest pause is the recommendation in this study that the building height control be lifted from the traditional level that it's been at for very many years, the one in 100 level, which sits at 17.3 metres here at Windsor, to the one in 200 level. I think there's a growing, emerging awareness that we simply can't be building on the floodplain in the way that we have for centuries. And of course, the floods over the last several years have reminded us of the very great number, 5,000 houses historically, that sit beneath the one in 100 level because they were constructed before there was any such thing as flood height controls.

I'm also mindful that if Warragamba Dam had been raised, which remains the single item of capital expenditure that would do the most to mitigate against the height and frequency of flooding, that 500 out of the 600 houses that were flooded in 2022 would have been saved. So in that sense, it's quite sensible to lift the level from one in 100 to one in 200. But I am seriously concerned about the impact that that has on the insurability of remaining properties. We in this chamber have heard from many locals who find it impossible to get affordable insurance now because insurers look to government studies and planning codes and laws like these to set their premiums, and they've already started to factor in these additional risks and have told many landowners that their properties are virtually uninsurable.

And I'm worried that, as necessary as the recommendations of this report are, it is going to turn the screw even more on landowners who will find that in the event of a flood, they will have no backstop, they will have no insurance, or the insurance will become even more expensive as a result of this, which is why I think that it's going to be very good to hear the public's feedback.

Councillor Veigel, you were starting to speak. Yeah,

Thank you. I would concur with my colleagues on Council with the remarks I made on this report, and further to that, I'd like to thank you, Council, for drafting the report. At least it gives us a basis. I too have some concerns with the data in there, but I think we need to get the feedback from the community. And whoever's in this chamber has been said, they can go through those comments and see what's appropriate. I know I was very much surprised when my flood insurance went up. Many of you know I live in Windsor Downs, and the reason for that is they took it from the one in 100 and they went to the PMF. And why did they go to the PMF when I inquired on that? It was basically because of the Pitt Town floods, which is 2018, I think, remember.

There was overland runoff and there was some catastrophe down there. So by stealth, they went and changed all the premiums. Yeah, why? Well, take your pick why you think they did it, or whether the state government at the time gave them the modelling and said, Well, here you go, go for it, but I haven't heard any arguments to the point. Having said that, it's a basis for some, I guess, improvement of how we're planning, you know, the Hawkesbury, dare I say. I would concur that if they did take the dam up, that would be a huge mitigation to our valley, and not only that, would keep the homes, many homes, and the lives safe for a good deal of time. I wouldn't completely discount that the dam will never go up, because I just don't know what will happen in a decade or two decades.

Somebody might see the light and say, Hey, yeah, we've got to do it. If you go and have a look at the loss into this area, which is catastrophic, I think in the report it was about $20 billion, putting the dam wall up at around about five, and maybe doing the currency deviation, not a bad investment if you're going to save a huge economic zone such as the Hawkesbury Valley. And dare I say, we're only just looking at the Hawkesbury; we've got to look to Penrith and beyond that as well. Anyway, but yes, I'll put my support in the document going out

To the public. Thank you. Councillor Sheather.

I don't think you can see.

Yeah, there's light on it

Councillor Conolly. Thank you. I have no problem with the document going on exhibition, but I do think that

The move to one in 200 doesn't seem logical based on the information in the report. It seems like there's a whole lot of discussion and then they've just picked a number at random, at one in 200, with no real backup for why that particular number makes more sense. I'd like to see more focus on Evacuation, rather than flood height controls. I think once you're talking about an event that's got a one in 200 likelihood of happening, that's not, I would have thought, unacceptable risk to buildings. is an unacceptable risk to life, and you can solve that risk by making sure that evacuation capacity is there. I don't think just saying that, you know, you can't build anywhere that's a one in 200 chance of something bad happening to that building is reasonable or rational, given the housing pressures we're facing .

In regards to, but I'll be, yeah, I'd be very interested to see what the community has to say. I won't be here on council when it comes back, obviously, but it'll be interesting to see what the community sentiment is once you start to think about just how many people are going to be affected by that personally, versus other people who definitely do have the view that we shouldn't build anywhere here ever again. It'll be interesting to see what comes back. In regard to insurance, I think insurers use the publicly available information, so the, I guess the conclusion seemed to be put by some people is that we should therefore not publicly disclose this information so they don't know about it.

And I think that's not the right way to approach it. I think if you want to lower insurance premiums, you need to do something to decrease the risk, and the only thing you can do to decrease the risk is some sort of flood mitigation. Hiding the information doesn't work. I also think if someone's—insurance is meant to be a free market enterprise. It's meant to be that you want to share some of your risk with somebody else. If you're very, very concerned about your flood risk and very, very concerned you don't have flood insurance, perhaps you shouldn't be given flood insurance on the free market because maybe you're too at risk, is the reality. And if you're not concerned about your flood risk, if you think it's not a big deal, well, what are you worried about insurance for, I would say.

So I get it's a genuine concern for some people. Some of the people that are talking about insurance are at the one in 10 or one in 20 level. You shouldn't be able to get insurance there because it's very, very likely it's going to happen, and why would anyone take that risk for you ? So I'm in favour of publishing all the information we have, giving insurers the best information they could possibly have so they can make the best decisions about the risk. But then we should be—it doesn't look like we will be for the next however long in New South Wales, but we should actually be looking at what we can do to reduce the risk if we want to affect insurance premiums. Councillor

Sheather. Thanks, Mr.

Deputy Mayor. First, I'd like to apologise to the staff for a comment I made at our informal briefing about changes in the document. The document had been presented to me was the wrong one, and the changes had been made, and it was given to me by the staff the very next day . There's some— someone spoke about the LEP and the DCP. There's no proposals in the recommendations to change any of that, which concerns me a bit because I think that there's opportunities to restrict development without imposing additional hardship. We're looking at 354 homes in the area we're talking about above Windsor, above Wilberforce, and 19 properties or opportunities for development in the lower reaches within our city.

That's a small amount of houses to, what I believe, to lift the height to the 19 metres we're proposing. And most of us, climate change weather patterns that are driving that. And when you look at the documents, the weather patterns in two of the time zones, I guess, the weather patterns we've had, there's been, I think there was 34 floods in 10 years. There's a couple anyway; it was more than one a year. And then we had a period just recently of none over 25 years. So weather patterns come and go. They're suggesting a hundred mil rise in the next six years, of Windsor. Something's got to work really fast for that to happen. The problem that I've got is that the document looks at saving these 354 homes at 19.

If we lift the levels up, you know, there's going to be restrictions on building them. And indeed, there's already restrictions within our LEP and DCP now to limit. That's the amount of properties that's available for the development. That doesn't mean to say there's going to be that many houses built. The concern that I've got, I guess, is that there's things like the zonings. We've got a map now that shows us the one in 100 and the proposed one in 200. That could be zoned between those zones that you can't build a house, for instance, or whatever, instead of raising it. And as Councillor Conolly spoke, the state document that when it come out, they're not suggesting the council raise it to 200.

They've given us information, but they're saying the one in 100 they're not raising. So there's a bit of concern there. And the other thing that concerns me that we've looked at all the heartache if we have a flood. We haven't looked at the heartache if we raise the levels. And I'm not suggesting that that level of danger is going to change whether we print this or not. The danger is what it is. If it rains, the water comes up. If it rains more, the water comes up a lot higher. The, I guess that with the things like the zoning that hasn't been looked at, the consequences of lifting it up, what financial effect does that have on properties? There's nothing in the report about that, nor have we discussed it.

And I think that if we're going to protect 354 homes and 19, then that comes at a cost. What is that cost? And if that cost is massive, and I don't know that it is or not , my gut tells me it will be , in relation to borrowings and insurance and all that sort of stuff. But that hasn't been assessed. So we're talking about , as again Councillor Conolly said, we're making information available, the insurance companies will go off it, and that'll be the end of it. And we can wipe our hands and say, oh well, we're looked after all those new properties and the likes at the demise of the others. In relation to the report here, we've got McGraths Hill levee, Pitt Town levee, Windsor, South Windsor levee, Wilberforce levee, all proposed not to go ahead.

Survey of existing levels, that's the little ones around the river, they're not going to make much difference. And the currency creek bypass is called flood proofing. That takes a metre off, and if Warragamba was done, it's in the one in 100, you're looking at five. That's six metres. We're talking about going up a metre and a half and imposing all this. And there's the possibility, if the government did their job, that we can reduce the water height by five metres. And I think that's been conservative. Your

Time's up.

My time's up, Mr Mayor. Thank you. Deputy Mayor, sorry.

Any further speakers? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor. This is one of those hard discussions that we simply have to have. And I think if we can't have it with the clarity borne from the last three years, then we're probably never going to get around it. I think this document stands to be one of the most important pieces of work that Council has completed in the last, certainly in the time that I've been on Council, perhaps with the exception of the LEP, which of course we still haven't completed. This will have impacts certainly on current, but very definitely on future residents. We can't continue with business as usual and pretend that this risk hasn't, A, increased and, B, been brought starkly to our attention. The report details the impacts of climate change and the impacts of that on rising flood levels.

And it's a shame that so many people are still in denial about the impacts of climate change. I found the recent local government conference in Canberra incredibly frustrating when people were talking about the potential economic impacts on their towns from the gradual phase out of coal and gas, while we're sitting here with a report in front of us that tells us that flood heights will rise by a level of bricks every year due to inaction on climate change. We are at the forefront of climate change and its impacts. There's a couple of things missing, I think, from this report for me. And as I've said in briefings, I'm concerned about the shelter in place expectations and about service provision.

And these are things that we will have to discuss as we move forward with this document and discussions that we will have to have with our community as well, because they need to know what to expect when the water rises and And they have to make decisions about what they do with their families and with their property. The elephant in the room here is the difficulty of evacuation. We already can't evacuate the people that we've got here. The consultant who came to speak to us in the briefing told us very clearly that it doesn't matter how you rearrange the modelling, in a very large flood, the only thing you change is who drowns first. So we can sit here and massage this issue and talk about how it's going to hurt insurance premiums and it's going to have impacts and we've got a problem with affordable housing.

But I do not, as an elected representative, want to be sitting in a coroner's court in 10 years' time and say, We could have done something, but we weren't brave enough. And that's what this report is going to require from us as we have a discussion with the community, some bravery and some forward-facing. We need to take the community with us. We need to really actively engage. This eight-week period of exhibition is only the beginning, I think. This is quite a complex report. There is a lot of complex data that will suit many people in the community, but for others it will be confusing and it will be frightening. And we, as an organisation, need to be able to have the difficult conversations that will come out of this.

And I hope that the next council will commit to some really active public consultation around what we do with this information . And that will, as Councillor Lyons-Buckett has said, that will include bringing the next council along for the journey, because what we know needs to be passed on to them. We have to be really clear about the impacts of this on insurance. Insurance companies already understand the risk of flood. We can pretend that changing a flood planning level will impact, will stop premiums rising. The premiums have risen. Insurance companies know this. They've had the data long before we have . Increased information has reduced premiums in some instances. When the flood study came out in around 2018, premiums actually went down.

What has happened now is that the risk has gone up, and the insurance companies' willingness to take on that risk and pay out those huge sums of money, $90,000 per year per household is the estimated cost of flooding in the LGA

We can't pretend that allowing people to continue to build at the one in a hundred in known flood-affected areas is going to just make insurance premiums stay low and it'll be fine. It's not fine now. It won't be fine in 10 years' time. We have to be bold about what we do here. The housing pressures will not and should not be fixed by building on a floodplain. Even the state government, desperate to fix the problem that it's been left, gets that. We should get that too. What I'd like to see next after this consultation is the LEP and DCP taking on information about how we can build better, more resilient developments and modifications to existing dwellings, similar to the way Maitland has incorporated it into their DCP and the SES's flood resilient buildings advice. Time's up, Councillor.

Thank you

They're freely available online. We need to move forward with this.

Thank you. Any further speakers ? A question

Councillor Sheather, a question. A question. In relation to the going on exhibition, I've spoken to staff about it. I just want to clarify, we're proposing to send notices out with the rate notice, and it looks like there could be as many as 22,000 that go out. The rate notices don't go to everybody. Could we have a comment on how we might pass this information to the community, and in relation to the outgoing mailing of the rate notice, how far into the exhibition period is that proposed? Because people are going to need some time to respond to this.

General Manager, Director of City Planning

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. So the community engagement is proposed at a variety of mediums. Part of that, a key part is obviously including in the rates notice, and the intention is for the rates notice to go out at basically at the start of the exhibition period so that people have the full two months to consider the material. There's a raft of other media we're using, and obviously our traditional Your Hawkesbury, Your Say, our various media releases and so forth, but we're also looking to utilise our newsletter and our e-newsletter, and in addition to utilising the various email contact lists that Council has.

Further questions? No further speakers. Councillor Reardon, do you wish to have right of reply?

Not necessary things.

If not, I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour is Councillor Reardon, Councillor Bygell, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Sambrockno, Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor McMahon. Declare it carried. Thank you.

Our next item is Item 10 .5.1, Hawkesbury River County Council. We have one speaker, Mr Barry Smith OAM. Could you please come forward? Thank you, Mr Smith.

Acting Mayor and Councillors, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening. My name is Barry Smith, and I am representing Hawkesbury River County Council tonight and speaking in support of the recommendation contained in Item 10.5.1. I think I bring an independent and unique view to this matter, as last year I acted as the General Manager of Hawkesbury River County Council for three months while the General Manager was on long service leave. And in that period I brought to the board the 2023 operating plan, the delivery program, and budget. And that included a 10% increase in each council's annual contribution. Rather a challenging proposal at the time, but that was adopted without exception by all delegates.

I've continued to work in a casual advisory role since the General Manager returned from leave, reviewing and advising on, for example, the operating plan and delivery program reporting mechanisms, the resource strategy, and corporate governance policies, for just to name a few things. My last full-time position was as General Manager of Hunters Hill Council for 22 years, and in previous years I have also had the experience of working at Hawkesbury City. I started at Windsor Council. I was very young. Penrith City and Hills Shire Councils, three of the four constituent councils of our county council, and it provides me, I think, with a wealth of knowledge about the operations of Hawkesbury River County Council and its importance to its councils.

Some councillors may not be aware, I'm sure most of you are, that Hawkesbury River County Council celebrated 75 years of its existence in this year. In my experience, I believe that because of its longevity alone, Hawkesbury River County Council is one of the best examples and a beacon for resource sharing between councils. Without arguing the merits or otherwise of the financial analysis contained in the report, it is also my view that our constituent councils are receiving value for money for their annual contribution. Now , we did a little bit of number crunching and we worked out that last year we believed that the value to Hawkesbury Council of work was $440,000 for your $240,000 contribution.

That's pretty good value. Again, without arguing the financial analysis in the report, the report does consider some non-cash benefits such as regional weed management, and I would seriously agree that it is unlikely that two staff could deliver an equivalent program to what we're delivering. There are a variety of other benefits of a county council model, but two of the more important ones are economies of scale, particularly from the specialisation that we can provide, which reduces the overall cost of weeds management, and the development of collegiate relationships between neighbouring council bodies.

It is noted that in the report the value proposition has now been examined a number of times in the last four years, and on each occasion the same answer has been received. Yes, Council is receiving value for money. I'm also of the view that this continuing question of value is causing some confusion amongst both our staff and the council staff, and is having a negative impact on achieving desired outcomes for both organisations. The recommendation to receive and note the report is strongly supported. I don't have a lot more to say. I'm only here to answer any questions or any clarifications that you may want. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Smith. Are you happy to answer questions?

I'm

Happy to answer questions. Councillor Conolly. Thanks, Mr Smith. You mentioned that you find it unlikely we'd be able to complete the same amount of work with two direct staff. How many direct weed staff does HRCC have for the four councils?

At the moment we have six , six, eight.

Okay, so two per council. Well, you could put it that, simplistically you could say that, yeah. And this question isn't meant with any disrespect. I guess there's, to go to the crux of this, I should give you a chance to comment on it. I guess, why would we need multiple admin staff and eight councillors all being paid to deliver weed management services to council?

Well, I think it's a way of managing resource sharing. Resource sharing has been a bone of contention in local government for I don't know how long, a very long time. And one of the main reasons is because there's no governance models of managing how that will work between each of the participants of a resource sharing arrangement. This is a really good way of doing that. We only have one line of business, and that's in weeds, but you have other county councils like Rouse, which is now doing weeds, water and flood mitigation. There's a couple of others that do water and weeds. So if

Councils are reminded to add something to a resource sharing model for Hawkesbury River County Council, they could do that, but it's not something that's ever been thought. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be thought of. It's just something that hasn't been done that way. But I think it's a really good, as I say, my experience, it's a good working model.

Further, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mr Smith. I'm just wondering, have the other councils, the other member councils, done similar analysis of whether they feel they could administer this more effectively than the River County Council? Do you know? Has there been any discussion with them about potentially changing the composition of who is in the River County Council, as it's, I know it's statutorily, you know, instigated?

Sorry, not that I'm aware of.

Okay. Sorry, just one other question, you might not know this. Is the operating model reviewed in any formal sense regularly? Or, I know it's put out by statute, but does the River County Council from time to time look at whether there should be more councils in it or less councils in it or anything like that? Do you know? Sorry

I'm not aware that that has happened. There's certainly been some discussion amongst the nine county councils about the model itself, and that's only really just started in the last year or so because there's become a much more focused and cooperative arrangement between the nine county councils. It's a bit like, well, it's a bit hard because one council's in Walcha and one somewhere else and one somewhere else, but with the technology that's available, there's a genuine effort to try and do that. But no, I'm not aware of any discussions. Okay

Thank you. Any

Further questions? Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. Mr Mayor, in relation to the role that the county council plays across the community with weak control on private properties and the likes, could you give a bit of an overview on what council would be required, like with the work the county council does and have done for years and the experience at SEAR, is it feasible that council could take on that role in a short period of time in relation to the knowledge and understanding of the work that's got to be done across our community?

I wouldn't think it could happen in a short period of time because you would need to understand what is the work that you actually have to do. You would need appropriately qualified staff to do it. All of our weed inspectors, for instance, have been through proper training courses. They've even had some legal training because they're issuing fines. So it's not necessarily a simple project. It's not that complicated either, but it's not something that you could do overnight .

Is that— Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. Thank you very much for coming in, Barry. Could you just expand a little more on what are the less tangible benefits of this shared service model? For example, the way in which the County Council liaises with stakeholder groups and environmental care organisations. And also, could you comment on whether you think that a council going solo would be able to win a pro rata share of the kind of grant funding that the County Council is able to get through its current arrangements?

Probably go back a little way from that. I think one of the advantages of the County Council model is the fact that it only does have one line of business. A general purpose council has many, many lines of business, and therefore it's very hard for them to communicate all those lines of business with 70,000 people or whatever it is. What we've got is one line of business which we can communicate with the whole of the community, across whether it's one council or four, or various groups within each of those. So this County Council has spent a very long time building relationships, and I think that's a really key issue, building relationships with various groups within— It's region. So, for instance, just I'll use this as an example.

There's obviously a very strong relationship here between Council and the Hawkesbury Local Landcare Network. There's a strong relationship between various individual bushland groups because they can just talk to us one-to-one. There's no other issues arising. It's all about their particular issue or what they want to be able to do. So I think that's a real strength of the Council model.

Grant funding, I think, is a bit of a vexing question because all the time there's many, many people crying out for funds, whatever the nature of those funds are. So, again , I think because it's a one line of business, simple, the government can fund the programs for what it wants and can see the outcome straight away. Probably the WAP funding is a good example of that weed action program. Sorry, that's the weed action program. So it's not tied up within all of the other Council business. That's our business, to go out there and fund a weed action program that looks at the biosecurity, the designated weeds, looks for the particular populations, and our community can see straight away that that's what we've done.

It's the same as someone , I think there's a mention in the report that was there about a frog bit infestation. There was a frog bit infestation at Oakville , and we were able to jump on that straight away. What was interesting, it was a border between the two councils, the ups of the hills, so there was a reaction to that. Local Land Services got involved as well, so it was a really good cooperative approach to dealing with what could have been a very serious situation. I think that's another advantage of the model. We can get those sort of reactions. You look at— I'm not criticising anybody when I say this, but if you look at how long it's taken bodies other than this one to react to the flood situation,

Well, hello, we can do that straight away. And that's something, unfortunately, we're a bit hamstrung here. Council, deputy council's hampered in a way, and I

Don't know how you fix that

Any further questions? Councillor Dogramaci? Question

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. We haven't met before. I have several questions. If you'd be kind enough to very briefly tell me, from my getting elected, my number one priority has always been money side of it, and River Council is a business as well. Am I correct? Now, overall, how much money in total, how much money are we contributing to this organisation?

For this year, I think the contribution is about $250,000. Okay

$

24, $25.

All right. And how much money are we getting from state government grants or whatever?

Look, I can't tell you about that off the top of my head. The largest, I know the largest amount of funding we get is for the Weed Action Program, but what the exact dollars are, I can't

I can provide you with the information. Okay. Am I correct to say that we are the only, correct me if I'm wrong, we are the only council amongst that four that we are contributing more than the other councils? No, you all contribute exactly the same amount. Okay. Am I also correct to say that we are the only one that have 10 staff working, more than the others?

I don't know how many staff work for the other councils.

Well, they're working less, I'll tell you that. I don't know. So,

At

The end of the day, can you tell us that, you know, we are getting a good deal?

I believe you are getting a very good deal. As I said last year, we did a bit of a calc, and we believe we delivered $440,000 worth of work to this council for your $250,000 contribution.

Okay. And I think it will be my last question. If we decide to get out of this organisation, who's going to fill our shoes?

Well, that would be a decision that our board would need to make, whether or not they wanted to approach another council to become a member. I don't think it would be an easy ride to move outside the

Council. So you don't know?

Well, there is legislation that governs it, but whether someone else would come in, you can't force anybody to join.

And my very last question: if we decide to get out, what's going to happen with the weed control and the other things that, you know, you mentioned, you have good community integrations or whatever? If we decide to get out, what's going to happen? Well, you're on

Your own

Who's our own? We? You would be on your own.

Thank you. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Smith. Thank you for coming tonight and giving us all your information.

Councillor Kotlash, you'd like to move something? Yes,

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I sent the staff a motion that I wish to put .

I sent this motion out to all councillors this afternoon. Do we have a

Seconder? Councillor Conolly. Thank you. Please continue

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor.

I've been thinking about this long and hard, and I'm sorry that I disagree. I don't think the

Hawkesbury River County Council is serving our purposes. But let me start by saying, look, I want to thank the staff for the report in the business paper, even though it has taken a very long time to get here . We're here now, so thank you for the work you've done on that. And I'd also like to say from the outset that the reasons I've put this motion up have absolutely nothing to do and don't have a reflection on the staff of HRCC. I have witnessed their dedication and their hard work. I think what's let them down is the governance structure and not their commitment and their capacity to work. So I want to emphasise that and underline it and make sure that everybody is really hearing me say that.

So the reason I've put this motion up, and as you'll see, the first point in the motion is to ask the Minister for Local Government . To either dissolve the HRCC or, if he's not in agreement with that , to allow Hawkesbury to leave. And if he gives us permission to leave, that we take a reasonable and fair percentage of the assets, because we've been paying into HRCC for, well, I think, in one form or another, for the 75 years of its life. And I think we deserve to share in some of those assets if we choose to go and do our own weed management . The second point is about, obviously, letting HRCC and the board of HRCC know of this resolution. So there are five main reasons why I think that we would be better off doing our own weed management.

And they basically start with the question of value for money. Now, I disagree that we're getting value for money from HRCC . The staff have crunched the numbers, and it looks like we get 56 cents out of each dollar that we give over to HRCC for non-discretionary weed management. So the weed management that is under the Biosecurity Act and is the agreement, we've delegated our local control authority to HRCC, and that's what we're paying for in that $256,000 per year. Now , the staff have calculated that if we were able to employ two people, we would get up to a value of 73 cents in the dollar. Now, we have to also remember that we would be eligible for $50,000 from the Weed Action Program funding.

So across the board, there's a no-brainer. We would actually save money and get a better outcome. We would get more weed work done on the ground. And if we, if we're in the initial stages of building our program, we just employed an authorised officer, which has all of the responsibility and knowledge for doing this, we could start to try and seasonalise our weed management. This is all things that will benefit our value for money proposition. And this leads me into the second reason, which is HRCC is a very small organisation that's very top heavy . It's got nine staff at the moment, three administrative roles, three weed inspectors, and three people that actually do weed control. Now, the cost of, just in wages of the three admin staff, is $318,000 per annum.

And if you add the cost of the eight councillors that oversee this small organisation of nine workers, it goes up to $385,000. That in itself should be ringing alarm bells, that how do we get such fabulous value for money that's being claimed? I just want this to be investigated, and I think the minister is really, you know, in this day and age of accountability and transparency, I want to know how that works. It's really, you know, it's really important that we start to look at modern ways of doing things. And the other thing about HRCC is that those three administrative people sit in a building that's probably worth $3.5 million.

Time's up, sorry. Do you want to finish that sentence?

Yeah. And so, you know, there is lots and lots of good reasons why we would want to have a go at doing our own weed management. It's our responsibility to look at this and to look at it without any of the emotional fanfare that seems to be going on. I just want people to look at the facts. Thank you.

Further speakers? Councillor Sam Progra.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'm strongly opposed to Councillor Kotlash's proposed motion to unwind our three-quarter century relationship with HRCC. In fact, it's completely ridiculous to suggest that this would be in our best interest. This is an organisation which we fund with 0.2% of our own revenue. That's how much it costs us. And yet we

Are about 73% of the area that is covered in the four council area. So we, as Mr Smith pointed out, we pay an equal share of the four councils, but we represent three-quarters of the area that the Hawkesbury River County Council is responsible for, which is one reason among many that we should count our blessings that the other councils, Blacktown, Hills and Penrith, are so willing to continue to go along with that. And when I sat on the board of that organisation and spent two years as chair, I was constantly in conference with the general managers and the mayors of the other council, and I was saying, we at council at Hawkesbury ought to feel embarrassed that we get the lion's share of the benefit.

And the other councils were saying, that's fine. We love this arrangement. We're sold on the benefits of a shared resource operation where you have a brains trust of plant and knowledge that has been doing good work in the community for over 70 years. And we want that relationship to continue. The only person that is unhappy with that relationship is Councillor Kotlash. The only person that I've ever spoken to that is unhappy with that relationship is Councillor Kotlash. And I think it arises from her deep and personal antipathy towards certain members of the staff at HRC. Point of

Order. Can you withdraw that statement, please?

I withdraw that statement, Mr Deputy Mayor. Thank you. We get outstanding value from HRC, and to put forward the kind of vandalism that Councillor Kotlash is proposing here, where we would secede or break up an organisation that is headquartered in our own LGA, I think deserves to be treated with contempt.

Thank you. Further speakers? Councillor Dogramaci.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. I agree with Councillor Kotlash 100%. We all know the current financial situation of the council. I don't think that we need this entity to go along like that. We're not getting any benefit. This is the way that, you know, I'm looking at it from a business point of view. I don't know who owns that yard, that, you know, we keep the machineries or whatever, and the three administration—well, people in administration— paying close to $400,000, I think, you know, plus more than $400,000. We could, if we have to move out of that area to Wilberforce, we could accommodate. I think that we should get out of it. I wasn't here, but I believe that the previous council, there was a councillor, I forgot her name .

Bart Bassett's wife, I think, apparently she also, you know, moved some kind of a motion to get out of that, from this arrangement. I think we could do without this council, and I think that if we have to manage ourselves, we will get a better deal. We will run the operation from Wilberforce Depot with our own people, and I don't think it is sad to say that we need those three secretaries or administration people sitting there and collecting $400,000, as a matter of fact. And these days that we are going through, you know, hardship financially, I think that we could save money, and I think that, you know, managing our own operations would benefit the public in large. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. I watched a really good video this week about the toxic and nasty nature of politics, and I want to recommend it to Councillors out of program after his comments.

He might want to take note. Deputy Mayor.

Councillor Conolly, I think that is bordering on a personal slight of another councillor. I hope

It wasn't toxic or nasty. No, I just meant it was a good video.

It goes both ways. Point of order, Mr Deputy Mayor.

Yes, Councillor Lyons-Buckett

We are told at the start of the meeting not to make insulting comments Is that insulting ? Well, it was meant to be. That was its intent.

You’re told not to talk about the councillors.

Point of order , Mr Deputy Mayor. Councillor Lyons-Buckett has the floor. Councillor

Conolly needs to hear her in silence. And I would like to hear Councillor Lyons-Buckett too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. Councillor Conolly has masked what is in essence an insult towards another councillor, and I would ask that you ask him to withdraw it. That is my point of order.

Well, you may not have been listening, but I was just— Having that discussion with Councillor Conolly, suggesting that he had done that, and then you interrupted me. Councillor Conolly, I believe that you have maybe not strongly, but— May I clarify my comments ? —maybe implied a criticism of another

Councillor. Certainly not my intention, and I apologise if he felt criticised. My point was that we shouldn't be making personal reflections, as were made earlier, and it's not very nice. And, you know, people who want to get up on high horses maybe should monitor their own behaviour. Councillor Conolly, can you— I'll withdraw that last bit. Thank you. And

I also am not quite happy with your response. I think you did make a comment against Councillor Samprogno, and I'd like you to withdraw it, please.

Sure.

Thank you.

Okay. Mr Deputy Mayor, as the person reflected upon, I can only express my pleasure that Councillor Conolly watches my output. I do

Very good video quality. Entertaining . I am going to support this motion. I think, to me, there's a lot of discussion designed to complicate this decision. To me, it's been very apparent for a long time. You can't possibly have three highly paid admin staff and eight councillors all being paid to run an organisation with six operational staff and get good value. It just doesn't make any sense at all, and it's not meant to be disrespectful to anyone. None of the people in this room set that arrangement up. It's an arrangement that's existed for 75 years, as we just heard, and just because you've done something for a long time doesn't make it a good idea. It defies any logic, and yet we've got people who want to keep arguing and throwing all sorts of things out there.

But the reality is you've got six to eight operational staff and 11 people overseeing it being paid $400,000 collectively. I just wanted to ask a question too. Is that correct that the councillors on the board are being paid an extra amount to do that? General Manager

The members of the board of the County Council are paid members, yeah. Yep,

Thank you . And I think sometimes over—I'll be careful what I say, I'm not reflecting this on anybody currently, but over time that probably has played a part in while this arrangement continues to exist, in that it's been in some people's interest not to ask too many questions. But the reality is that all those people are being paid to oversee a very small operational staff doing one single function. And the idea that that's going to be the most effective is, to me, silly. We were told we've got $440,000 of value. We've been told that we get the lion's share of the value, and yet in our report it says that 49% of the money we pay to HRCC goes to on-ground weed control, which kind of checks out if you think that's about roughly the proportion of direct staff to overseeing staff at HRCC.

I would also point out that Councillor Zamprogno said that 73% of the land area is in the Hawkesbury. National Parks and Wildlife, I understand, do their own weed control. Is that correct?

I believe so, Councillor Conolly. Yes.

So I think that might be a little bit misleading to then therefore include the massive national park as land area of HRCC when HRCC don't touch any of it. They only do in the area that's not national park. I expect there'll be a lot of discussion about this. A lot of people will be unhappy about change, and it will be a big change, and it will need to be managed carefully if it happens. But I think we've got a responsibility just to do the right thing and say clearly that cannot be the most efficient use of ratepayers' money. Clearly, our ratepayers could get a better deal if all of that money, or at least a far higher proportion of that money, went into weed control instead of admin and governance. Thank you. Councillor

Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I think Councillor Conolly just hit the nail on the head by saying this would be a very big change. It's a significant change, and it's one that's been proposed through a motion that was sent late this afternoon, giving no time for people to have read it or absorbed it. I had asked Mr Smith whether the other councillors consulted, and he didn't believe they were consulted about this report, let alone about them having been consulted about having one council withdraw from a four-council organisation. I find it quite preposterous that the standard of governance requested by putting a motion like this has been brought before us when so often in this chamber there is criticism of anyone changing a motion or anyone proposing something late in the afternoon. The hypocrisy is quite gobsmacking. It's a poor way to make a decision.

Point of order, Mr Deputy Mayor. Councillor, I believe the comment about the hypocrisy was a personal reflection that should be withdrawn.

I wasn't reflecting on myself.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett, you're— It was a generalisation

No, nobody in particular, just a general sort of vibe that happens. Mr

Deputy Mayor, can I just insist, the comment was made about whoever brought the motion. That's fairly personal.

No, it was not.

Can I just ask Councillor Lyons-Buckett to answer that?

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. No, it was not about that at all, Councillor Conolly. It was about generally in this chamber, particular councillors raise objection to motions brought late or motions changed on the floor, and I am just saying that for something of this magnitude, to have something come to us to say, well, we're asking the Minister to dissolve this body, a statutory body that has existed for a long time, I think that is very poor governance, and that's the point I was making. Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor.

Thank you for that, Councillor Conolly. I'm satisfied with

Councillor Lyons-Buckett's answer to that. Thank you. That's not to say that that organisation cannot be reviewed to be better. All organisations can be reviewed to be better. It's also not to say that we have the capacity to deliver those services when we know that we're not necessarily on top of all the things our community expect us to be doing and all the functions that a council has to carry out, and we know that is multifaceted. We know there is so much work that a council has to do, and to have a single entity that can deal with one aspect of weed management is something that does assist, I believe, on a regional level, where we have weeds that don't stop at a local government boundary.

We need a regional approach. Much as we probably should have an overall government approach on a regional level and get rid of local government and state government while we're at it. What I would like to do is to actually propose an amendment, if I may, Mr Mayor.

You may.

Thank you. Mr Deputy Mayor, I'm sorry, apologies. So what I would like to suggest is the recommendation in the business paper to be point one,

And point two to be that the incoming council, following the 2024 local government election,

Review the organisations which

Receive ratepayer funds,

Including the Hawkesbury River County Council.

Is that it?

Well, I was going to add others. I'll just say and other third-party organisations.

Okay. Do we have a seconder for that? Councillor Zamprogno.

So did you finish your talk?

No, I might just speak to that, if I may, just to explain. I just feel that we need to absorb, I know this— I know people have raised this before. I've had it raised over decades, actually, in various respects about what people want to do about it. I'm not up to speed on what people are paid for doing it, but obviously councillors are paid a sum of money to participate. That's not overly problematic if that's getting results, but there's—I've got no analysis or no evaluation of any of that. There's just an absence of any information about what the impacts of our decision would have on three other councils and on weed management at a regional level. And I could not make any of these decisions without that information.

So this requires a further looking from the perspective around what this motion is asking us to do. This report does not support that. That's how I see it. This is not a clear-cut report saying that we should have the River County Council dissolved. It's a report that the recommendation was to receive and note, and I think we should do that, and we should continue reviewing our participation in such an organisation. But we need to understand what the impacts are on others. What about for local land services and various other organisations that work in partnership with the Hawkesbury River County Council? I have a lot of issues around the absence of information that would actually enable us to really see what the impact of us doing that would be on other people.

I would certainly promote the continual review of the operational model of the River County Council. I think that's a good thing to do. I think all organisations should regularly review how they're operating and how effectively they are operating. That goes for our council, and it goes for any other organisation as well. We need regular— Regular updates. I don't like the uncertainty for the staff that must occur when these sort of things pop up just out of the blue, and I think there's an element of unfairness in bringing a motion like this and expecting us to make a decision of this magnitude on the floor tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. We're now discussing the amendment. Those of you who have spoken before on the motion can speak again now on the amendment. Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'll speak against the amendment. First up, it's not up to us to look after other councils. I mean, our responsibility in this chamber is to look after the ratepayers of the Hawkesbury. It is perfectly legitimate for us to ask the minister to take this course of action. The motion that I put up is totally legitimate under the Local Government Act. It is the process that we go through to investigate changes in county councils. So it isn't an outrageously risky decision. It's a decision that is our responsibility. As far as unfair to staff, the weed work will still need to be done. It's just the governance structure under which these people work is at issue here. There's still going to be plenty of work to do, so I dismiss that as being just not an issue at this stage .

It's really important that— We don't keep putting off these important decisions, saying, Oh, it's not fair. It's too hard. I think it's not actually fair of us to dictate to an incoming council what they should be doing. It's our responsibility to do this. I have, you know, and as far as putting this up and putting it up this afternoon, and you haven't had time to realise it, I have spoken in briefings about this. I have given you my opinion that I have built up from looking at the data, from my work experience, from knowing what all of the Greater Sydney councils do with their weed management. I know how they all operate, and I'm one of the few people that do do that, and I am prepared to have a conversation about how we can best manage weeds in a modern way.

So I really refute the fact that we have to look after the other councils. That's their business if they want to be involved. It's not up to us to, you know, to tippy-toe around them. If they're not looking at their value for money, well, that's not our problem. I think we really have to make some tough decisions.

Further speakers on the amendment? Councillor Conolly.

Thank you. I speak against the amendment. Just to add some context and information here, back in, I think, 2022, Councillor Kotlash moved a motion to the board of HRCC and asked the board of HRCC to review a number of other governance models. I went along as the mayor and spoke at that meeting of the board of HRCC. I spoke for my five minutes and was told my time was expired. The motion, I don't know if—I don't believe it got—it was allowed to proceed to debate. Councillor Kotlash made a case, a couple of, and I had been there as the mayor to make a case that Hawkesbury City Council was concerned about the value, wanted to look at models. The board at that time had no other discussion and voted no, 7-1.

So that is the way that the board of HRCC, certainly at that time, viewed the concerns of Hawkesbury City Council. Hawkesbury City Council has tried four years to work with HRCC to find solutions, to get data, to make this better, and has not been treated with the respect as a partner of those other three councils. So I don't think it's up to us now to consider whether us being in HRCC is best for Blacktown or Penrith or the Hills. I don't think that's our concern.

Point of clarification, Mr Deputy Mayor. Misleading statement.

Could you please repeat that? What's the misleading statement?

The misleading is that I think Councillor Connelly is alluding to the fact he's insinuating that I said that we need to look after the other councils. What I had said was that we don't understand the impacts of us leaving, what that would be on the other councils in the area. That's not looking after them. That's understanding if there's going to be some deficit that's driven by our council removing.

Okay, point taken, but not a big difference

Sorry, Mr Deputy Mayor, I think that wasn't a point of order. That was just a point of rebuttal in the middle of my—when I had the floor, and it's quite inappropriate. Councillor Lyons-Buckett is able to make that point when she has a chance to speak. I wasn't suggesting that she is at anything. What I was suggesting was that we need to worry about what's best for Hawkesbury City Council and its ratepayers, and that we have given HRCC and the other councils a lot of notice that we are not happy. We have been talking for years about the fact that we are not sure about the value, as was indicated by our speaker earlier, that this has been looked at a number of times over a number of years. It was very apparent to everybody in our briefing session, and many briefing sessions before it, that this was a point of contention.

We have discussed this before. It's not new information, and I don't think anyone should be surprised that, as Councillor Zamprogno indicated earlier, it's no surprise that Councillor Kotlash might feel this way. She's made it abundantly clear to all of us and sought to provide us all with information to back up that position. I also would just suggest if this motion does

Get up,

This amendment does become the motion, that we clarify. The wording at point 2 because there would be hundreds of organisations that receive ratepayer funds, so we need to actually name who we're talking about. And we have, of course, done third party reviews on all those third party arrangements other than HICC over the last term of Council anyway. I also agree. I don't think this is, I don't think it's right to say, Oh well, you know, it's July, so we're pretty much done, so we shouldn't make any decisions. We should kick this down the road. We're the Council's been looking at this in detail for the last few years and we should make a decision. And I think the right decision is in the original motion.

Thank you, Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor, Mr Deputy Mayor. In relation to the review that was done with the County Council, was there any — it's a question I've got. Was there any documentation within that review that would suggest anywhere along the lines of opting out or the likes of the County Council?

General Manager.

Through you, Mr Chair, I'd probably prefer to take that question on notice just because I don't have the document on hand. Taking my mind back and trying to recall the themes arising from that, it was predominantly a governance review, Director. Yeah , it was a governance review, and so it was never, I don't think, contemplated at that point of that review that Council was opting in, opting out or anything of that nature at that time.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor . We're talking about just over a quarter of a million dollars here. I wish that we spoke about other aspects of our Council in the same regard as what we're talking about tonight. I've been involved with the County Council nearly 40 years. And I was on it for probably 15, the first term that I was on council, and chaired that for nearly two years. And it was at a time when we had 40 kilometres of water height on the river. It was like a turf farm from Penrith to nearly Ebenezer. And at that time, the county council had a plan to eradicate that weed. The government and all the authorities, and there was five of them we finished up working with, their view was to just go out and poison it.

Now, the county council stood ground on that and didn't allow it to happen. We would have had blue-green algae, because we're just going into 15 years of drought, as it turned out to be. We would have had blue-green algae you still could have walked on.

And it was asked, Bob Carr was the Premier at the time, and he asked us, did we have a plan? And the answer was yes, we did, and he allowed it to happen. Working with six other government authorities is not easy, I can tell you, but the county council did it. And within two and a half months, all that weed was eradicated. There was access to every property between Ebenezer and Yarramundi within our city. Not once was the police called or anything else in that regard. The communication they got between the public and the work they do and the knowledge and understanding, it would take us a lifetime to employ staff. To get that knowledge and understanding. There's the respect within the community that Mr Smith spoke of that would take us some time to achieve.

So, I just find it hard to believe that we're spending this time. I spoke to Councillor Conolly at the time, the Deputy Mayor, before I was elected this time, in relation to some information that was probably about the time that you spoke to the County Council, and I had concerns then that it would be inappropriate for council to opt out or otherwise with the County Council. The other concern I've got, and I'm speaking against the amendment too, that these reviews that we're having of organisation committees and the likes, it's a bit like what's happened between two of our councils just recently, about two minutes ago, that you keep poking one another in the chest long enough and someone's going to get cranky about it.

And we've spoke about the County Council, and we've done reviews, and we discussed it, and we discussed it privately and the like, and sooner or later someone's going to get sick of it. And so that understanding that the communication that we were supposed to be good at between us and the community is going to go away. And what's going to happen then? Even if we did take it over, the community wouldn't want to bar of us anyway.

So, Mr Deputy Mayor, I'm proposing a foreshadowed amendment, and it would be the recommendation in the business paper that reads, the Council receive the note and report of the Hawkesbury River County Council.

Thank you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Mr Deputy Mayor, I'm happy to withdraw my amendment.

And who was your seconder?

In that case— Councillor

Sam Brogner, you wish to withdraw it too?

In that case, Mr Deputy Mayor, I'd move an amendment, and that be the recommendation.

I'll second that. Seconded by Councillor Lyons-Buckett. So, Councillor Dogramaci wishes— before you speak, we have a new amendment.

Yeah, I was going to pause there. I don't think that amendment is going to achieve anything. So— This is

The new amendment.

That's right. Sorry

Keep going.

I'll just make one more comment, Mr Deputy Mayor. I don't think it will be beneficial, and just when the new council comes in, I'm sure that, you know, there will be some new faces, and they will have absolutely no idea what was happening, let alone River Council and their work. So I support Councillor Kotlash to simply cease and get out of that River Council business. Like I said, we could run our own weed eradications or whatever is involved, and we'll be saving some money. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, because we have a new amendment, all those councillors who have spoken previously can speak again. Councillor Sam Brogner.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'm happy to support Councillor Sheather's amendment. Just to bring some facts to the table, the Office of Local Government does put out time series data, and that time series data includes statistics about administrative and governance overheads. And the General Manager of HRCC has confirmed for me that the administration and governance overheads, in the order of about 35%, which is extremely competitive, extremely competitive, with other special purpose councils that are available through the spreadsheet. It is inappropriate to say, well, it hasn't got the same governance and administration overhead as a general purpose council, because we're a vastly different organisation with vastly more staff.

And I know from firsthand experience is that HRCC, through its board, have been focused on making the organisation leaner to make sure that more of its members' funds reach on-the-ground services by leveraging the fact that its operations are shared out to the member councils. So, for example, instead of having to have its own complaints or auditing or something, or even certain kinds of admin, the process of assembling the annual report, HRCC draws upon the various member councils and asks them, this is beyond us with our capacity, are you able to do that with us? And the general managers of all of the other member councils, including some larger councils than ourselves, even our own council, took a role at a certain time in taking on some of the functions that otherwise HRCC would have had to have employed somebody to do themselves.

And that was just part of the collegiate and collaborative network that they had operated within for very many years. I share the concern of many other councillors that this incredibly significant— Change to a relationship with an organisation that we've been a member of for 75 years was brought after 3 o'clock, after it was possible for anybody to know that this was what was going to be debated here this evening, so that nobody could register as a speaker. I've seen this modus operandi operating before.

Bring something to the chamber late in the afternoon that's of significance to a particular section of the community. Make sure that they don't even have the ability to register as a speaker and come and speak to that. I'm sure that if Councillor Kotlash's proposed motion had been more widely known, the gallery would have been full of people from Landcare groups and bushcare groups who would say that they had had such a warm and cooperative relationship with HRCC for many years, is that that organisation is worth defending. But no. The motion was brought to the chamber in a way that prevented those people from having any kind of a say. I don't know how, in good conscience, we could vote for something of such consequence here this evening. So I'm happy to support Councillor Sheather's amendment.

Thank you. Further speakers? Councillor Kotlash.

I'm speaking against Councillor Sheather's motion. Is that what I'm up to? Sorry. Look, there's a few points. Again, this is not a surprise that I have these views on HRC. It's not a surprise. We've been talking about this for a long time. The process that the Minister will follow when he makes his determination is that he will, well, I don't quite know how he's going to do it, but one of the mechanisms is that he will call for community consultation, and the community will have an opportunity to have their say. That's not the end of it. I'm not shutting anybody out. I don't feel responsible to our community for shutting them out. That is not the case. That's not the process. We are just going to ask the Minister, can we run our own weed management because we think we can do it for less money and more effectively.

I'm not shutting anybody out. It happened to be three o'clock because I have been working all day, and that was the time I had to do it. That's the way, you know, modern busy people have to deal with their workload. I'm sorry if it didn't suit you. I'm sure you weren't surprised. You know, anyway. In Councillor Sheather's comments about he just wants to receive a note this and we don't need to think about this or discuss this issue. If we had another

Floating weed bloom in the river, six operational staff in HRCC would not be the people that would be dealing with it. They'd be involved, but there'd be a cast of a lot more people. That's how it works on a regional scale. The Department of Primary Industries would be involved. Local land services would be involved. A lot of other LGAs would be involved. Don't think that it's just a county council model that we'd be able to deal with that. That is just not true. You know, we have to start having some genuine conversations about this that don't go, Oh, we've had it for 75 years and it used to be fabulous. HRCC was a different beast when it first started. It had lots more staff, it had lots more funding, it had lots more equipment.

It doesn't have any equipment that it could deal with an aquatic weed bloom now. They've been written off. In the last asset management plan, they've been deemed as obsolete. They're going. They're being disposed of. There isn't that capability. If we have that sort of bloom again, it's not going to be up to Hawkesbury to fix the whole river. We'll just try and do our part in our part of the river. I mean , let's not kid ourselves. We're just getting a bit— I mean, Councillor Sheather talked about people getting sick. Well , I'm a bit sick and tired of this conversation. Can we just make some genuinely good decisions for our ratepayers? Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, as the— as the, Deputy Mayor, thanks. Sorry, start again. As the only remaining delegate on HRCC, there's probably a few questions that I can answer. We are paid. We are paid about $6,000 per annum, and for that we take on the governance responsibilities under the Local Government Act. So that doesn't just pay for us to turn up to meetings and read the business papers. It pays us to be responsible for an organisation that has responsibilities under the Biosecurity Act. And if that organisation stuffs up, it's us who carries the can for it. And that's what the money is for. Would some of us do it without the money? Yeah, probably. Would some of us not? Certainly. Most people, like everybody around this table, expects to be paid for the work that they carry out.

Do some people treat it as a junket? Probably. I'm not one of them, and I resent the inference that I might.

One of the questions that I have under the proposed model of Hawkesbury Council taking everything on is what would happen with the Landcare coordinator. That Landcare coordinator is employed by HRCC, but reports to Councillor Kotlash in her current role, in her current employment role. What would happen to such a person? Would Council take that person on? Would we fund the Landcare role?

That's a question. General Manager.

Through you, Mr Deputy Mayor, as staff, we haven't contemplated that question. What's in the report is the extent to which we've contemplated the issues.

Thank you. So, who knows?

There's a— what we have, I think, in this, and the report admits it, that we've got a fairly simplistic analysis

Of a comparison between what Hawkesbury River County Council provides and what Hawkesbury Council could provide if we employed two weed care officers, or two officers to meet our obligations under the Biosecurity Act. And what's missing from this discussion is an understanding that these requirements aren't just us tidying up the roadside or getting rid of things that people find unsightly. They are clear responsibilities under an Act of Parliament that Council has to be responsible for. The report states that we, we wouldn't have, or we haven't considered provision for. or staff absence, inability to attract staff. And sometimes these staff can be difficult to attract. One of the reasons that HRCC manages to attract staff is because it's able to run.

It has the capacity and the expertise to run a training program. Whether Council could offer that remains to be seen. We don't have any information about that.

It doesn't fill me with the confidence to say that this council is ready to take on a biosecurity requirement. One of the things that we saw with the frog outbreak at Oakville that Mr Smith spoke about was not just the ability to rapidly upscale by working with other organisations. And I concur with Councillor Kotlash that that could work regardless of who is running that operation. But one of the key reasons that that frog bit action was successful is that HRCC was able to move into an area of the LGA where this council has been manifestly unpopular due to our rates. And HRCC didn't have that problem. So when it hit the ground and it said, We are the weed authority. We are not Hawkesbury Council. We are Hawkesbury River County Council, and we are here to fix your weeds, people welcomed them with open arms. I don't know that we would have got the same reception had we walked in there.

I don't know that we can fix that as an organisation rapidly. Yes, Hawkesbury River County Council is top heavy. It's top heavy in large part due to state government requirements and getting more top heavy, including the requirement to run an ARIC at $20,000 per year recently imposed. Some of the requirements, including end of year reports and things, Councillor Kotlash has actively pushed for HRCC to provide, even when the— The understanding that we had to provide those was unclear, or the reasons for providing those was unclear. There are very high record keeping requirements. I'm not sure that we're prepared to take those on. There are means of us getting better value out of HRCC, and one of those is by increasing our request rates for work on the ground.

We have the lowest request rate for work on the ground of any of the constituent councils. We could fix that. If we don't think that we're being well served by HRCC, we need to ask more. That's very easily fixed and welcomed by the staff at HRCC. We could explore changes to HRCC's governance model. I think we could quite feasibly run with one councillor per council. So we could contact the minister and ask that. That would require, again, an Act of Parliament, as would our withdrawal from HRCC. None of these are simple things. We could ask for reduced governance models, including the need to pay for our own participation. In at ARIC, we use Blacktown's; it saves us money, but it's still 20 grand that isn't being spent on the ground works.

Time's up, Councillor.

Thanks

Okay. Further speakers? No further speakers on the amendment.

Then I will put the amendment. The amendment is what's in the business paper, that Council receive and note the report on Hawkesbury River County Council. If you are in favour of that amendment, please raise your hand. In favour are Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno. If you're against, please raise your hand. Against, Councillor Cotlas, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Calvert. Absent is the Mayor, Councillor McMahon. Declare the amendment. The amendment becomes the motion. Now that it's a motion, I believe those who have spoken before can speak again. Otherwise, we go to right of reply, and the right of reply goes to Councillor Cotlas. No

One? Councillor Wheeler, yes

Thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor. I might just finish off with —there's some information that's been given to us that I believe has—it's not necessarily an error, but I think some of it has been misinterpreted or misunderstood. The direct comparison of on-the-ground workers at both organisations, I think, is a little off. The weed inspectors at HRCC all are involved in active weed control. They don't stand around pointing and saying, That's a weed. You go and deal with it. If you've ever watched those inspectors on the ground, it is hot, sweaty, difficult work. They are—I joined them to work on one of our sites at Howe House, and the weed inspector got in and did it herself. It involved her crawling in a space that was about six inches wide and shimming up a drain pipe in order to deal with one of the largest Cats Claw creepers I have ever sighted.

to do that work. So there was far more than inspecting going on. There have been some comments about staff, about the impact on HRCC staff, and the idea that this is not damaging to them. Of course this is damaging to them. People listening to discussions that they have no control in about their place of work being altered, their employer being altered, them having to reapply for another job in another organisation, even if it is an organisation down the road, is really, really disturbing to staff. It is bad for staff morale. It is bad for staff mental health, and we should be mindful of that. It doesn't mean that we should never have these discussions, but we should be very sensitive to the needs of the staff.

And saying that they're not affected, look, frankly, is unreasonable.

We've also been talking about the costs that we pay and staffing costs as if they're a direct correlation and that we'll get 240-odd thousand dollars worth of work on the ground. No staff come without additional costs. All staff come with on-costs, and our on-costs, I imagine, are around the 30 percent mark. So every staff member that either we employ or HRCC employs comes with that additional cost of superannuation, management, all the things that add an additional component that means that they are not carrying out all of that active work on the ground. Whether we pay that directly or we pay it to HRCC, that cost doesn't go away. So let's be really clear about comparing apples with apples.

Councillor Conolly. I'll be very brief because I think that Council's probably made a decision, but I think just on that particular point, the report's actually quite clear that Council's estimate is that we would spend 73% of that money on the ground works, on direct action on weeds, versus the 49 to 56% that is currently being spent. So it's not a 35% overhead. When you're comparing the total amount of money we give versus what gets spent on weeds currently, it's about a 44% overhead, and we estimate that if it was self for City Council doing it, it would be a 27% overhead . And all that information is actually in the report.

Thank you, Councillor Conolly. I just wanted to add something to what you said earlier. When you were mayor, you went to Hawkesbury River County Council and gave an outline of Council's position at the time. And before that, when I was mayor in 2019, I didn't go to them, but we had discussions with them about their governance structure and their organisation structure. And we asked for information on how that could be changed, and there was an attempt to change it. And I know that this Council, over this, that's about seven years now altogether, this Council has continually suggested that the Hawkesbury River County Council is top heavy. And from what I can see, it just continued to get even more top heavy and is more top heavy now than it was back then.

And that has never been addressed. And this matter, as I said, has been going on for seven years, and I think it's fitting that as a culmination of this Council's term, that we would consider this right now rather than sending it off and letting the new Council try and work it out when they probably don't know anything about it. So I'm surprised that councillors have not taken this opportunity to support Councillor Kotlash's motion, because if you analyse it carefully, all she's really doing is sending it to the minister and saying, Minister, this is what we would like to see. Could you please make a decision? What we've actually decided to do is nothing. We've decided, if this goes the way I suspect it will, we've decided to do nothing.

And after at least seven or eight years, what have we come up with? Nothing. And that worries me, that that's a whole waste of time by councillors and staff and a whole lot of other people. There could have been other amendments, such as sending it to the minister for his review or something like that, but none of those came up. So I'm rather disappointed that this council has decided to be so ultra conservative and not do anything. Any other speakers?

Councillor Sheather. Yeah,

Thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor. I just asked how many other county councils are in our state. There's nine others. I've been to a few of their conferences over the years, and

The different roles they play in different areas for the different problems they have. And it's, you know, we talk about working together and the likes, and just to clarify, I think a couple of councillors might have thought that when I spoke about cleaning the river up, that the county council did it. We were part of it. And when the minister rang me, he said— How can we do it? I said the six organisations, including the County Council, and they need to work in partnership to do it. He sent an email out to all six. About two paragraphs said, You will work together to achieve it. The County Council had the plan, it was in place. They knew the problems. They knew the property owners. They had the solutions.

That's why it worked. But it wouldn't have worked if the others hadn't worked together to achieve it. And that's the sort of things that can come about when people work together with common objectives. For us, you know, I just, I find it really hard to understand why we've spent so much time with this. In all the time that I've been involved with it, I haven't heard a complaint from anybody outside of this council. Not one. And being involved for 40 years, I'm guessing that if someone had complaints, I probably would have heard about it. And that's not saying, and I'm not suggesting that there's options not to look at. But I can tell you, feeding a kid candy, you're likely to get a better result than do what we've been doing for the last hour or so.

And so if we've got concerns, and that's why, as the Deputy Mayor just spoke of, and I didn't, I purposely didn't put any revision or anything in there, because if we've got concerns about it, or the new council has concerns about it, then I'd suggest there's a couple of people sitting up above us here that need to go and sit down with a cup of tea and talk about issues and see whether there's a resolve to And what's the best outcome? We don't spend a lot of time with other councils and the like, or certainly not enough, because what we decide here does have an impact. Our boundary, we've got a line on the ground. Well, let me tell you, water, weeds, wind, it don't stop at boundaries, and nor does people's attitude or the like.

If you've got problems on your other side of the fence, then it's your neighbour's problem as well. And so, you know, there's ways to resolve it. And, you know, I don't see anything in tonight's discussion that puts us in a better light to come out with a better outcome. So that's the reason that I moved what I did. If there's concerns, and I take on board there are concerns. Councillor Kotlash has certainly had concerns for a long time. Just, there's a few of us that hadn't agreed with her. If there's a view that we need to review it, then we have informal discussions, put it to our general manager and staff to have discussions with them. It can be done privately, not publicly like tonight, and we'll get a better outcome.

So, Mr Deputy Mayor, you know, what we've got before us I think is fair and reasonable, and there's opportunities, as you suggested, to look into it. I don't think we need the minister or anybody. I think we've got people quite capable amongst ourselves that can deal with those issues.

Thank you. This motion is still Councillor Cotlash's motion. It's been amended to read as it is on the board, so Councillor Kotlash has right of reply.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'm actually quite surprised that most of the people in this chamber have squared the circle so much to say that we shouldn't be doing anything. But anyway, that's life. I am disappointed that we're not going to be able to investigate how we can save our ratepayers a lot of money. A couple of meetings ago, we had a discussion in this chamber about that was brought at, actually brought at the 11th hour of our operational plan to spend $150,000 on Koala mapping and urban heat

Canopy work. That was $150,000. Well, here was our opportunity to scrape some money back and save some money in one area that could have been given and devoted to that sort of work. So we've missed an opportunity to manage our resources and our ratepayers' money more equitably and fairly, and I think that's a real shame. I'll keep this brief, but any organisation that claims to give us $471,000 worth of value for $200-and-something thousand dollars is just ludicrous. If that was the case, if we got that level of value, people would be breaking down the doors of HRCs to get involved. Who wouldn't want to be involved? That's just not the case. We have to start looking at the data properly and start having honest discussions about this.

I agree with Councillor Sheer that we should be sitting down with cups of tea and doing this, but that's not what's happened. We have a whole setup that's really geared, and I think Councillor Conolly mentioned this before. There's this, the board of HRCC have vested interests in keeping HRCC. The decision makers have vested interests. As a major shareholder, a one in four major shareholder of HRCC, it's our role and responsibility to say, let's look at some other way of doing this. If the council, if the Hawkesbury County Council had been, if the minister dissolved the council, we could then go into discussions about having a really modern shared services model without all of the ARIC and the risk committee, without all of the policies, without all of the, you know, without the really huge depot that we don't really need for people to knock around in.

I mean, it really just needs a review, and it needs it soon. I'm really, really disappointed that we're , you know, we're presumably happy with having such sort of slack standards about how we spend ratepayers' money. That's all I can say. But anyway, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. That was right of reply. We're voting on the motion, which now looks like that on the screen. If you're in favour of this motion, please raise your hands. In favour is Councillor Reardon and Councillor Sheather, Councillor Durick, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno. If you're against, please raise your hand. Against is Councillor Veigel, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Cotter, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor McMahon. That means the motion is carried, I believe. I didn't count the numbers, but yes. It is, isn't it? One, two, three, four, six , five. Yes. Motion is carried.

We now move on to the next items. Firstly, condolences and mayoral minutes.

There aren't any. So the next item is exception reports, items to be adopted on block. Would someone like to move that? Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded Councillor Veigel. All those in favour, please raise your hand. In favour, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel , Councillor Sheather, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci , Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor Conolly and Councillor McMahon. Declare it carried.

Next item is item 11.1.3, enhancing the arts in the Hawkesbury Working Group. So, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, you'd like to move something?

Move that, Mr Deputy Mayor.

We haven't got a motion to second yet.

Thank you. Yes, I'll move the motion in the business paper, thank you.

So you're now your seconder? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'd just firstly like to thank the staff who have facilitated these meetings. It's been thoroughly a thoroughly enjoyable experience to have monthly meetings and to have seen so much feedback coming to us from across the cultural sector. We've completed gathering the feedback as we would wind down for the end of the council term and It's been really good that the participating organisations have given us such a variety of things to work with and enabled us to identify a few options for going forward to pursue also some other groups which weren't originally represented, but that we can represent, that we can get feedback from in the future. This was a really positive exercise in gaining an understanding of the needs of a variety of groups and to understanding what is available across the Hawkesbury so that ultimately there can be a pairing of what is needed with what we have to offer and how Council will have a role in that.

So through our Social Infrastructure Strategy and our Cultural Plan, when they're in operation, they'll have crucial roles in assisting Council to understand and identify those opportunities around performance spaces, which was the original objective of setting up the working group, as well as working towards effective ways to engage with private providers who may be offering their facilities for us to use. As I think I've said previously, my only regret is that there was such a big gap between when we first started having these meetings and when we got the working group back this year. So we had had a committee in 2017 and then it dwindled away and then we had no committees. And so what I think it's really shown is the absolute value in capturing feedback from interested parties around issues.

It makes me confident that we can continue to develop ways in which we can effectively engage with the community to work towards beneficial outcomes. We know we've got various community halls scattered across the area and we know they're in various states of being usable or whatever, and I know we're looking at that. But what I think really came out of this engagement was that there isn't a one-size-fits-all around. Groups that want a performance space or a rehearsal space, what there is is there's this diverse number of needs, and it really showed that we have opportunities as a council to utilise some of our community facilities more when people were able to understand that such things existed.

There's many different requirements that people need around the various cultural activities, the dancing or singing or drama, whatever, things around the size of the hall, the type of flooring, all sorts of things. And I think that it was a really, really valuable exercise in gathering that. So hopefully it will continue onwards in the next council or come in some shape or form, because we've really got a great opportunity to match up our existing facilities in that way. And it was greatly appreciated by the people who participated, that they had an opportunity to engage in this way, and that we had a private operator who attended, who has the Regent Theatre, and for us to maybe think down the track how we can assist in supporting some community groups to use that facility to enable them to be able to hold their concerts, because we're losing a lot of people going out of area to have their end-of-year concerts, and it was just a really positive experience.

And I thank the cultural staff and I thank Melissa and Imogen for their follow-ups in getting the people to attend and so on. It was a good result.

Thank you

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor. To follow on from Councillor Lyons-Buckett , what I think we achieved in just the short time that the committee was, or the working group was able to operate, was far more social capital than can be captured in any report. There was lots of information shared, not just with Council and the Cultural Services staff, but also across organisations who came in at the invitation of the committee. And it was really nice to watch those form. These are people who give a lot of themselves, I think, particularly to emerging artists and to kids who are trying to either learn their way into an industry or to get a start in an industry that can be often really unforgiving.

There's been some interesting discussions and I think some future discussions for Council as we go forward, but particularly around a performance space. I think when we were looking at the Western Invest money, there were a couple of us who were very keen to spend some of that money on a performance space, and that didn't come off in the post-it note and stick-on dot exercise that we all participated in. But what has emerged now is the Richmond Regent and the place that it is likely to hold in the community, and that balance that's required between the needs of small commercial and not-for-profit community organisations with the responsibility of Council to provide fairly across a whole range of needs.

You know, we have sporting groups coming to us wanting facilities and wanting funding and sponsorship, and we have other community groups wanting funding and sponsorship. And then we have these other groups that often, I think, slip through the cracks that require performance space, rehearsal space, very often storage space. You know, we heard from the Macquarie Towns Orchestra, who need places to put all their stuff. You know, that's a bit hard to shove a tuba under a, you know, under the... I don't know where you stick a tuba. Let's not go there. Tuba what? Excuse you.

But then there's, and then we have this really iconic building in Richmond, the Regent, where we have this new operator who's very keen to make that the focus of the community in a way that both makes use of the building but allows it to maintain that iconic status. And I look at the similar building in the community that I grew up, which was the Roxy at Parramatta, which has just fallen into disuse, and that would be a terrible shame to see that happen to the Regent. So the question then becomes, what is the role for Council? Is it to facilitate those connections and to facilitate the community use of those private concerns? Is it to provide something else that would then compete and make that potentially less viable?

So I think this is the next discussion that we have to have. There was also a lot of really useful information about the quality of community spaces, and particularly the quality of modern community spaces that are often erected due to a price point and because they're easier to maintain in the long term when compared with something like the old Wilberforce School of Arts that I know Council has poured quite a bit of money into at different times and, in fact, looked to be so expensive to restore 25 years ago when I first moved here that Council was very keen to pull it down. That came out as one of the buildings most loved by these performance groups because of the facilities that it provides that are just not found in modern buildings, particularly the sprung floor.

And a floor that isn't so, so a parquet floor that's really slippery; it's a fully sprung dance floor that any organisation can use. And I want to make special... mentioned tonight of the Wilberforce School of Arts Committee, who have looked after that building since it was reopened to the public in 2000. I was a member of that committee. I left a few years after. They've maintained that building, and tonight, while we were meeting here, they were winding up that association and they've handed control back to Council. And I really want to thank them for 25 years of really dedicated service to the Wilberforce community. We got continuing good comments about the condition of that hall, the ease of booking, the very low price point that made it accessible to everybody.

So many thanks to those people.

Yeah, thanks, Mr. Deputy Mayor. Just a question to Councillor Zamprogno. On page 67, there was representation from Simon Levine , is it, in relation to the Hawkesbury District Concert Band. Have you taken that up with a request to the staff, or would you like to ask it now?

No, I did relay that request to staff, and I believe Ms. Stewart provided a response, and I'll defer to her.

Through you, Deputy Mayor, yes, we did respond directly to Mr. Levine.

Yeah. I'd like to congratulate the committee on the exceptional work they're doing. I know I've spoke to people involved with some of the discussions you've had outside, and it's all been extremely positive.

In relation to organisations like the Hawkesbury District Concert Band and the others, is there a reason that we don't use them as much as we used to, where there's opportunities?

General Manager, do we have an answer? Apparently not. I'd like to take it on notice.

Yeah, well, I guess the reason I ask is that, like on Australia Day and other things, I

Guess it's horses for courses a bit with different organisations and the likes. But if there's opportunities to use parts of our arts in activities we do, you know, I attend most of their concerts and stuff, and there's a lot of young people. In the past there's been older people. There's a lot of young people getting involved with some of those organisations now, and I'd just like to see if there's an opportunity for us to somewhat involve them. And I'm not suggesting in everything , as I said, horses for courses. But if there is an opportunity, I think two things out of it. One is that they could do with our support, and the other is that we promote where we can activities within our organisations, and I think that it'd go down well with organisations for us to have that sort of contact and arrangement where possible.

Thank you. No further speakers? Yeah, please.

Yeah, thanks, Deputy Mayor. Yeah, I'd like to thank the committee for the work done when we discussed this about a year or so ago. Everybody on board with this one. This is very important. I too, Councillor Wheeler, remember the post-its, and I did call for an amphitheatre like you. And going past that site just yesterday, I thought, well, that would enhance a long-term vision of putting an amphitheatre in the Hawkesbury, even it is flood prone. But if we're talking about one in 100 floods, or maybe a bit closer, it might be out for every one in maybe five or ten. But anyway, I think it's an ideal spot. But having said that, it's good. But I know this we've debated before, and the long-term vision for the Hawkesbury, we do need a purpose-built function centre, if not nothing like the Joan Sutherland Centre at Penrith.

Now I know that's way out there. So whoever's here after the 14th of September, don't let this one drop. I think it's got to continue in perpetuity with those long-term goals. So , but thank you to the staff, and thank you to the committee.

Any further? And bring on

The amphitheatre.

I would just like to firstly correct Councillor Sheather and Veigel. It's not a committee; it's a working group. And that is a very, very important distinction. A working group is, it's based on action and it has a direct purpose. And this working group has fulfilled that direct purpose very well. It's good to see the working group model working. I've always knew it would, and I hope the new council continues to follow that working group model because it's been proven how well it can operate. Any further speakers? If not, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, right of reply.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor, and thank you for that clarification. I also hope that it will continue after when the new council comes in. I think what Councillor Sheather raised was very important, and one of the problems we have in this area is that we have such a wealth of talent. We really do have a really vibrant and widespread cultural community. We have so many wonderful artists, musicians, actors, and people, and what we're hoping is that we have more opportunities for them to be able to utilise local venues to show us their amazing talents. The other thing is, of course, we need to keep our community spaces affordable because we know how important it is for those particular groups to provide, particularly for children, but also for adults, the opportunities to engage in cultural pursuits. So thank you, and good night.

Thank you. I'll put the motion. All those in favour, please raise your hand. Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Sam Brogno, and Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor McMahon. Declared carried.

Next item is item 12.1.1, notice of motion. It's my notice of motion about electric vehicle charging. I'm not going to spend— Thank you. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this except to say it's all there in the motion, that the general manager did write to the minister saying, How come we keep getting left out all the time? And she said, Well, I'm going to include you. I will consider including you in future grants. My motion says, Let's go see her and make sure she knows that we need to be included in future grants, especially for the role that electric vehicles can play for tourism in this city. So it's a very simple notice of motion, and I would be very pleased if you would support it. Any speakers? Councillor Sheather.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Deputy Mayor. When I read this, the thing that concerned me, and it's been happening a bit in America just recently, the vandalism in chargers because of the content, the scrap metal and all that sort of stuff. And I don't know whether you would consider putting a point three in there, or maybe the staff could bring something to our attention if there's— I'd like to get something in place before we get money, rather than get the money and then go chase the stuff. My comments were in relation to where they go, and I wouldn't be opposed to involving all-night service stations to accommodate . Council opportunity to get funding to put such a charging station there. To have it stand alone somewhere, I do believe it'd be vandalised.

All-night service stations, and I don't know whether council wants responsibility and maintenance and stuff. I'm talking about if we can get it funded to go onto an existing site that's got protection and can look after it, and ongoing maintenance. I'm talking about sort of give it to them. Then we achieve, firstly, the recharging stations that we're going to need, and secondly, that it takes a burden off council for further costs and the community gets what they want. So if we go putting them in particular places, where do we put them where they're going to be looked after 24/7? So whether or not you wish to put something on there now, probably not, but I'd like the staff to consider something prior to getting the money so that straight away, whether we have discussions with 24-hour service stations, there's only two or three in the city, they're on main roads and the likes, that that sort of thing could or would be practical.

You might like to make a comment or the general manager whether that sort

Of thing is

Practical.

I don't want to include that, but the general manager does have an internal working group, I believe, that is looking at those. Would you like to comment on that?

Through you, thank you, Deputy Mayor. Yes, council does have an internal working group. Trying to come to grips with actually was quite a complex problem for the Hawkesbury, and we have been working with inputs from groups and entities such as WestRock and their regional charging infrastructure plan, and also guided by a suite of New South Wales Government policies and work that they have been doing that I have identified high priority locations and regions and travel routes and those sorts of things that are optimum locations for charging infrastructure. What the team, amongst other things, are working on across the suite of work in this space is also an EV charging policy for Council that will then start to cover off a number of those things that you're talking about, Councillor, around public land, private land, all of those kinds of things.

Yeah. Thank you. Any further speakers? Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. I'm always happy to discuss EV chargers, as you would well know. The choices that we make today will matter for generations to come, and it's very relevant that we look at decarbonisation of the transport sector and the future of forms of transport. And we know there is documentation of where they're needed, where the gaps are. And again, I'm really disappointed to see in the letter sent by the General Manager that we were not eligible, again due to the categorisation of our Council as a metro Council. That's really unfortunate because far too often when we're classified as metro, we're missing out on things. When we're classified as regional, we're paying more for something.

So I'm pleased that we fit one category and that we're going to be getting one fast charger by the end of the year. 2024, it's a very delayed time to be reaching that milestone, and I'd be quite surprised if we're not the slowest LGA in New South Wales in providing such an item of infrastructure for public use. Not through lack of trying on my part, I could say. And I'd like to thank—we had some recent advocacy from local EV enthusiast Dr Tom Aczel, who wrote to all the councillors about the deficit of available EV charges, and I'm glad to see a motion about it. But I'm not sure, really, that this motion would progress us any further to write to request a meeting with the minister about including Hawkesbury in the future rounds of funding.

The minister has said she'll be reviewing the criteria. I think that's a rather slow and uncertain way forward. Unfortunately, this council and the previous one, when presented with opportunities to advance this forward, saw an absurd deflection of the matter. It's been delayed over and over again, and as someone just said about a previous thing, seven or eight years later, here we are with nothing. I think that in 2019, I brought a notice of motion that council install at least one EV charger in a public place. At the time, there was one offered to council free of charge. It would have only been an installation cost, with the plan to roll out further charges when possible. In the early days, the EV charging companies were looking for locations and offering them to councils, and unfortunately back then, which is 10 or so years ago, we didn't capitalise on that because of the resistance of some people to actually go down that path.

So that motion was changed by people who wanted a report because some councillors couldn't commit to supporting installing an EV charger at that time, and then that motion descended into a void where it went into a committee, then the committee stopped, and then finally we got a scoping paper. Sorry, Councillor Kotlash, did you say something? A committee, then the committee stopped and a scoping paper was done in 2021, and here we are in 2024, and the suggestion is for the mayor, who has in the past openly resisted supporting emissions reduction strategies and the declaration of a climate emergency, and the suggestion is to write to a minister to ask for a meeting. I just don't. I think that's too little, too late.

When in a meeting of the 26th of April in 2022, we resolved that EV chargers would be considered within the scope of the Hawkesbury Town and Village Place Plans, and they had been supposedly to be part of the liveability plans. And at one point they were actually in the designs for the liveability, but I don't know what happened to them. They vanished out of there. So the issue has been repeatedly pushed down the line, and with its gone opportunities to have been proactive around EV installation, which is disappointing. But hopefully, the government will review the criteria so that we can apply, and we may get one. With a greener electricity grid, the business case for having them is so much better now.

I think the average cost of installation of a pedestal unit is around $1,500, and council can set up whichever operation to lease them on public land or to own them themselves. And the economic benefits we know that flow from having people who come to townships who drive the EV network, they really are significant. You know, as an EV driver, I know how you plan your trip and how you go to places where you can charge your car, and you invest money into the local economies around where you go. So I'm happy to support a letter being written. I don't have a lot of confidence it will change anything or get us an EV charger, but I'm at least glad to see it's been raised again.

Thank you. First speakers? No? Oh, Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look,

Sorry, Mr Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Councillor Dogramaci. I'll support the motion, but I agree with Councillor Lyons-Buckett that it's very far from where we need to be at this point. We have missed multiple rounds, and we've missed multiple opportunities, particularly given the work we've done around the liveability project and the major works in three town centres. These should have been part of that work. They were certainly discussed by the working group, and they were discussed by Council, and placement of them was stymied by some really warped logic. There was first the culture of really quite toxic climate denial. There was concerns about someone possibly getting a freebie by charging up there, by driving all the way down to Richmond to charge up their car, their personal vehicle.

A deliberate lack of understanding about how EVs can be integrated into local economies. The truth is that we've bought much of this lack of charging infrastructure on ourselves, and that has impacts on our towns. I've travelled in Councillor Lyons-Buckett's electric vehicle. My own car is so far from that, it's not funny. But I've seen how the vehicle itself and the need for it... to charge, and its ability to determine where it goes to charge determines the route that the driver takes. So instead of just throwing yourself out there and hoping to get to the destination via, you know, if you go for a long trip, I travelled to Mount Barker last year to a conference that I self-funded. I went on the bus because I couldn't come at flying.

Many people travelled to that conference just outside of Adelaide in electric vehicles because it was permaculture convergence and was full of greenies and hippies like me. And they travelled through towns specifically because they could go there and charge up their vehicle. And while they were there, about 20 minutes to charge up, they got something to eat, they went to the local shops, they walked, and they spent money. And we know that they're the two key reasons that people spend money in local businesses. Firstly, they're on foot, and secondly, they've got a bit of time to kill. And that's what EV chargers in town centres, which is exactly where they should be, bring to local economies: walkers and spenders.

I'm really pleased to see someone proposing that we actually go to Macquarie Street, because that's how you get busy ministers to pay attention: not by demanding that they come to you, but by going into them.

What I'm also pleased to see is the staff getting on with this in the absence of council's action. And if you look at our staff car parks, you'll see a lot of blue stickers on number plates, because despite this and previous councils continuing to vote against EV chargers and EVs as part of our policies, the staff have just got on with it because they can see that this is the future. This is the future for emissions reduction, and it's the future for driving costs, the costs of transport down, particularly in a council like ours in the outer suburbs where people drive all the time because they don't have any choice. Shifting to EVs will be that, with infrastructure that's run on cheap, renewable energy, often generated in-house, is the way to drive down transport costs when you don't have any other means of getting to where you want to go.

So this is an essential piece of infrastructure. The faster we get on the bandwagon, the better.

Thank you. Any further speakers? If not, I'll give myself, Councillor Dogramaci, yes.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Mayor. I always say that theory is different than practicality.

We tag along United States and Europe. We don't have adequate roads to drive the cars, let alone

Have this intention of having charging stations. To start with, as per this motion, which I support, that's no problem. I have no problems with it. South Windsor, and you all know that, you know, I just say it straight, who is going to park his car and charge at South Windsor after five or six o'clock or seven or eight night? We know what's happening in South Windsor. And those cables, which they have deoxidized copper , that's my industry. And when I was in Vancouver some six months ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a few people and two councils, as a matter of fact, and with some councillors. They have huge problems. And in the United States, you have underground charging stations, perfectly lit, with maybe a dozen CCTV cameras, and people still go in and steal those cables.

Sometimes I think, you know, they have four or five kilo of pure copper in it. And in the United States, if I remember correctly, they are about six or seven dollars, maybe eight, nine, ten dollars in here in Australia. And when it mentioned that about the tourists, I understand most of the people driving EV, they charge their cars overnight anyway. So, and look at the roads, the main roads, Richmond and Windsor Road. Where are we going to put them? Who is going to man them? Petrol stations, besides one or two of them, they are all closed, you know, after eight, nine, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, perfect time for thieves to go and steal that four or five kilo of copper as well as the aluminium that , you know, house those.

And how are we going to put the CCTVs on those areas? And on top of it, when you say here, Mr. Deputy Mayor, Bilpin, St Albans, Ebenezer, perfect spots for St Albans. Maybe put one today and it will be gone tomorrow. So it's good, yes, of course, you know, I support that, you know, we should have them, but we are not ready. We are absolutely not ready with this 149 million dollars part of it. And I'm sure that people who are charging their vehicles overnight, they will also, you know, have their Tucker, and maybe they'll... And the least expensive car EV, least expensive one, you know, nowadays is doing about three, four hundred kilometres. So who is going to come from Mudgee to, or, you know, wherever?

A couple of hundred kilometres there to visit our towns, our, what, St Albans or Ebenezer or you name it. It is good, like if we could do it, all right, but I don't know what kind of guarantees that, you know, we could have that these stations are not going to be vandalised. I hope you will achieve in your motion, but I have no hope that we will get anything good in return. Thank you.

Thank you. No further speakers. I'd just like to say I don't necessarily disagree with what Councillors Wheeler and Lyons-Buckett and Dogramaci have said, but what they are talking about is more about the operation of the EV chargers. I wasn't on about that. What I'm on about is getting the money, getting the grants from the government. Once we get the grants, then we can figure out all those other questions. And indeed, as was pointed out before, the staff have a working group that's already addressing many of those issues. And sure, there may be theft and damage, but that's not my point. My point here is that we go in and see the minister and say, Hawkesbury has been overlooked too many times.

You must include us. We need these charge stations not just for the residents, but for tourists in particular. There is a danger that if we leave this to the private market, as was done originally with the mobile phone towers, they tended to put the towers where the people were. So if you lived in Strathfield or Chippendale , you had pretty good coverage because there's towers all over the place. But if you lived out here where there weren't many people, our coverage was terrible for many years. It took us a long time to catch up. And then it was only Telstra that tended to do it, not— Not the private operators. And this could go exactly the same way, that people, the private operators with the EV charging are likely to put it in places where they get a bigger return.

Out here, they may not do that. So we need the government to step in and say, look, Hawkesbury is missing out, so we'll make sure that you don't miss out in the next grants. You'll share the money and you can have some EV charging stations as well. The other thing they look at is the number of people in that area who own an electric vehicle. Hawkesbury does not have a high ownership of electric vehicles, and therefore the private companies might say, well, I'm not going to put one there because nobody's got an EV. And why don't they have one? Because there's no infrastructure to support them. And it's a circular thing. And once again, I think the government needs to step in and make sure we get the grant to overcome that.

So look, the other thing I've been doing is working with WesROC to work on an EV charging roadmap, which addresses those questions. And as president of WesROC, I went to see the federal minister, Chris Bowen, about a year ago about this very matter. He guaranteed us that he's going to look at those matters and make sure all the outlying areas, as well as the inner city, get equal treatment through the federal government's grants. So I'm just asking that the state government does the same thing. So I thank you for your comments, but I just wanted to make it clear that all those things might be true, but that's not what this motion is about. That was my right of reply. So I'll now put the motion.

If you're in favour of the motion, please raise your hands. In favour is Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Sheather, Councillor Conolly, Councillor Cotter, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Sam Brogno, Councillor Calvert. Absent is Councillor McMahon. Declare it carried.

The next item is responses to councillor questions. Do we have any discussion on that? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. In relation to Windsor, to the livability project in Windsor, sorry, franticly shuffling, I've had a couple of questions from a community group today. When we get the report on the livability that the response refers to, will that include a breakdown of what money has been spent in each of the three towns, so South Windsor, Richmond and Windsor? And if not, is that possible to include?

Is it also possible to get some information, and I don't want you to go to any additional bother, of changes to what the changes to the project have done to the costings, if possible? And then a few other questions probably on notice. There's a quote here for the running of the gas lamps, which are on 24 hours a day, unfortunately.

Was there ever a comparative cost analysis against LEDs, which was the original plan of the livability project? I note that the electric lights are still required for safety. Has there been any calculation of the CO2 emissions from these lamps and the impact of those on our, as mentioned in the letter to the Minister, very ambitious net zero targets for 2030? I know it was raised with Council by the previous Director of Planning. There's also a reference to the mantles . Do we have any information about the maintenance costs of these lamps into the future, and was any of this information available before changing the project parameters? And which funding pool are the running costs coming from?

I assume not the Liveability Project because that will be completed in June next year. So I presume it has to come out of Council's costings somewhere, and represents at least an additional $12,000 cost to Council for some lights that are running 24 hours a day that would have looked substantially the same with LED globes in them. Thanks.

So we got a letdown. Is there any answers to any of that now , or is it all going forward?

Thank you through you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor. I think we might take most of that on notice so that we can prepare a holistic response. I think particularly around those issues of the emissions and costs and the budgets, particularly in light of... Council having made the decision, I've lost track of time, in or about the middle of last year, actually to preserve the gas lamps. So that decision, to the best of my knowledge, was made in the absence of this information. So we can do our very best to pull that together.

Councillor Connelly.

I had a related question, just a question for, has there been any discussion with the business owners about sharing the cost of the gas? And if not, could there be some conversation around sharing the cost of the gas? Given that those business owners are the ones pushing very hard for the economic benefit that would come with it.

Through you, we haven't had that discussion. Happy to think about, perhaps through a question with notice about what a mechanism might exist for that cost sharing, because I'm not sure that there even is one, but we can have a look into it.

Anything further?

Do we need to move that?

We've just received them. Yep. No further business on that topic. I think that brings us to…

I would suggest that we have a five-minute break. Everyone happy with that? Resume here at, say, 20 to 10. Sorry. So we'll have a break until 20 to 10. See you then.

No, Councillor Djuric has moved it and Councillor Reardon has seconded it. All those in favour, please raise your hands. It's unanimous. Councillor Zamprogno. Except for Councillor McMahon, who's absent, declare it carried. We move into confidential.

To the ordinary meeting, we have a report on the confidential, and I ask the general manager to give us that report, please.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. In regards to item 15.3.1 regarding lease from Crepe Myrtle Pty Limited 442 and part of 441 Cornwallis Road, Cornwallis, whilst in closed session, Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Conolly, seconded Councillor Reardon, that : 1. The outcome of negotiations between Hawkesbury City Council and Crepe Myrtle Pty Limited regarding the land that is leased 442 and part of 441 Cornwallis Road, Cornwallis, as detailed in the report, be received and noted. 2. Council enter into a new lease between Hawkesbury City Council and Crepe Myrtle Pty Limited for 442 and part of 441 Cornwallis Road, Cornwallis, as outlined in the report. 3. Authority be given for any documentation in association with this matter to be executed under the seal of Council.

4. Details of Council's resolution will be conveyed to the proposed lessor, together with the advice that Council is not and will not be bound by the terms of its resolution until such time as an appropriate legal documentation has been put— such a resolution into effect has been agreed to and executed by all parties. For the motion were Councillors Conolly, Calvert, Djuric, Dogramaci, Kotlash, Lyons-Buckett, Veigel, Reardon, Sheather, Wheeler, and Progne. Absent for the vote was Councillor McMahon.

In respect of item 15.3.2, Code of Conduct Complaint and Investigation, whilst in closed session, the Council resolved on the motion of Councillor Conolly, seconded by Councillor Djuric, Council resolved that Council defer consideration of this matter to the next Council meeting on the 13th of August 2024 . For the motion were Councillors Calvert, Conolly, Djuric, Dogramaci, Kotlash, Lyons-Buckett, Reardon, Sheather, Veigel and Wheeler. Absent for the vote were Councillors McMahon and Zamprogno. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Someone like to move we accept that report? Moved Councillor Lyons-Buckett, seconded by Councillor Sheather. All those in favour? Nobody against. Declare it carried. Absent is Councillor McMahon and Councillor Zamprogno. Any further business? If not, I'll close the meeting. Thank you very much for your attendance. Closed meeting at 11:01.