10 June 2025 - Ordinary

Thank you, Councillors.

Good evening and welcome to Hawkesbury City Council meeting of the 10th of June. I'd like to welcome all those in attendance at the meeting this evening, as well as those attending online. We'd also, Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Darug and Darkinjung people as the traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to their elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Nations people. I'd hand over to the General Manager to offer some information.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you'll be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I'd also like to advise that in accordance with Clause 5.33 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting and livestream 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 the livestream video and if you do not wish to be recorded in the livestream, please move into the foyer and we will turn the foyer speakers on for you. The recording 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 will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting.

This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Finally, it's also requested that if any person participating in or attending the meeting this evening has their mobile phone on them, can you please either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Jill. There's all in attendance. There's no apologies. Declarations of interest.

Councillor McMahon.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Item 10.2.2 and item 10.4.5, and for that particular item you'll need to pull it out of block.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

The second one, Councillor?

10.4.5.

Thank you, Councillors. Confirmation of the minutes. I'll move that way. Councillor Reardon. Councillor Veigel. All those in favour?

Against? Carried. In this case, Councillors Brogden, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan, Councillor Shane Djuric, Councillor McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Veigel, Regan, Dogramaci and Sheather.

I declare it carried.

Agenda for the public speakers. We've got one, two, three, four items on the business paper tonight. The first one's 10. 1.1. The second is 10.2.2. The third is 10 .5.2, and 12.1.2. We'll take those in that order. And the first speaker for item 10.1.1 is Mr. Glenn Apps. Mr. Apps, you have five minutes, and there's an opportunity to answer questions if you..

Thanks. Good evening. Councillors would remember this matter from April, where Council resolved to place the VPA on notification. The notification's ended and there's been no public submissions, and the recommendation is that the voluntary planning agreement be endorsed. When we were here, or when I was here, sorry, last time, there was a question raised by one of the councillors as to how the $35,000 per lot figure was reached. Some years ago, the state government, as part of the initiatives to sort of encourage housing delivery and lot delivery of lots and housing affordability, set a cap on contributions of $30,000 per lot. The $35,000 is essentially that $30,000 plus indexation since then.

So that's how the $35,000 was derived. I think there was another question as to what that money could be used for. That's—I'm happy to announce that's a matter for you. That's a matter for Council to go towards infrastructure in that local area. This is six residential lots and one residue lot, so it's admittedly not a lot of money, but that is some contribution towards infrastructure in the area. I thank Council officers for the report and obviously I support the recommendation. That's it from me. If anyone's got any questions that they'd like me to answer, otherwise I'm

Done. Councillor Kotlash

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you, Mr Apps, for that explanation. My question's really simple. On page 18 of our business paper, the Angophora Place is called on the map Angophora Piazza , I think that's how you say it. Is that, yeah, is

That Angophora

Angophora . No, it's Angophora, but anyway. So which one's, is that an old place name?

Well, the subdivision plan that is superseded

By the geographic name, which is Angophora Place.

Hopefully. Oh, good. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Thank you.

And it's Angophora named after the tree. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I was thinking of piazza, I mean, to me that's sort of, you know, a cobbled community area in the middle of Italy somewhere.

Middle of Italy somewhere

Florence or something . And I thought, really, are they going to call it that? And I didn't know which was the one, so

That's my— We can bring a little bit of provincial Italy to the Hawkesbury. Okay

Thanks.

Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.

Do we have a motion, Councillors?

Councillor McMahon

I'll second that.

Councillor Kotlash, was it?

Any

Discussion on the matter?

Not necessary, Mr Mayor

Those in favour of the recommendation?

Those against? It's carried unanimously. Councillor Brogno, Wheeler, Mary Lyons-Buckett, Ryan , Djuric, McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Weigel, Regan, Dogramaci and Sheather.

Item 10.2.2, Councillor McMahon.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I have a less than significant non-pecuniary interest. There are two items in this matter that relate to that. There is expenditure on the RFS and the new fire control centre, and I'm a member of the Hawkesbury Communications Rural Fire Brigade. The other item is Turnbull Oval, and my son plays for the Hawkesbury Hawks. Both of those items do not have a pecuniary interest. I'll be staying in the matter. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thanks, Deputy Mayor. There's three public speakers. There's two for, one against. Mr Paul Collins is in favour of the document.

You have five minutes, Mr Collins.

Good evening, councillors, community members and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Paul Collins, and I'm here to present a community-supported aspiration to commence a preliminary investigation into the future land use potential of the Oakville East area, specifically the pocket of the land along Boundary Road adjacent to the vineyard Stage 1 and west of Box Hill. There is a document that's gone around, I think it's a presentation. Yep, the slide two. Would

I have a quick look at that? So

Slide two, which is the second page, obviously. This one here just sort of outlines. It just sort of shows. I just wanted to show you where the boundary is. So the light blue is vineyard Stage 1. If that makes sense. The lower one is vintage stage two, and the yellow section above that is what I'm talking about. It's sort of like a jigsaw piece of puzzle that fits into the allotment. And you'll see the brown line there. That refers to the power lines that run through, and that's generally marked where the orbital road was planned to originally go through, so it's not affected by any of that. The red lines there are simply the four-lane, $75 million boundary road development that's going up to Old Pitt Town Road.

We border that, and also the Menin Road, which is on the opposite side. So essentially half the infrastructure of the road would be suitable for that position. Let me begin by acknowledging that I understand the Community Strategic Plan is not a land use document. However, the CSP is about aspirations and supporting long-term planning, strategic infrastructure and financial sustainability for Hawkesbury future generations. I present this tonight a call to initiate early stage investigation to prepare our community and council for the future. This land is flood free, already semi-cleared and strategically positioned between two growing centres, Box Hill and Vineyard. It forms a natural bridge between Hills and Hawkesbury LGAs.

It is surrounded by infrastructure that has either been built already or already funded, including the $75 million boundary road and Bandon Road upgrades, as well as existing services. So on slide three, you'll see, which is this one, the next page, the lot larger. You've got Windsor Road, Boundary Road, and you'll see that it's not affected by anything because part of the upper part of the boundary is the escape route for the floods, so we're attached to that. And because we're in a no-flood area, there's no issue of evacuation, if that makes sense. But if there was, down Box Road, down Chapman Road, and you'll see that the big box there in the purple line is the train station, so it's quite close to the infrastructure of that side of it.

Council's own document states that beyond 2030, commitments to meet housing demand are limited. Our community sees this as an opportunity to work together to identify suitable low-impact sites for possible future urban use. Importantly, the site is flood free. Unlike deferred Village Stage 2, it is not heritage listed or environmentally sensitive, sits directly next to the multi-lane road upgrades and utility corridors, and requires minimal infrastructure. So on slide four, the next one over, you'll see the blue area is the probable maximum flood zone, and you'll see that the yellow area I've identified is the Oakville East area along Boundary Road, which I'm presenting there. That sort of gives you an idea of that site.

From a financial standpoint, even a modest future development here could contribute millions in rates and Section 1.1 contributions, helping to close council funding gaps. As noted in your own long-term financial plan, revenue challenges are growing. This area offers one avenue to strategically grow revenue from that aspect. Let me briefly highlight ten community-identified benefits of this land for the future. It's a logical urban extension between Vineyard and Box Hill. It's flood-free and an orbital M9 free zone. It has potential to generate significant rates revenue and Section 7.11 development contribution. It also allows an affordable housing opportunity. It enables a high-quality mix that preserves the Oakville rural character by potentially offering larger lots around the bordering areas, similar to a Pitt Town feel.

So the idea is to blend the outer areas with larger lots and blend into the areas which you've seen in here which are flood zone anyway, which can't be developed. So it offers that sort of transparency. It reflects current land use patterns, with larger majority of the pocket not used for genuine RU4 purposes. It supports northwest growth area stage planning principles. It aligns with major road and transport upgrades and located close to Vineyard train station. It avoids environmental disruption by building on already cleared and semi-used land, and finally, it provides a strategic foundation for sustainable growth that balances community needs, infrastructure readiness and long-term financial resilience.

In closing, this is not about changing zoning today. It's about laying the groundwork for a thoughtful, evidence-based assessment of long-term land use suitability, especially beyond 2030. Accordingly, I would like to request that the Council formally consider initiating an investigation, whether under the LEP review process or in the revised CSP implementation. Thank you

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Collins. Thank you for bringing forward an idea to the Chamber. We should always look to the future, as you've said. Just a couple of questions about what you've put here. Did you send something else to go with this, or you're talking about what your vision is?

There's a 19-page document which is circulated to the Council, which should have been part of the process. Oh

It was. Oh, sorry, I

Haven't received. This has all the illustrations, documents, foundations, financial...

Thank you, I'll check on that. I was just wondering, what are the size of most of these lots? I can't tell from the map. Are these five...

Oh no, the 65 blocks there are the 65 landowners. So for the last week, I've met with 25 of them who are all wanting to move

On. Yeah, no, I'm wondering what size. They're

All five-acre lots. They're all five-acre lots, yeah.

Okay. And what's the red section on?

That's just my... That's your house. Okay.

Thank you for that.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you, Mr Collins, for your presentation. I know you've been a long-time advocate for this proposal. With the 65 properties that you've got on this page here, have you done an estimate for how many lots or house blocks that could potentially become? And I'm just thinking about our housing targets with that question. Yeah,

It's pretty much the same as Vineyard Stage 1, because Vineyard Stage 1 loses all the zoning for the water channel, so it's about 2,700, I think. 2,700?

Yep

But potentially, if you have larger blocks, you can reduce that down to blend in with the R2 area out of scope. Okay,

Thank you. And my last question is, do you have any developers in mind in terms of one developer like a Redbank, or is this more going to be like a spot development like Vineyard Stage 1?

Oh, I would just after the investigation so Council can improve it. Yeah, there's none

Of that on the table

No, no, no, not at all. It's about just getting the initiation moving forward so we can plan ahead for the Hawkesbury area.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Councillor Ms Bogdan. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Mr Collins, we've become frequent correspondents on this question, and, you know, the question that you pose: preliminary investigation — who could be against that? We're not talking about block sizes. How many acres do you own in the area that you've designated?

5.5. So

You own land in the target area. Yeah. And you say that of the 60-plus blocks in that area you've met personally with 25 of them. Is there anything other than anecdote that you can offer the Chamber to prove that there is a majority of support within the whole of the area that you've proposed, rather than partial support among the third of landowners that you've spoken to?

Yes, I'd be happy to get back to you with those documents of support from all the landowners. I've been collating all those recommendations and from different pockets around. The whole of the area. Thank you.

Any other questions? Thanks, Mr Collins. I know you've put a lot into this. Sorry, Councillor Dogramaci. Eddie,

Thank you. Thank you very much. My questions are not related to the plans or how many houses you are going to build, but directly, where on earth have you been all this time doing this kind of thing? Why so late? Why didn't you do this, you know, five, ten, fifteen years ago?

I grew up in South Windsor on Acreage, which is still Acreage, and my motocross track was Bligh Park, and it got turned into developments. I've seen the development happen. I moved down to play football for Manly, and I've returned recently over the last four years, so I've only been there for four years. And since that period, I've actually been working on this to— Okay

Well, representing the small business party, I am 100 percent behind you. Please do more. We desperately need more funds . We desperately need income, not only for the people, you know, who are moving in this area, for the plumbers, for the turf growers—

You need a question, Councillor.

Yeah, well, I'm coming to that, if you allow me. Please, don't interrupt me. So I'm very, very glad what you are doing. God bless you. That's not a question, Councillor

That's not a question. Well, that was

My input. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you, Mr Collins.

We have a second speaker, Mr Peter Webb.

You have five minutes, Mr Webb. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Mayor and Councillors, for this opportunity to speak tonight. Tonight I'm speaking as a nearly 50-year resident of Kurrajong, of the observations and knowledge that I've learnt, particularly over the last 30 years volunteering in the Hawkesbury. I volunteered in a number of groups; however, in particular, the knowledge I gleaned while part of the Council's Human Services Advisory Committee from 2016 and 21 has given me an understanding of the workings of this place. In 2019, I was invited to join the Kurrajong Nursing Home Board, and I became board chair in 2023. We submitted some comments on the draft CSP, and the Council's response, which is provided on pages 51 and 52 of the business papers, was encouraging.

We support the statement in the CSP about a shared responsibility requiring collaboration across all levels of government, non-government agencies, industry groups, businesses, community organisations and individuals. When we look at the four guiding principles in the CSP, we have deliberately chosen to read the words through the lens of an older person living in the Hawkesbury. In recent times at Kurrajong Nursing Home, we have undertaken a strategic review of its operations and our role in the Hawkesbury community. We will be expanding our support for all recipients of aged care support, either in their own homes, in our existing Kurrajong Nursing Home or Parklands Village, or in new purpose-built aged care residential facilities.

This review has short, medium and long-term goals for us. One of our goals is to have a better understanding of the long-term health condition of anyone over 65, and as a starting point we are using the recent census data to inform us. We note there are more than 11,000 people in the Hawkesbury aged over 65. That's one in six of us. And there is, in that census, there is 461 people reported as having dementia. We believe the community indicators in the CSP need to be explained and/or expanded, and a process adopted to share this information with the wider community on a regular basis. The delivery partners shown for each of the four directions you have do not appear to have any representation or a voice for these 11,000 people in the Hawkesbury.

Of more concern, there is no apparent process in the CSP to hear or engage with the Hawkesbury aged care residential sector. We recently attended a webinar on local approaches to managing and recovering from natural disasters, and it presented the findings of two research projects by Sydney Uni and Western Sydney Uni. When we listened with our aged ears perspective, we were encouraged to hear confirmation of some of the ideas we have pondered for some time. Five of the ideas we heard were: community resilience is about connection and reciprocity. I always struggle over that word. Reciprocity. Transparency and information are the cornerstones of everything we do. All responses should be continuous, not episodic.

Like-minded self-organising groups should be encouraged. Social isolation leads to ongoing hardship. Over the last 12 months, Carerong Nursing Home has reached out to the other aged care operators in the Hawkesbury. To share our experiences. Initially, this has been informal and at a senior operations level, and we have been encouraged with the willingness of the Hawkesbury facilities to engage. This has led to regular meetings over the last few months, and we also have invited someone from the PHN to be there. In closing, we appreciate the considerable work Hawkesbury Council staff have undertaken in preparing the CSP to provide the vision document for everyone in the Hawkesbury. We ask that any future directions decisions our Hawkesbury Councillors make will consider the older Hawkesbury residents and are made with the wisdom of older lenses.

Therefore, councillors, to help you with your future deliberations over this term, and to peel the layers of the onion to see the wisdom of your decisions, I have some special wisdom glasses for each of you. Would you like a pair? Pardon? No. Would you like to answer any questions?

Thank

You, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Peter, for that. Just , thank you, Gary. Just , I'll wear those. Thank you for raising those. I think that's a really valid thing , and I thank you for the submission from the nursing home as well. Was there anything—are you just suggesting that we somehow implement something into our decision making where we are considering the situation for these 11,000 people, or did you want us to include something additional in our community strategic plan? I wasn't quite sure what you were actually requesting there.

I guess there's. .. Something. I like the term you had, I think, deliverer or lead, partner, enable, and all that. I guess we're looking for partnership. We don't see the council as a lead, but we would like council to know of the struggles of the aged care. Certainly, we need more capacity. We need more capacity for aged care. We need, as I said around dementia, we need more capacity in the Hawkesbury. We don't have palliative care. We don't have really a lot of good service. We are getting, even this morning, we had five phone calls for people trying to come into our nursing home. Yesterday I went through Hawkesbury Hospital, and both the Maria Lock and the other ward are chock-a-block with old people.

So the state system is blocked up, and we all know about that. What can we do? We've got some ideas. We don't have a solution. We'd love to be able to talk as a group, an informal group that we've got. One of the joys of the Hawkesbury, we have three community organisations that have been going, Fitzgerald, us, and Hawkesbury Living, for about 60 years, 70 years. We're all struggling. There's new rules around how do we comply.

I guess we want just an audience occasionally, and if you are making decisions, reach out to us. We might have some knowledge for you.

Thank you, Mr.

Williams. Thanks. Thanks, Peter, and thanks for the work you do. I think I'll foreshadow a notice of motion around furthering that into the near future for those further discussions. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Councillor

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Now, financially, of course, you know how we are doing, but you prepared and you submitted all these details, you know, how many people we have, you know, suffering and the shortage of rooms or whatever it is. Is there anything that I could do personally?

I guess that's a conversation outside of here, is it?

All right. I'm approachable 24/7. Sorry, 25/8. 25/8. Yeah, that's with the inflation. Thank you

Councillor. Thank you, Councillor. Anytime,

Whatever you need. Anyway, I could assist, I'm at your service. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you

Thank you, Mr Webb. Thank you. We have another speaker, Angela Jones. Thank you

Angela. Five minutes. Thank you.

Thanks. My name is Angela Jones. I am a treasurer for community sports clubs, Northwest Magpies and Hawkesbury Leagues Tag. The Northwest Magpies has between 200 and 300 children in the winter season and Hawkesbury Leagues Tag between 300 and 400 in the summer season. I was directed at one o'clock this afternoon to have a read of item seven regarding the sports fields in the Hawkesbury area. It was a little bit concerning to read that we are at 16 fields in surplus, it says, and I'd just like to highlight that that's not the experience of the individual sports clubs that use those fields. It is noted in the report that— There is sport specific statistics are variable depending on the sport.

And we as a club would just like to highlight that that is very, very true for our members. We have been, we were established in 2017. We were given Tamplin as a temporary home field. That was eight years ago, and we are still there. And every year we're told at the end of the year, that's our last year at Tamplin, and we are still going, nine years on. Most recently, I suppose, is there was going to be some lights installed at Vineyards so that we could use it year round, because once obviously the daylight savings hits, we can no longer use Vineyard Oval. So we announced to our members on the advice of council that we could say that we would have lights next year, and that was at the end of last year.

That was then delayed, not happening before April, now was going to happen in June. Now I'm told today June next year. So it is continuously delayed in moving forward in anything to do with sports fields that we're finding. So just , we are very familiar with all the sports fields that we use because as an essentially homeless club , we use Tamplin Field, Vineyard Oval, Brinsley at Pitt Town, Richmond Park at Richmond, Colonial Reserve at Bligh Park, Don't Worry Oval at Windsor. We've used Peel Park at North Richmond, Burdett Road South Windsor, Deerubbin at Windsor, and we also sometimes use Pitt Town Sports Club and Londonderry Park. So yeah, that's all I've got. Thank you.

Angela, how many people are in your team to put it together, in your committee?

Our committee at the moment is six committee members.

And how many groups do you break up each week for your training? Oh

Individual teams. For our winter sport at the moment, I think we're about 14 teams this year. We have reduced in numbers slightly this year, and it's mostly due to this uncertainty about where we live. I think people are getting frustrated with the fact that we're in a particular sort of Pitt Town vineyard area, but we're now having to have people travel way outside that area within the Hawkesbury just to utilise the fields.

Are you aware of Pitt Town Soccer? Yes

I'm aware of their major issues with this. They're a much bigger club with much more issues around

How much field space they have for their children, yes.

Thank you. Thanks. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you for enlightening us on that. But I missed which club you were from, sorry. Northwest Magpies, sorry. And what do they do? Soccer? We're rugby league. Rugby league, yes. And are you part of the Sports Council? I'm not part of the Sports Council. Okay, thank you.

Just to clarify, the lady's not part of the club, is

I'm just clarifying, the lady's not part of the Sports Council, but the club is part of the Sports Council. Yes.

Oh, I see. I was just trying to clarify when it was said that Council said something, does that come from the Sports— Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, I just missed the first bit of who she was from. Any further questions, councillors?

Thank you. That's the last speaker on that item

Councillor [unclear], Councillor [unclear], you wish to move that?

Do we have a mover?

Councillor McLarn.

Seconder? Councillor Biegle.

It's good that we had three speakers on that. It's the biggest item in our business paper tonight. It's massive. Takes in a whole heap of—well, there's eight reports. So it's certainly good to see that the public made an effort to discuss the matter. Councillor Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I wasn't ready to speak yet, but now that I've moved the item, I am happy to do so. I just wanted to highlight for everybody, either in the room or watching online, how much work our staff do. And I know people say, you always talk about the staff, Sarah. Well, without the staff, we don't have an organisation, and your parks don't get mowed and your roads don't get fixed, and we don't deliver the services, and your rubbish doesn't get picked up. So we have not just staff who have done business as usual, but staff who have, after eight floods, and of course the bushfires, but let's concentrate on the flood recovery, who have done more extraordinary work than those councils around us.

And I think that needs to be highlighted and spoken about, especially when considering in our operational plan. And I know it's probably really boring reading for everyone in this room, but this is how we make our money and spend our money, so you really need to have a look at what Council does and how we do it. It's a $224.8 million budget. And that is excessive. And this year we have balanced that budget. We have balanced that budget by delivering considerable savings across the services that we deliver, and that has not been easy. And I know that has been hours and hours, actually days and months, let's be honest, of work from our staff to try and ensure that we deliver a balanced budget.

There are two other things I do want to highlight very quickly before moving on to the other speakers. And if you do get a chance to look at our operational plan, either in the flesh like this, this document, or online, please turn to page 49, because the most thing that I see people talking about on Facebook, and yes, I'm across all of the local groups, are our potholes and the delivery that we do to our Capital Works Program and our roads more specifically. Please have a look at that. It tells you from that point on what we are doing for a lot of our services. It tells you for the next 12 months a lot of the roads that we will be concentrating on, and it gives you the value that we spend on those roads.

It tells you where your rate dollars go, and that's really important for transparency and accountability for our organisation to show you as ratepayers what we are doing with your money. And these decisions don't come easily. They are really hard decisions. We spend a lot of time with our staff in briefings, prioritising what roads we will look after in the next 12 months, what services we will take some money from, what other services we'll put some money into, and they're really tough decisions for the 12 of us around this room. So I did just want to highlight that. The other thing I do want to touch on quickly is how you pay your rates, and that is the rates calculation. Since I was in this chamber, there was considerable debate in my early years around 2016, 2017 about the base rate of rates.

Very proud that through the Liberals, we put forward a 50% base rate so that for the residential sector of our area, the entire LGA, therefore, is based on a base rate of 50%. It is fair. The other 50% is based on the land value by the Valuer-General. That is the fairest way that we think we can deliver the rates to this area, and I'm proud that we are endorsing that rating system again in this operational plan. I'll leave it at that. Suffice to ask a couple of quick questions to the staff.

The lights at Vineyard that we were just asked about to the Director of Infrastructure, can we have a reason why that has been delayed another 12 months, please, and the cost, please, as well?

Through you, Mr Mayor, I'd have to take that on notice to get the full details of the reasons for that.

Well, that's all from me. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor

Councillor Zed Brogden.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I couldn't say this in questioning to Mr Collins, because we're only asking questions at that time, but it's worth pointing out that this isn't the appropriate juncture to be attacking on or contemplating the subdivision of a new part of the Hawkesbury when our housing targets are met by those areas that have previously been designated and debated at length. What's before us this evening is not the exhibition of these policies, but the endorsement of these. So unless Mr Collins had made a detailed submission at the point when they were subject to public comment, and then staff had believed that these documents By the appropriate vehicle to add that in, then it's not possible for us to contemplate them this evening.

That said, I'm very sympathetic to the point that Mr Collins makes because I'm from that part of the world, and I know how badly that this question splits that community. And I believe that we should have that debate in this chamber, but in a more considered way and at another time. So despite the fact that Mr Collins was perfectly entitled to say his piece in relation to this item on the business paper, it's simply not the appropriate vehicle. And I wanted Mr Collins to have appropriate expectations about our ability to tack that on at the last minute when these are matters that have been debated among the elected councillors for years, and I am still no closer to feeling like I have a majority to begin the conversation about either thinking of other land uses at Oakville or stating yet again that we've had that debate, and the answer is no and is unlikely to change until at least Vineyard Stage 2 is complete, which will be many years hence .

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Just in response to Councillor Zamprona, it would appear to me, and I'm happy to be corrected, that Mr Collins' submission did come as a formal submission as part of the CSP exhibition, and there's information regarding it as submission 10 in attachment two to this item. where the staff have made some comment. Excuse me. I agree that this is not the best place to discuss this, in large part because we are so time constrained in this item. What I will do, though, is foreshadow a notice of motion to come to a later council meeting proposing a workshop on land use planning adjacent to the Northmead growth sector for councillors. I think it's— since before I was elected, I've advocated for us to get on the front foot with planning and not have planning be something that happens to us and our community.

And I think this is one suggestion for how we can do that forward-facing planning. But this item is really about the major body of work for this council, and I'm bitterly disappointed that it has come to us yet again as a job lot. When this happened on the last term of council, I think I was very clear that this is too much for one item. We have multiple strategies here, incredibly important strategies that set our strategic direction for the next 10 years, certainly for the whole four years of this term of council. We used to have an entire council meeting dedicated to this single item here: the CSP, Delivery Plan, the Operational Plan, the Workforce Plan, the Asset Management Plan. Frankly, it is really poor governance that this has come to us as a single item with five minutes for members of the community to speak, and only three of them, and five minutes for councillors to address this and respond.

That is not good enough. I'm really incensed that this has happened again. We were very clear last time, and here we are.

This lacks engagement. It lacks reasonable consideration and reasonable time.

I've got so many questions about this document. Who wrote the message from councillors? Because I don't recall having any input into it. So who were the councillors who wrote this message? Anyone? No, I didn't think so. Where do the resident suggestions for this end up? Because some of them are outstanding. I hope that they don't just stay in this report and that's as far as they go. There needs to be a repository of these, and they need to be readily searchable when these issues come up again. Where do the road issues go? It's clear that people want good basic amenities like public toilets that they can actually use because they're not locked, and active transport links.

All our fees and charges are contained in these documents. The things that people object strenuously to, and they just slip through because there is such a massive volume of information in front of people. Tip fees, for example, massive bone of contention. People should be able to digest this information and come and ask us why it's so expensive to go to the tip. And then we could outline the fact that we pay in excess of three million dollars a year to the NSW RZPA for the privilege of putting our own waste in our own hole. Do people notice that if you opt for a smaller bin, you can save 200 bucks a year on your rates, or 500 bucks? If you're on a fortnightly connection, are people able to even find this information when it comes to us in such a huge volume of stuff?

I'm really concerned about the extraordinarily high sullage costs that are being paid by small communities like Bowen Mountain, parts of Sackville and Kurrajong. $117 a week. That's extraordinary.

A question: the pensioners rebate, does that also apply to DVA pension holders or only aged care pension holders?

General Manager.

I'll take that on notice.

On notice, Councillor.

Thank you. I want to comment on the CSP particularly. I think it's very clear, it's ambitious but also achievable, and I think congratulations are in order for that document. The delivery plan, I'm not sure that we will open all the Western Sydney infrastructure grant proposals. I'm yet to be that confident. I'm also a little bit concerned that the success measures are quite nonspecific. How many trees are we planting? One? A thousand? Five? What will we call success? How will this be reported back to us? Only at the end of term? How are we to keep on top of things if we don't have a regular report back on stuff? The workforce management strategy, I would really like to spend more time on, and I can't. The delivery program finishes with a picture of a weed. I'm not sure that's the look we were going for. Look, I'll have to stop because I've run out of time on a massive body of work.

Thank you, Councillor.

Could I just ask a question, Mr Mayor? If Councillor Wheeler has questions, I don't think there's anything stopping her asking those questions. No

If you want to think about how you might ask some questions, by all means. Any other councillor at the moment? Councillor Michael. Yeah,

Thank you. Just referring to the lights, can we just go back to the playing lights, please? Sorry, the lighting of fields and the issues with just playing grounds. Exponentially, I think sport for the kids is growing in this community. Now unfortunately, a lot of the ovals are on flood reach, but I'd have to say to you, back when we had the '22 flood, we had portable lighting that was specifically bought to help people like Vineyard get training areas during their night-time training, because I think we're bereft of training areas. The question is, adding insurance claims that the flood were granted, and it wasn't a great deal of money. There's two sets of lights were sitting down at Benson's.

Were they replaced? Just ask the staff on that, and you can take it on notice if you like. As far as I know, they weren't. That may have helped a little bit for the short term, but as it's long term, we've really got to get more ovals with lights, Mr Mayor. And that's just a statement. It's not, you know

Yeah, I don't— the lights went under, so the lights weren't replaced, but some of the equipment was, I believe.

Through you, Mr Mayor, I'd have

To

Take that on notice. Thank you. Yep. Yeah.

Councillors. What Councillor Wheeler spoke of tonight is pretty right. It's seven documents. I was away on the weekend, so I was up a little bit this morning to make sure I'd read the documents. It's a lot of work, and the staff's put in a lot of work, as Councillor McMahon said. And three speakers spoke on three different items, which is really good. I'd just like to touch on one, not that any of the others probably would be more important to most people in the community. But as you're aware, sport to me, it's got a lasting effect on people. And Angela Jones, when she spoke, was about one team of kids that are playing all over our city. And if you want to drive from McGrath's Hill to Hobartville or the Lakes, which they do most nights, at four o'clock in the afternoon it takes an hour.

And if you've got a couple of children, one 10 and one 14, they might be playing at different grounds. Try and work that out. They've been doing it for eight years. Pitt Town Soccer's been doing it for 16 years. When I come to council four years ago, I spoke about the need for additional sporting grounds, excuse me, and there was great support there.

Part of these documents that we've got here is we're going to IT stuff, and we look at state averages and all the rest of it. And you've heard me complain about how many grants we got or too many or the like. We haven't got too many of anything. And this document, as indicated by Angela, said we're 16 short. Well, the previous one said 19 when we were five short this season.

Next year, cricket's going to play summer and winter. At the moment, we use alternate seasons for sport. It's going to get much greater for sport. Now, for anyone that thinks that while I've got the opportunity to speak even, that we're going to suggest that kids don't play sport, has got another thing coming.

We're here to provide facilities for our community. And to have organisations wait for years for particular sports, like soccer and indeed football, they're the ones, BMX at McGraths, every time it spits on the ground, they go under. Never once have they come to this council asking for additional funds, any of them, in 35 years. But there is an expectancy, and certainly by me, that we do the right thing. And they're still not asking, but they want support, further direction, and plans that the Sports Council have had to progress those without additional expenditure to council or the community. And they've done it for 35 years. It's not a big ask. So I just want you to be mindful of the comments that were made by one speaker tonight.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you for that. Information around sport. I agree with Councillor Wheeler. We did request last time that we have either a separate meeting or we have these considered separately. In essence, we're being asked to, the recommendation covers a really broad span, and we can see from what people have come here tonight, the diversity of the issues that they've raised and the scope of the matters that people have sent in in submission, just how important it is that we take this information from the public. This is our role. We don't have much left of a role as councillors, hardly anything at all. This is the one thing we get to do, is to set these strategic directions, and we get it lumped on us with multiple other really important decisions with massive amounts of documents amounting to hundreds of pages of reading.

And for us to do it adequately, we cannot be pressured into making these decisions in that manner. I object to that, and I find it, as much as I thank the staff for all the work they do, I think that this is depriving us of being able to do this to our best ability. I like that people bring forward these ideas, but tonight we've had everything from future provision of housing to sports issues to how do we hear the voice of our older people. These are massive topics, and they're really, really important if we're to set proper strategic direction. And we're here with a bundle of paperwork and literally a few minutes in which to be able to do this. So I don't feel comfortable as a decision maker making decisions on that basis.

And in addition to that, as I have said many times here before, I have a strong objection to the commitment of this chamber to four million dollars of ratepayer money being put in towards some of the Western , I'll call it Western Best because I can never remember its name, but I object to that sort of ratepayer money being allocated into our budget because I don't think it was necessary, and I express my objection to that. Aside from that, I think there are some great directions in the strategic plan, but I think that already tonight we've heard from people, there is still more we can incorporate. I'd like to see us come up with a mechanism where we can take that information in. We have no other avenues for this input.

We have no committee system anymore to speak of. We've got no way for these people to be bringing us these ideas and for us to say, well, we can include that in our decision making, or we can include that in a specific document. That means that those voices are being heard. Because ultimately, our role here, as we sit here, is to be the voice of the people. We're meant to be bringing what each of us brings from the community and brings into this chamber. And I'm sad to say that I feel overwhelmed by this business paper. It was why I liked the two meetings a month, because now we've got everything lumped into one big meeting, and to me it feels like pressure, and I don't like that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor.

You.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of questions first. Through you, can I get an answer on, as the Deputy Mayor raised, the road budget and road renewal, road resurfacing mill and fill program, $500,000. Is that with regards, is that what you just did on Yarramundi Lane? That's what you mean by mill and fill, when you spray the tar and then just lay the gravel? Or what was it that Yarramundi Lane was allocated under?

Through you, Mr. Mayor, Yarramundi Lane was pavement reconstruction. The mill and fill program targets the wearing course of a road, so that's generally the top 25 mil layer of the road. It's essentially the waterproofing. The roof to a house, it just removes that when it gets to a certain age where it starts to crack, which allows water to seep into the pavement. We pull that up, put down a new wearing course, and hopefully walk away for the next 12 years. Sorry

So following on from that, the roadwork that just happened on Yarramundi, what is that classed as?

Through you, Mr Mayor, so that's pavement rehabilitation. So that's when the pavement, which is the underlying structure of the road, has failed, and we renew the pavement structure.

Okay, and so when that occurs, what is the timeline for council staff to go out and inspect the work to make sure it's been done properly and that it's actually going to last normally ? Can you

Clarify your question?

So if you look at Yarramundi Lane, the work that has just been done, it's only, what, finished less than just on two weeks ago. You can already see that part of the road pavement has already been taken out, washed out, and all that sort of stuff. So what I'm getting to is, when we do this work, is there a contractual obligation that if it is not lasting, they have to come back, the contractors, I'm assuming, comes back and actually redoes that part of the road to make sure that it stays up to a specific requirement of standard?

Through you, Mr Mayor, whilst this is the first that it's been brought to my attention, typically we would have a 12-month defect liability period for a contract. That is any defect that arises from poor workmanship or poor materials has to be rectified by the contractor at their expense.

Yeah, sorry, that wasn't to spring the Yarramundi Lane on, I just saw it this afternoon and I just went, hang on, this was only done a couple of weeks ago. I just wanted to check that. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd just say a few words. I will agree with Councillor Wheeler and Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Previously on council, we used to have a completely separate meeting for all of these items where we could actually go through and discuss this. I do have issues with— The amount that was put into this tonight's meeting, I have spent close to 14 hours reading through the business papers and the attachments over the last two days, trying to still get through it all and actually take it in and understand it.

For me, who's experienced in Council and understands quite a few of the sort of hidden bits, and not hidden bits, but, you know, the harder bits to find that most community people wouldn't be able to find, I think that I'm more than happy to foreshadow a notice of motion that we actually make it a directive that from now on, that Council do provide a separate meeting for these sorts of documents, because this is a massive thing that we're putting forward—budgets, you know, road resurfacing, sports, everything, and the vision of the Hawkesbury that we as a Council see it. I think we actually do need to dedicate, even if we call an extraordinary meeting, to discuss these type of thing in the future.

And I'm more than happy to make that a notice of motion so it's actually set in stone for Council staff. I do want to thank Council staff for putting these documents together, though. There's not everything that I'm personally—or that— there are a few things that I have questions about, but otherwise overall they have done quite an impressive job in collating all this information and putting it together for the future of the Hawkesbury. But again, I do think we need a separate meeting for these types of things where there is so much information that, you know, even as councillors, I would say that most councillors would have struggled to get through all the business paper plus the attachments and actually have it sink in, because there is so much information here.

And yes, we do have briefings, but we don't always get every single bit of information until I see it in the business paper or the attachments. So I'm happy to do that in future. Thanks.

Councillor Scott-Leishman.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm a bit concerned by the notion that to make good decisions, we need to be able to read massive amounts of things in the few days we have when we get the business papers. To me, this set of documents has been such a long time in the making and has been— I mean, we've been working on these for a long time. I don't feel confronted. Well, it's a lot of work, but it doesn't surprise me what's in here. There's no big surprises. I mean, we all have been working on this. Council decision-making doesn't start when you get your business paper. It's a continuum. We've been talking about these issues. We've been talking about liveability. We've been talking about road maintenance. We've been talking about our older residents. We've been talking about our

Early childhood education facilities. We've been talking about how First Nations people view this . We've been talking about sport. It's a big gig. This just didn't land in our laps this last Wednesday night. We have been developing this. I'm really surprised that some councillors are sitting here saying that they're finding it difficult to make decisions. If that's the case, possibly you haven't been paying attention.

Mr Mayor

Point

Of order, Mr Mayor.

No, that's my opinion. I think that I have a right— It's misrepresentation.

It's actually. Councillor.

Have I got the floor, or is everybody going to have a go? Yes , you have. Look, be outraged, but don't be outraged and not do something about your outrage. All we just heard was, oh, we needed more time. How much time would we need for this? We could fill, we could spend days and days and days discussing the how you fill potholes in Yarramundi or how we, what sort of lights we use on sporting grounds. We have to come to grips with the fact that what we are doing is complicated, and we have to be able to have a mechanism so that we are comfortable in making good decisions. Now, of course, I would like to have, I'd like to have the gallery quiet. That would be good, Mr. Mayor.

I'd like to have more time to do things. But as a councillor, I am always available to our community to talk about the issues that are important to them. It doesn't, your chance as a community doesn't begin and end in this meeting. You have the right and the opportunity to get involved with what you're passionate about. Lots of people are, and lots of people, you know, come and, and that's great. We really appreciate that because it's quite difficult to get your head around this, as we, you know, as everybody's seen who's read the business paper, this is very complicated stuff. So I just really like to say to my fellow councillors, if you want something to change, bring it up, make your case .

I know that that's what Councillor Creed has said, and I thank you for that. That's a good thing to do. And I will, you know, possibly it is a good idea to have this as a separate item. But my understanding was we were aligning these documents so that we had the asset management strategy, which was a bit out of whack, but now it's aligned. So now I think we're making headway. And I think we have to sort of not go to the default, everything's, you know, not to my liking. I think, you know, 80% of this is, I think we've done all right. Okay, I have things that I don't like in it, but at this stage of the game, we have to sort of think what's the way forward on this. So,

Look, I'm happy to spend more time on it, but I don't think it's outrageous, and I don't think it is going to diminish our ability to make good decisions if this was split up. I think that is a silly thing to say because, you know

Thank you, Councillor.

Yes,

Thanks I was just about to speak and intended to speak along the lines you just did. Probably wouldn't have chosen the same words. But this has been kicking around for a long, long time, all the stuff. It's just that it was collated and put together for us as a package. The business paper is only a few pages, but the documents that support that information is big. But there's only a couple of documents in there, and they're only very brief pages that we have that's not in documents that have been given to us over the last couple of months. And there's very little change. And those changes that were made were profiled in the first couple of pages, saying that there might have changed or none.

So it seems overwhelming, and to read them is that I'm glad to hear that most of you have. I don't know, but it was a massive read, and we need to be on top of it. But, and to have a special meeting of such items, I think is a good idea, but not on the basis that we haven't discussed it. We have discussed it. Some of us haven't agreed with what's in it, but we've discussed it on many occasions. And the effort that the staff's put in on making those changes during those discussions were commented on, again in brief, prior to the document and where it was done. So, further debate?

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Point of clarification, if I may. I haven't stated that we needed more time to read the document or to consider the document. I acknowledge that we have been kicking these around for a while. What I have called for is more time for this chamber to deal with individual items . The individual strategic documents that have come to us, as it is, we have one chance to speak on this job lot of items, and that's what I object to. And the community has one chance to speak as well at one meeting with a pile of other stuff, and that's what I find unacceptable.

Thank you, Councillor.

Question?

What would be an adequate number of, I guess, segments of the community that we would have address the council? Because I think, you know, we have a limit on our time. How many people would we have talking on the operational plan if Councillor Wheeler's idea of having one item?

Councillor, at the briefings, I'll get the general manager to ask on particular items that we're discussing if there's another way the councillors wish to deal with that particular item, because everyone will vary.

No, my question was, Councillor Wheeler said that only three members of the public got a chance to speak on this. How many public speakers would do this justice ?

Yeah, we'll take that on board also, because all the items were listed as one.

Well, there is no— yeah,

I'm

Sorry, it's just there is no answer to that. There's no additional speakers.

Yeah. I've just been informed there was no additional speakers other than above that asked and spoke.

But a good question. Thank you.

Councillor Dogramaci. Yes,

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What I'm going to say is in support of most of the councillors in here. This kind of paperwork, and anyone, he or she amongst us says that, you know, he or she went through every single one of the pages, is not telling the truth. If anyone, any one of us says that, you know, I've page such and such, this page or this one or that one, is not telling the truth. And if he or she says that, yes, I did, then he or she is wasting his or her time. Maybe should be a partner with Bill Gates, is

Wasting time in here. Point of order,

Mr. Mayor. Shut up, I'm talking

No, Mr. Mayor, that should be removed from the chamber, Mr. Mayor. Shut up. I never interrupted

Anyone, so don't interrupt me.

Anyway. So—

Just a minute, Councillor Dogramaci. Yes.

Mr. Mayor, I've never been so insulted in my life as to hear what Councillor Dogramaci just told me, to shut up. And as the mayor, you need to do something about that. Secondly, that cannot be let go. I'll deal with that first. Secondly, my point

Of order— Be quiet, Councillor Dogramaci. Yes. That'll be enough, enough. Yes, I never interrupted anyone. I never interrupted her in this whole year's time. Are you going to listen? Well, shall I finish? No. The Deputy Mayor has asked for an apology, and I'm asking— Well, I'm not

Giving an apology. I haven't said my point of order yet, Mr. Mayor. Doesn't matter. Anyway. Mr. Mayor, that's three times. Be a leader and get rid of that man from this chamber. That is not how democracy works.

Oh, it's just because I don't support you. Anyway.

No, Mr. Mayor, you still haven't allowed me to say my point of order.

Councillor Dogramaci. So many. No, we're not going to change the subject. Someone turn the microphone off. What's that? And you keep interrupting me. Dead right I am. Yeah, well, I'm carrying on. What are you going to do? You're not going to carry on. All these people are complaining about the potholes, the failed kerb, and here we are in all these hundreds of thousands of pages in here. Yes. You're asked to leave the meeting. I'm not. Well, I'm asking you. Well, I'm not. People elected me, so I'm speaking. I'm voicing all these people. We're going to have a short break for five minutes, and here we are. Look at this, like a circus.

Thank you, Councillors.

Stopping the council meeting doesn't sit comfortably with me, I tell you. We've got a gallery full of people who took their time here tonight to come and listen to the debate of Council, and so far it's been pretty ordinary.

Councillor Dogramaci, do

You have something to say? Yes. Yes,

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Apology, yeah, apologise to the Council without reservation. Carry on. May I? Thank you, Councillor. Okay. As I was saying, that, you know, the volume of all these things to me is not good, and I'm not happy with the staff downstairs, you know, putting all these things. And every time you turn a page, when there's a problem, they throw some buzzwords, some jargon, challenge, sustainability, just to divert our attention from actual problems that we have in here. How are we going to sort out the problems of each and every one of the residents in this area, the householders? Rates are up, everything is up, cost of living is up, and we are giving all these things in here to discuss individual problems in here, whether it's a development, whether it's building a shed or house or whatever.

How are we going to absorb all these things within a day or two or three or four or whatever? And we are not full-time unemployed people. Some of us are working in schools and different sectors. I certainly don't have time to go through every single word in this pile. As a matter of fact, four years ago, I have mentioned it to you, Mr Mayor. One of the figures right at the back of one of these books, I can't remember, that you needed a magnifying glass. Do you recall that one? We even discussed that recently. Is it something purposely done by the staff members downstairs instead of, you know, putting on two pages with a bigger font, or is it just to confuse us? Like I said, I'm not happy whether, you know, our budget is 200 million or whatever.

One should ask the question, how much of that 200 million is actually from grants? How much are we begging to get the rest of it? Maybe these people should know about that. It's not all your rates. We are begging to get grants, so, you know, we could resurface the roads, some of the roads that we don't need to resurface. And I can give you an example: some six or seven months ago, in Saunders Road, which I live close by. Councillor, yes.

We really need to stick to the items here. You've mentioned a couple of things. Rate increase is 3.8%, and there's a couple of other things that you're

Well, my priority is, like I said, you know, mentioned the roads and the sheer volume of these things. This is not going to be justice, you know, to these people, you know, coming this time of the night in here. And like I said, some of the buzzwords in here, when it says Great place to live. Great place to live for what? Come in here so we can punish you? So we can charge, you know, the silly price when you put the DA and wait and wait and wait. I haven't started really, but no, I'm not happy with what's happening downstairs. Not all of them. Maybe some of them are good, but... And the management, of course, they know that we are divided in here. For the sake of saying no to the opposing parties, and how are we going to run this council?

Who is going to make the decision? Are we making the decisions, or decisions already made downstairs and came in here so we can tick it? No , I'm not happy. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. The comment you made in relation to the information that's been provided, we need a magnifying glass that was taken on board many months ago, and the information that we've got most recently, none of it has been at the stage where you can't read it. The presentation has been additional pages and readable information, which one would expect, and that's what we've got. So, any other—

Can I, excuse me, sorry, I apologise . A couple of additions.

No, question only. You've spoken.

Okay, I'll ask you a question. What happened with the investigation of the sewer matter? When I moved that motion, and it was sitting there for one year, the sewer—

It's a question, Councillor.

Yes, what's happened?

The conduct of that investigation has been completed. We're awaiting the final report from the investigator. He has been ill, and so we had hoped that that report would come to this council meeting, but we are now expecting that to come to next month's council meeting, Councillor. And

When did we have that report?

Which report, Councillor?

Well, that report, that investigation.

I've just said to you that you'll have it. That's your question. When did you have it

Come into management's attention?

What? Council's earlier resolution.

Yes.

Some time ago.

Okay. The other question is that why nothing happened? For over a year when we moved the motion, and I must of course, you know, give the credit to Councillor McMahon.

Councillor,

Why did we wait for a year until—?

Councillor, we’re not going into debate about why or what. You’ve asked the question, it’s been answered. What do you mean? You mean I move a motion and I wait for a year? You’ve just had the results of it. The investigator has been sick, as you just said.

Mr Mayor, it’s three months since both you and I reset. We’re debating

Something, Councillor. This is not the place for it.

So these people have no right to know what’s happening? No, you haven’t got the right to ask. Well then I will distribute something, you know. Okay. Councillor Feigel.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. Am I allowed to ask a question, please?

You certainly are.

Strategic operational plans. My idea of a strategic plan, it gets reviewed after 12 to 14 months and you make adjustments. I dare say the council would be looking at doing that, wouldn’t they not? Yep. Just to keep— just to, when the debate maybe, and we can come back and review, rejig it and improve it if we have to.

Through you, Mr Mayor, the plans are revised annually.

Thank you, Madam General Manager.

Any further debate? No, but I’d like to put the motion, please.

Sorry?

I’d like to put the motion, please.

Yeah. If there’s no further debate, right of reply, Councillor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you very much. I just want to apologise to everyone in the gallery for having to watch another councillor insult his elected councillors in such a way, insult our staff and bring our organisation into such disrepute. You should not have had to see that, but I guess you’ve had a window into what we have to put up with. I want to thank the people here tonight who spoke on this item, Mr Collins, Mr Webber and Ms Jones. Your input tonight was valuable, and I like that those three speeches were varied. We had a comment on aged care, on proposed housing development in Oakville, and of course on our sporting facilities. So thank you very much for all of that. I take on board what the councillors have said about such a suite of documents being in one particular meeting.

However, Councillor Kotlash was correct in saying we've had ample opportunity to digest what these documents will look like through our briefing sessions. It's actually good to see these documents come together to Council in the package deal that they are in. They are actually the most professional looking documents that I have seen in my nine years elected to this organisation. If you actually have a look through some of the data that our infrastructure team have put together to show the future works that needed to be done in this Hawkesbury. While I do not understand it, I am not an engineer, I'm a lawyer. It's fascinating to see what we need to do, making future decisions down the track to ensure we have the money to be able to afford to keep our roads in the state that the community expects.

There was mention tonight about, and Councillor Buckett's title will always be called West Invest in my eyes. I'll never ever get used to calling it the Western Sydney Infrastructure Grants Program. It's too much of a mouthful. It's West Invest. That will hopefully solve some of our sporting, where we're lacking in our sporting facilities. The upgrades to those facilities are something to be quite excited about. I know that we now, those grants don't cover the cost of delivering those facilities, and we will have to dig into our own pockets to be able to deliver that. But at the end of the day, we were given nearly $100 million worth of state government funding that we could not say no to. So we will find a way to make that work, and I look forward to down the track delivering those not just sporting items, but cycling ways and, of course, the signage, which I'm really excited about, into our community.

Now, I can't believe that I almost did not talk about this specific part. I'm just about to get to in this item, and that is my favourite thing in this whole council right now, and that's the fire control centre. The work that has gone into delivering, to securing that land, has been phenomenal. The backstory to what we had to do to get to the point of delivering that land at North Wilberforce is extraordinary. And yes, I declare that I am in the communications fire brigade, and I will have a lovely chair in that building as a volunteer, and Councillor Wheeler is in my brigade as well. But for all of the volunteers in the RFS who will get to, and of course the safety of our community, have a brand new fire control centre, and we have been able to purchase enough land to make that a potential emergency services precinct into the future, where when we get those huge planning proposals through our emails across the desks that we will be getting into the future, we have the ability to sit here as the elected 12 people and say to those developers, If you want to put this on our doorstep, then this is what we want in return, and I will considerably be asking for in return if those proposals come our way, funding for an ambulance station west of the river and funding for a police station west of the river so that we can make that land into the emergency services precinct that we deserve here in the Hawkesbury.

So I look forward to being able to inform the community every step of the way about the new fire control centre. It is exciting and, as I said, it's not just the volunteers who deserve state-of-the-art assets like that, but our community, after what we went through in 19 slash 20, deserves a centre that's going to protect us for future bushfires. I will just end on this, that these documents are about you, our community. They're not about what the 12 of us and our staff have sat around... around and put together because it is about delivering services to you. This is the vision we've come up with. This is our plans. And I cannot encourage you all enough to read it, to be educated, and to be informed, because when those battles break out across the Facebook groups, it'd be lovely to have people in this community come in and support our organisation and our staff with real hard-core data about what we're doing for a positive Hawkesbury.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor McMahon. We're dealing with item 10.2.1. All

Those in favour? Mr Mayor, could I move a procedural motion that this item be heard in seriatim.

Do we have a seconder? Yeah, I

Do. But I'll second everything

What's your proposal to deal with these items as listed here one at a time?

Okay.

The recommendations...

We need to put it to the vote. That

We have it in seriatim. There will be a vote. Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Second. Those in favour?

Sorry, just the vote to consider it in seriatim.

Yes. Those in favour? That's Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan . Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Creed, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Veigel. Those against?

Councillor Brogno, Councillor Sheather, and Councillor Kotlash. The motion is carried.

The recommendation as written is item one, the report regarding the strategic plan. Those in favour?

That's unanimous. It's Councillor Zamprogno. Sorry . Righto, okay. Number two, the community strategic plan. Those in favour?

Against? Unanimous, carried. Number three, the delivery program 25/29.

Those in favour? That's unanimous. Those against? Carried. Number four, the operational plan. Those in favour?

Those in favour, Councillor Brogno, Councillor Zyrick, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Dogramaci and Councillor Sheather. Those against? It is Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan and Councillor Creed. The motion

Is carried.

Number five, Long Term Financial Plan. Those in favour?

It's unanimous. Those against? It's carried.

Number six, Asset Management Strategy 25-35. Those in favour?

That's unanimous. Those against? It's carried.

Asset Management Plans 25. Number seven. Those in favour?

Unanimous. Against? It's carried. Number eight, Workforce Management Strategy. Those in favour?

Unanimous. Those against? It's carried. And number nine, Council make the following rates changes and rebates. It's in relation to part A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. Those in favour?

Councillor Brogno, Councillor Djuric, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Contos, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Dogramaci, Councillor Sheather. Those against?

It's Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan and Councillor Creed. Yes. The motion is carried.

Number 10, Council adopt the interest rate of 10.5 on overdue rates and charges in accordance with section 566 , in brackets 3, of the Local Government

Act. Councillor Brogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan, Councillor Zirakiya, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Veigel, and Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather. Those against is Councillor Creed and Councillor Dramaci. The motion is carried.

Number 11, it's in relation to relevant comments in the report. Those in favour?

It's unanimous. Those against? The motion is carried. Thank you, councillors.

The next item.

Thank you, Councillors.

The next item we've got is 10.5.2, divestment of Windsor sewerage scheme. We've got one speaker, Mr Lionel Bucket.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councillors. One speaker, so that's a pretty boring topic, sewerage. Many years ago I went to university, and part of the degree, building degree, was a trip to the McGraths Hill sewage treatment plant. And it was also then a tourist attraction. People would come in large numbers from China to check out the water reuse. So it was a leading water reuse, environmentally wonderful thing, actually. And it was a tour that the Hawkesbury did, and Hawkesbury workers explained how that plant worked. So I'm taken aback that we've gone from that to a broken sewer pipe, a 30-plus million dollar debt, and now we're talking about giving away a $170 million book value asset and keeping a $30 million debt.

And it seems to be in a hurry. It reads almost like we've got to decide this now before the end of the month; otherwise we won't be able to get in further... The water board taking it over.

So, I'll put my glasses on. So, I know it took a while. It's only one item on the business paper, and I've got to agree with everyone. It took— I did take the afternoon off to read it, and even then it wasn't— and that was only one item, and it wasn't really enough time. So, I think there's gaps in the report on the financial side of it. There's no detailed modelling, including transition costs or hidden— that go into hidden liabilities, long-term maintenance, decommissioning expenses. It's not fully explored or disclosed. Staff employment considerations. There's operational impacts on staff are noted, but the plan lacks specifics on employees' transition projections and reskilling strategies and no costings for those things. And what I got from the report is that the cracked sewer pipe debt seems to be wishy-washy and very dangerous for the council's economic situation.

So, I would hope that the council doesn't proceed to divest until there's been community consultations. I've noticed that too, that it's being asked to make a decision, but you haven't consulted with the community that are connected to that sewerage system, and you haven't consulted with the rest of us who might end up having to pay for it. So, I think that— Thirty million dollar plus debt can equal about half of your average rates, so it's a lot of money. And the 170 million is a lot of money to be giving away for nothing back in return. So it seems to me to be a very good deal for Sydney Water, not such a good deal for Hawkesbury, and in a hurry. So, and now the sewerage investigation, I hear, into the whole issue doesn't come out for another month.

So I would ask that the Council don't give the General Manager delegated authority for making decisions on this matter, and that Councillors wait for these reports before they make decisions. It also appears that the longer you put it off, the more money you'll make and the smaller the debt will be. So that's what I've got to say on it. Please don't do it.

Thank you, Mr Buckett. Is there any questions, Mr Buckett?

Thank you.

Mr Mayor, I do have a couple of questions for Mr Buckett. Sorry.

Mr Buckett, are you connected to the Hawkesbury sewer plan at all? I don't know where you live. No

I'm not. I'm in the mountains, up at Mount Lagoon.

Okay. No, you're definitely not hooked up to this section of the sewer plan. What are your feelings about if we go ahead with this and we absorb this debt into the rates? Are you knowing that our other ratepayers who are now hooked onto this will get a lesser sewer bill, but people like yourself and myself will have to help Carry this debt with perhaps even extra rates. What are your feelings on that? Look,

I put a bit vague on that, but to me it seems the obvious thing not to dump all of that debt on just the people connected to the sewerage scheme, that it probably has to get shared out. And I think people will want to know all about it when they realise that it's like half their usual rate payment. So I think that people should be informed. The ratepayers should be informed. They should know about a $200 million deal, which it is, $170 million write-off plus a $30 million debt. It shouldn't be something that's quickly done without proper consultation, and at the moment there's no consultation. Okay, look,

Thank you very much for that.

Thank you.

Mr Mayor, could I say something?

Yes, you can.

Before we start, could we have some clarity around the extent of confidentiality? There's information in the confidential section, but there are also two previous reports on this matter, and I'm unaware of whether they were confidential or whether the previous KPMG report was a public document. Just to— I'm not quite sure why it's confidential, but could we have some clarity, please?

Thanks.

Through you, Mr Mayor, I'd have to go and check on the other reports. I honestly can't recall what were public and what were confidential. In terms of this particular— Particular item, anything that's in the open report, of course is open. There are parts of and pertinent parts of both of the confidential items paraphrased and summarised in the open report to provide as much transparency as possible. But I'll see if I can quickly determine of those previous reports to what extent, if any, they were confidential.

Would someone like to move? I have a question too, if you allow me. On a similar line as Councillor Buckett, on page 127, when we resolved in June 2024 to enter into direct— I'll wait until you turn the page—with Sydney Water Corporation. And here it's a public document, says that, you know, our management is going to go into this negotiation or whatever it is. Then why are we making this confidential? What are we hiding from people, from ratepayers? No one is going to compete with Sydney Water or any other entity. So in here it's open, saying that, you know, we are going to go into the negotiation, yet in here we are saying that, no, you ratepayers are not allowed to know what's happening in here.

Through you, Mr Mayor, the term sheet provided by Sydney Water was provided in confidence.

I mean, what are we hiding? I mean, like I said, no one is going to compete with Sydney Water. It's not

A debate. It's a question answered.

Well, I'm not satisfied

With the reply. Well, it's in confidence. We can't do much about that. But why is it confidence? Because that's the arrangement with Sydney Water. They won't talk otherwise. Did we go to expressions of interest from other organisations?

Through you, Mr Mayor, we dealt with this in its earlier report. We didn't undergo or undertake an EOI process. The reasons for that were outlined in that report at that time.

So, are we telling people that we have, or as you said, that Sydney Water wanted this matter to be confidential? Could we have some kind of written document saying that, you know, they wanted it confidential, or we just created that word to make it more sophisticated ?

Councillor, the discussions aren't confidential. Some of the information within those conversations are. They're to do with the EPA, they're to do with finance, and they're to do with other government structures, and they're not prepared to discuss some of those matters in public.

Is it from their side or from our

Side It's from both sides, Councillor. We are

Not hiding

Anything from community, are we? No, all that'll be made public when— Then they are hiding something from their part. No, no, Councillor. There's negotiations happening, and before anything's decided, it will come back before the Council. Okay. And so that we will be informed of that information.

Okay. Will you then allow me to clarify to all these people about this matter, how it started and— What happened? How much we lost? No. Why not? Because this

Is not the place for it.

So they don't have any right to know that we lost 40 million, one third of our budget?

They've got every right in the world, Council, and it's all that's been documented and the like. What we're doing is looking at devolving a suit scheme that's aging, that has only got a population that's served of seven and a half thousand people, that can't cope with ongoing costs. They're paying twice as much as Sydney Water now. That'll be reduced by half. And we need to— this tonight is to go to the public, as Mr Buckett indicated, to allow the public to have a view and be provided with all the information that will be made available on their request. Well

Since you said no, I cannot say it. Well, can I also tell all these people that we borrowed 32 and a half million dollars, and we are paying 1.9 million dollars for the next 20 years, so their children and grandchildren are going

To repay?

Can I move

The motion,

Mr Mayor? I'd like to move the motion in the business paper. Second that.

You can, Councillor, but this is not the place for it.

Am I being interrupted again? There's not a motion

Mr Mayor, we hadn't even moved the motion.

Yeah, we haven't got a motion, Councillor. So there was a question, and that should be it. There's no debate till we've got the motion, and we've got a councillor who's prepared to move. That was Councillor Kotlash,

And Councillor McMahon seconded.

Councillor [unclear], do you wish to speak to the motion?

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. This whole issue was first brought to our discussions in briefing sessions, and as a group of councillors, was brought to us with the main objective of doing the right thing by our residents. It wasn't brought to hide things and be tricky, and I mean the motivations that some councillors have about the rest of us is just really quite bizarre. This is a serious negotiation that is going ahead, and we all agreed — well, I don't know whether we all agreed, but when this first came to us, we did give the go-ahead for our staff to start negotiations. They have done that. They've put the information that they have deemed fit for a public document to be put to us. They've also put information that they've seen fit to be confidential in that document.

There is no hiding things. This is just a professional process that happens in these big sort of negotiations. One of the things that, as an overarching comment on this divestment, Sydney Water knows this business better than any of the rest of us. They have a very big organisation. They have expertise — not denigrating our staff — but really, they have the breadth of its expertise that will benefit our residents. Our residents will get a better deal financially. They'll probably get a better deal service-wise because of the bigger organisation, da da da.

They will be able to address the offset and the, now what's it called, the nutrient offset scheme, which is a very complicated piece of work. They have many people that are working on that from all sorts of angles, the environmental angle, the, you know, it's, they're going to, if this all happens, I think our residents and the rest of us are going to be in a better position.

I must admit it was a complicated read because I think that all of the different things that we have to figure out, like, you know, how this all happens and, you know, we are divesting an asset. But I don't think it's like we're blowing it up. I mean, this is public asset. It's going to go to, okay, probably state government's cash cow, but that's okay. It's going to be still a public service provider. So let's not get too hysterical about, you know, hidden things and, you know, I think everybody's doing the right thing here.

And I think we should all, I think we should all take a couple of deep breaths and remember why we're here. We're here to help our residents , and this, I believe, is going to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor

Councillor Zabrogna. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple of questions to staff to start. There is a section in the report about the environmental impacts, but I see no discussion about the potential impact on the McGraths Hill wetlands from the retirement of the Mulgrave sewage treatment facility. Could somebody please speak to whether that was a consideration and what the water flows and the impact on that ecology would be if that plant was end of life?

Through you, Mr Mayor, we haven't done or completed the in-depth analysis of that, but suffice to say that the only permanent water supply for those wetlands is from the treatment works. When the treatment works cease operations, then the water flow is also likely to cease. All right then. So I would

Suggest that

I feel like we've got a gun held to our head, in the sense that this report makes it abundantly clear that this is an extremely time-sensitive decision. I suppose my next question would then be: at what point are we contractually bound? Let me elaborate. The recommendation says that we will proceed with the divestment, which sounds like a point of no return, if subject to the conditions precedent being satisfactorily resolved. Do we retain discretion to declare whether those matters have been satisfactorily resolved, or could we still back out by saying those matters were not satisfactorily resolved ?

I'll let the staff answer that. Thank you.

Through you, Mr Mayor, there are conditions precedent by both parties, which both require resolution. So in the report it outlines that there are a number of conditions precedent held by both Council and Sydney Water. Sydney Water's extend to matters relating to IPART and to the provision or the transfer. And certain allowances by the EPA for their environmental protection licence and timelines for compliance with the nutrient offset framework. That's for Sydney Water to determine that they have been satisfactorily resolved. In the report, the recommendation also

At point five, sorry while I just reread it, calls for a further report on the satisfactory resolution of those conditions precedent. The intent of this report as it's outlined is that it gives Sydney Water sufficient confidence that they can include this in their pricing submission to IPART. Now, if we miss, or if Sydney Water misses this gateway, it's on their advice a five-year wait time.

So

Are we contractually bound after tonight's decision, or after that subsequent report comes back to this chamber? No

There hasn't been any contract presented to Council. Terms have been, but there's no contract. All right then, that's heartening.

Next question. If the ownership of the Mulgrave sewage treatment plant remains with us, there's only a vague indication about the timeframe that Sydney Water will honour concerning the construction of a pipeline to take our poo to Riverstone. It says within five years approximately. I'm concerned about the longevity of our current plan because part of this arose because of our concern that it's on its last legs.

I'm unhappy about that degree of uncertainty because, as we've seen, catastrophic, unexpected, extremely expensive failures can occur. What's the level of risk that Sydney Water will not honour that five-year timeframe?

Through you, Mr Mayor, the— The five years is an estimate. It's based on the shortest possible time that Sydney Water anticipate that they would be able to investigate, design, procure and construct a pipeline. In respect of the operations and maintenance agreement, we would seek to adequately address our risks through that agreement in terms of Sydney Water agreeing to fund the planned and reactive capital and maintenance that's required to keep that plant operating. And furthermore, the environmental protection licence, which is the legal instrument which allows Sydney Water to discharge treated effluent to the receiving waters of South Creek, would sit with Sydney Water Corporation. So if there was a failure which meant that there was not, or that the final product, as it were, did not meet the requirements of the EPL, that would rest with Sydney Water and it would be their responsibility to amend that.

Sorry, next question. You say that there are two pathways to deal with the repayment of the infrastructure loan borrowings. We either secure additional funding from other sources to either fully or partly pay off the principal, or we secure an additional supplementary revenue regime. Neither of those things have come to pass or are in prospect , so I'm trying to firm up how likely those two ifs are in this report. Through

You, Mr Mayor, I don't think I'm in a position to speculate on the likelihood of those things occurring. It really matters for the state government at the end. Okay.

And my last question relates to the clarity of my own recollection. Earlier, when this was brought to our attention, I have a fairly distinct memory of the reasons why this was a killer, once-in-a-lifetime amazing deal for us to jump on as soon as we can, was that the state government would take on the debt. In fact, I remember the current deputy mayor, at a point when she was the mayor, saying either to councillors in a briefing or even in this chamber that that was her understanding. Did I mishear that? Was it at one point part of the negotiation that they would take on the debt? Because that appears to have been taken off the table.

Through you, Mr Mayor. No, the intention was that, or the early conversations were about consideration of the transfer of the assets, that is proceeds from the sale of the scheme. Sydney Water have undertaken their modelling as outlined in that report and determined their valuation. Given all of the things that are outlined in the report, that's not an unreasonable valuation, and that's where the basis of the nil valuation transaction has come from.

All right, then that concludes my questions, so I'll now make some remarks. We have $28.4 million of debt that's now not going to be taken on. We have approximately $7.4 million of cash reserves that we could claw back and apply towards that debt. So that brings us down to, well, it's still over $20 million. If I can quote Darth Vader, the terms of this deal have changed, and we should pray that they're not altered further. I feel like we've been sold a pup, and I feel like we've got a gun to our head now to accept this, or else defer this. Five years or put it off to the never-never, and I just wanted you to know that I'm very unhappy about that, and I'm going to listen very carefully to the remainder of the debate. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. When you first asked them the questions, I thought they were Dorothy Dix questions, because most of the questions you ask are in the confidential document that are a little bit more precise than what's being expressed here.

I read it, annotated. Good. Okay.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Dogramaci.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Some of the questions I was going to ask Councillor Zamprogno already had. I was under the impression, and what I know is, the money that we owe is not twenty million dollars. It's more than that.

And let's think that, hypothetically, if we agree Sydney Water to take over this operation, and at the end of the five-year contract term, now on page 130, Council to retain all lands and then nominal lease arrangements to be entered into. So we are leasing it. What after the five years, and they leave, and then leave a huge amount of repair bills? What's going to happen then?

Councillor,

The reason that some of the stuff can't be discussed tonight is along the lines of what might be the outcome of that.

Well, it's in here.

It's not all of it's in there. What I'm saying is that— The staff are negotiating the sort of line that you're taking, and Councillor Zamprogno, on the basis of the best outcome, so they can come back to us and say, do you want to cop this or not? And all that's been spoken about is relevant. But what's before us tonight is that to allow the staff, and in that confidential document that we're going to deal with later, it will give an indication of what the discussions are that they're having to come back to answer some of your questions. Because at the moment there's other authorities involved that don't want to make that public because they've got obligations within their organisations as well.

So that's where that's up to. In relation to things like whether or not there's a lease charged, we're trying to negotiate, for instance, as Councillor Zamprogno indicated, we'd like to dispose of an asset plus a debt, and then we're going to perhaps turn around and charge them ten dollars a week for a piece of land. They're the sort of negotiations that they're taking place, which is likely to best and should be the best for the best interest of our community. So, and that'll only come about if what's being asked of us tonight allows the staff to go out and communicate that process and protocol with them.

Just a last question. With all this information that we have, can somebody from management tell me and tell all these people that, are we winning in that sewer matter? Are we in plus or minus? Yeah,

Thank you, Councillor That's yours.

Yep

Obviously we are

Losing.

And all I can say, the negotiations have been fruitful. Fruitful to them and to us. The deal is for us. Okay. And so that discussion has been ongoing and the like. Well

We are not making money and morally it's wrong. You're passing off a business that's losing money.

Through you, Mr Mayor, in case that's not abundantly clear, the purpose of Council entering into these discussions with Sydney Water, the overarching objective here is to halve the customer bills of our 8,000 customers, okay? That is the reason why, presumably, you all voted in June of last year for us to go and enter into this negotiation. There are, and we have been through, a very complex mergers and acquisitions process with Sydney Water. The reality is, is that given the age of our infrastructure and the amount of funding that is required to uplift that infrastructure for Sydney Water's purposes, that it effectively means that Sydney Water is only prepared and able to do the transaction at effectively a nil financial value, okay?

That is the truth of it. Council has in its sewer reserves, you know, a significant amount of money that we will intend to keep aside for eventually, should Sydney Water, should the arrangement come to fruition and the McGraths Hill–East Pipe to Riverstone, there will need to be several million dollars kept in reserve for the rehabilitation of the treatment plant and the wetlands site. But just to be really clear and abundantly clear about this, this is, we are solely driven here off trying to save

8,000 households a significant amount of money every year.

Thank you. Just to reply very quickly, yeah. No, Councillor, you've spoken. I want an ironclad guarantee that, you know, we are not going to lose money.

Councillor, that'll be a decision that you'll be part of making.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Mr Mayor, just before I start to speak, could I just point out there is no matter in confidential. There's information confidential, but there is no item to be debated confidential, which is why I guess there'll be questions, because it hasn't been put in the business paper as an item to debate. It's simply information,

Just

To clarify that. Hence my question around confidentiality . Mr Mayor, I'm struggling quite a bit with this. May

I say, it's probably quite inevitable that Sydney Water are the best people to take this over. I know that they know their stuff, but there's nothing in the reports or in what I'm reading that shows me why we should do it under the terms suggested. I think that, again, it's another example of having to rush into a decision, and we have discussed it before. And my recollection correlates with Councillor Sanbruno's that originally in 2022, we were led to believe that it would be a divestment plus some sort of a windfall to Council, $10 million, I think, was the figure or something around that time. And then in 2024, that the divestment would, you know, possibly take over the debt. That was what I had written down.

Now we've sort of got a situation where there's a proposed divestment, but we'll be left with the debt and no solution in front of us of how that debt will be serviced. Now, when we borrowed the money for that debt, I recall that we were Hopeful, or we were sort of told that we could possibly get that money back from the government, which didn't occur. So that leaves us with that debt. So when I'm looking at it, on the face of it, is that we're losing an asset. I think it says the figure in here, does it? I'm not sure now what's confidential. Yes I wasn't sure if that was confidential. $171 million asset. But what I also think we're losing is the loss of opportunities around new techniques or commodities that could be coming from that.

Sydney Water are clearly investing in a lot of this, and they've got these opportunities going. Have we looked at a way that we could perhaps tap into that? I know that they've got in their northwest resource recovery centre, they're doing the carbonisation, they're generating biochar. They're wanting all this wastewater, obviously, in there to generate these products that they obviously then still, they sell. Councillor Ryan and I were at a wetlands thing the other day, and Sydney Water was speaking about their lucrative upcoming recycled water and what they were doing with that. And, yeah, and we have a recycled water plant. Like, I'm just cautious that we could be missing opportunities when we do still have some money in the reserves.

Have we really looked at could we do something, or are we just trying to flog this off so we don't have to do anything? I'm just, I know it's important to try and save money for Hawkesbury residents, but is this the best deal we can get? Because we'll be saving some money for 8,000 people. The rest of us could be supplementing it some way or another. And we're not really pushing to do anything for those people who have got other existing issues around sewer. Sydney Water's not coming to the party to help us sewer other areas, for example, and we've just lumped a 6% increase on the people who pay pump out . You know, I've got problems around how this is going. My main thing is that it is complex.

I do understand it. I've worked in this area, so I understand the processes and the various, especially around the nutrient offsets. But my concern is that I don't know that we've ever really investigated any potential additional revenue that we could get ourselves. Like, for example, there's still capacity at the Windsor sewer plant, I believe, to do more connections. I think its capacity is, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say figures, I don't know what's public, what's not, but there's still, we could have a whole lot of people on there. I mean, maybe this additional money could pipe it from somewhere that has no sewer, and then we'd have a whole lot more happy residents out there. It's just concerning me that we're giving away an asset in haste without potentially having looked at anything.

And I know you say tonight we're only doing this, but we know the old story of we've already spent so much money, we've got to go with it now. It happens over and over again . My thing is an anti-Sydney Water. It's not anti-divesting if that's the best solution, but I truly am not seeing before me the information that enables me to, in good faith, without having a guarantee of how we service that loan, so it doesn't come out of general revenue of our ratepayers to pay off a $29 million loan . We'll have a cost to decommission McGrath's Hill that might be a figure now, in five years it's going to be a lot bigger . What other opportunities have we got? I don't like seeing opportunities for lost, you know, I don't like seeing lost opportunities.

We've got a waste facility. Have we ever looked at anything in conjunction with our waste facility? I just feel like we've been sandwiched into this little— Situation where we've got to make a really fast decision yet again, and there goes my five minutes. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor . Councillor McMahon.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. There's quite a few arguments that need to be made tonight, and I take on board what my fellow colleagues have said. But I think there's one important element that nobody in the room has touched on yet. A decision tonight to divest is not just about saving money for our seven and a half thousand customers on this system. Equally as important as that, it is about eliminating future risk. It is a future risk that we cannot afford. We cannot afford another collapse like happened in Rising Main C, to the cost that we are in debt now of $28.4 million. Eliminating that future risk, to me, is just as important as saving our customers money. And we cannot continue to operate a sewerage scheme like we are.

We are the only council in Greater Sydney still operating a sewerage scheme. This is not our core business. This is not what we should be doing every single day. We need to divest this system. We need to save those seven and a half thousand customers, like it says on page 132 of the business paper, a reduction from $1,240 to $624. You tell struggling Hawkesbury families, seven and a half thousand Hawkesbury families in cost of living crisis, that you're not going to vote tonight to save them half of that money. You tell families in the Hawkesbury that we want to continue to take on that risk. And if you look at page 136 in the business paper, let me summarise that for you. As it says, overall, the risk of proceeding at the current time and with the information and certainties available, if left unmitigated, would likely be rated as extreme under Council's risk management framework.

Further, this leaves, however, a significant and arguably greater risk for council's operations, customer base and the wider environment in the event that the divestment does not occur. Now , we cannot sit there and ignore that advice. But the questions that you have raised are valid as well. When I was the mayor, you are right. Those initial discussions that I had, or that I heard our staff were having, was that if we divested the sewer scheme, we would also eliminate that debt. They would take on that debt. It is bitterly disappointing from my point of view to learn that that debt will not be absorbed. But the one thing that we do have is that we are elected as advocates, and the New South Wales Labor state government has let us down time and time and time again with the flood events that we have had in this community.

They paid for a similar scheme, correct me, General Manager, if I've got the wording wrong, they paid for this in the Northern Rivers. The New South Wales government did this for the Northern Rivers, but they will not do it for the Hawkesbury. I would like to know from Premier Chris Minns why he continues to fail this community time and time again. Not only will he not raise the Warragamba Dam wall, which independent data shows would stop lower floods in Windsor by four to five metres, he will not answer our community on why they paid for this to happen in the Northern Rivers, but they continue to neglect the Hawkesbury community, and it is just not good enough. As I said before, I am disappointed that we would still take on this debt, but we would need to fight.

I don't think that I could look seven and a half thousand customers in the eye and say that I didn't do everything to reduce your bills, that I didn't do everything to make sure that the risk to this council was not considered in my decision making. The thing we have to remember too tonight is not everything, as some councillors would like it to be, is a gotcha moment. We are actually here, the 12 of us, and I say this consistently in my speeches, we are in privileged positions, elected here to make decisions for almost 70,000 people for what is in the best interests of our community. Not everything has to be a scandal. There are some things that need to be considered deeply, that need to be considered thoroughly and based on its merits.

And this is one of those decisions. So I would like councillors to take a long, hard think about the decision they make tonight. It's not just about saving money, as I said. Please think about the risk that if we had another flood event and another one of our rising mains collapsed, we'd be in double the debt, and that is something that we cannot afford. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Councillor... Thanks,

Mr Mayor.

I've got some questions, if I may. There's several references in the report, excuse me, to irrigation options. Can I ask what that actually means? Through

You, Mr Mayor, irrigation options or operations? I've

Written options . I'd have to go back through the document, sorry. It's been a very long series of documents

What does the irrigation stuff refer to?

So through you, Mr Mayor, the primary reference that immediately comes to mind is that the irrigation operations on the McGraths Hill flats associated with the McGraths Hill sewage treatment plant would remain with Council, given that that's fundamentally part of the treatment train. For that particular system. So that's how we achieve some of our nutrient reduction. Sydney Water, I don't imagine, would want to see a worsening of the pollutant loading in that stream. So to sustain it at least, that irrigation would have to continue whilst over the McGraths Hill sewage treatment plant operated.

And all of that infrastructure, including that capacity to grow silage, et cetera, on that site, will be retained even when Sydney Water pumps the effluent to Quakers Hill.

What that land parcel looks like and its future use is a matter fundamentally for this chamber at that time. If Sydney Water construct a new pump station to pump the sewage that's currently received by McGraths Hill to Riverston, there would be no recycled water available to supply that network. So

We'd have effectively a stranded asset there.

Through you, Mr Mayor, we would have land that was then available for some future use. Contaminated

Though. How are we, if the state government doesn't come to the party, if there is no grant, how do we intend recovering that outstanding money? There's references in the report about a potential $600 saving or a potential $200-and-something saving. If we have to continue to recover that funding, that money from the existing customer base. How are we intending to do that, and what is the legal basis for that? If they're not technically our customers, we're not providing them with a service.

Through you, Mr Mayor, that continues to be a line of inquiry and an open dialogue with the state government about how that can be facilitated. We don't have an answer, hence why it's a condition precedent.

Right

Those cost savings are based on the idea that that customer base won't be ring-fenced, that they will go on to the same $150-odd a year charge that, or just about to go up, charge that those of us on the Sydney Water network pay. My reading of the IPART report suggests that there may be ring-fencing of Hawkesbury Council's customers. Is that correct? Is that what the point about putting a submission to IPART is all about

Yeah, that's correct. Through you, Mr Mayor, any future ring-fencing, whether the scheme remains with Council or with Sydney Water, essentially means that those 8,500 customers continue to pay the full cost of running that scheme, including the future upgrades. Those upgrades are to comply with the nutrient offset framework, both stages one and two. We have a fair idea of what stage one looks like, and that's a significant investment. Stage two, we don't know what that looks like. We don't know what goalposts we're targeting for, but I'd suggest that it's at least, if not more than what's required for stage one.

So it's possible there isn't a saving for these people

Through you, Mr Mayor, the indication from Sydney Water is that, as it's been outlined, is that they support the movement of customers onto the postage stamp price, their price that every other customer pays. We fully support that as well. I can't speak to the motivations of IPART for including that, other than to try and seek the view of the community. But there is very little point insofar as customer value proposition to continue to have the scheme ring-fenced, irrespective of who owns and operates it.

So we don't have a guarantee of saving at this point. Firstly, because we need to pay off a loan, and secondly because we've got this IPART report that says that they should be ring-fenced. And I guess my final question is, do we actually have anything proposed for McGraths Hill at this point apart from five years down the track we'll probably flog it off?

Through you, Mr Mayor, if I may first, one correction. IPART, I don't believe, are taking a position as to what the future treatment should be. They're seeking opinions on either or. I think that's an important distinction to make. In respect of the future use of McGraths Hill, there hasn't been any significant investigation into future options. The reality is that we are very, very time poor in making this decision. We've managed to time it well with the IPART determination that, for those who don't know, locks Sydney Water into the next five years of pricing. If we miss this window— Then all indications from Sydney Water are that we would have to wait until 2030 for them to consider it again.

We received the term sheet, I think it was in mid-May or thereabouts, and it was there that we had in writing the term in relation to McGraths Hill. So we've had approximately four weeks to digest this and turn it around and make these inquiries and pull together this report. That's just the reality of the situation we're in.

Thank you. That's the end of my questions, Mr Mayor. I'm, like other councillors, I'm really concerned about the tight time frame for consideration here . I'm not at all happy with handing over a large asset, and an asset that actually works at South Windsor. We know that there are problems with McGraths Hill. We know that McGraths Hill is reaching the end of its useful life in its current form. But South Windsor is actually working pretty well. We had a lovely tour of South Windsor, and we've got some outstanding staff running that facility. I think we are potentially devaluing the value of reclaimed water because we're in a wet period, and I know that we did value the McGraths Hill facility much more highly during that 20 years of drought.

We certainly valued the by-product, which was silage, much more highly. I can also remember going along to an urban greening... Workshop where people were openly envious of the fact that we had all this excess treated water that we could actually make things green with when everybody else's parks and trees were dying.

I understand that there is a great risk with maintaining these facilities. We've certainly seen the impact. We know the cost of when something breaks. I also understand the desire to shift seven and a half thousand households, I don't know if it's households or people or customers, across to a potentially cheaper scheme. But what we have is a deal here that has a pile of conditions attached to it, and if we accept the recommendation in the business paper, we are effectively signing on to a divestment now with negotiations with councillors out of that picture, in part because of this time frame around IPART, and in part because we're delegating authority to do this to the general manager. That sits really ill with me, not because I don't trust the general manager, because I don't think it's reasonable for us to hand that final decision over to our sole employee.

So I cannot support item recommendation three. I would much rather that if we vote as a chamber to proceed with the divestment, that if we have to, we come back to an extraordinary meeting when we have answers to the items in the conditions precedent, that we So, President, that we make the final decision about whether we divest this. So I'll move an amendment that we consider items one, two, four and five from the business paper, and that item three is removed. I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to leave that final decision to an employee, even an employee of the calibre of the general manager. That's not reasonable. I'll leave it at that.

I've seconded that, Mr Mayor.

There's an amendment. So it's one, two. Three is that— what was that,

An extraordinary meeting be called?

Sorry, just eliminate three, and if we need to have an extraordinary meeting, then that's within your power to call, Mr Mayor.

So the amendments one, two, four and five.

Sorry, Mr Mayor, I think point five might be problematic.

That's all right.

Just perhaps receive a further report regarding the conditions precedent before a final determination by Council.

Can I get a point of clarification, please?

I'll just— The Councillor, five was receive a further report following the

Regarding the conditions , regarding potential resolution of the conditions precedent before making a final determination .

If you ask me another time, I'll probably change that again. Sorry.

Someone asked for clarification. Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm sorry, but I need to get this clarified. I'm not clear with this process. And the taking out point three, I think would only be—

Would only be warranted if those, the conditions, the conditions precedents weren't met. If they are met, which is that we have— Sorry, I'm not going to be able to do that off the top of my head. But I think what we're after here is an agreement that if those conditions are met, then we give the General Manager delegated authority. All that I can see happening is if we come back from an extraordinary meeting is it will say, yes, they've been met, go ahead. And I can't really— I'm not really sure that that is the way we want to do this. Then there's point five, receive a further report following the resolution of the conditions precedent and outlining the implementation plan. And so that's the next stages. Can we just get that— I'm sorry to labour this, but could we just get that explained to us again?

Yep. Just sort of—

The GM. Sorry, while— Yep. Oh, I won't.

Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor. The Director of Infrastructure Services and I were just hypothesising because we genuinely don't know how that condition precedent is going to be resolved. So, if, for example, we were able to negotiate with state government agencies for them to effectively fund that shortfall, that would be a very simple process. If there were likely to be arrangements where there were additional charges or levies levied on either our customer base or some other option, that would be a more complex scenario that we would absolutely want run through this chamber. So it's a bit of a non-answer, perhaps, in the context that we don't quite know what that outcome is going to be.

So, frankly, if it gives council more comfort that it's making that ultimate decision, we can do that. What we do need to be aware of is that we will need to move quickly when we do resolve it, that's all.

Thank you. Thank you for that. I don't think that needs to be an amendment. I think we can probably all agree that that's probably

The way to go here, that we actually

Not delegate that to you, that it comes back at your discretion of what that outcome is, because it sounds like it could be complicated and not straightforward, and we may — To me, it was if they're met, well, off we go. But as you say, they might be changed. They might be, you know, I don't know what particular things IPART is going to say about this. Obviously, you know, if they get enough submissions, I don't know why they're doing it this way. It seems a bit odd to me. So I was— I'd be prepared to take three out at this stage.

Deputy Mayor

So the proposed amendment becomes a motion. Is that, are you happy with that?

Mr Mayor, I had another change, which could be an amendment if it's not agreed to. You've finished,

Councillor Kotlash . Sorry . Councillor Osborne

Sorry, I thought you'd put a motion. And that was to change number two with continue with the negotiations for the divestment rather than proceed with the divestment.

I'm happy to have that change, just to

What was the wording, sorry?

It was to continue, I can't remember, it was to continue with the negotiations for the divestment rather than committing— proceeding with means that we're committing to the divestment. And at this point, I wouldn't be happy with that, but I'm happy to continue and then get the report back around the conditions precedent and see what goes from there.

Can I get — I'll just ask the General Manager to clarify.

Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor, that would effectively be a tantamount to us saying we're not proceeding. Sydney Water are certainly after a firm statement. They need to go back to IPART to say, with a degree of confidence that Council is proceeding. So just in the interest of transparency, that would be equivalent to us not proceeding.

Well, I'll move an amendment to say that, because what that says to me in effect is, regardless of whether the conditions are met or not, we're telling them that we're proceeding.

Councillor Creed. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Can I just get clarification? We're talking about the timelines and all that sort of stuff, and from what I could understand within the business paper, the implementation timeline was 1st of July 2026 . So what's the timeline for Sydney Water and IPART? And we're talking about a very tight deadline here. What is the deadline? Because I'm trying to, I think I must have missed it because I've gone through this about three times and I can't see it.

Through you, Mr Mayor. So if I can just lay it out very clearly. So Sydney Water have made their initial submission to IPART for their pricing for the next five years. So IPART have examined that, and they have released their draft determination, which is the document that was released, and I'll be frank, took both Sydney Water and Council by surprise, with their inclusion about the prospect of the scheme's divestment. That draft determination, Sydney Water then have a fixed timeframe to respond to that. My understanding is that they have to have a report to their board sometime, I think it's in July. To formalise their response to that draft determination by IPART. IPART then considers that along with the...

Community consultation that they've called for, and which closes on the 23rd of June, and then releases their final determination sometime in August or September. And that is it for the next five years. So whilst we talk about a transition period and an implementation period of 12 months, and realistically that's probably going to be longer, the firm commitment that the general manager referred to is what Sydney Water is seeking from us to give them the confidence to proceed with their final pricing submission to IPART. And if that's missed, if Sydney Water determine, and that's for them to determine, I can't provide comment on their behalf, if they determine that there isn't enough certainty that's come from this chamber, then they won't take it on.

And that's effectively the advice from Sydney Water, is that that's it for five years until their next pricing cycle.

Just to follow on from that, what would be the outcome that if council supported the proposal that went forward to IPART, and then council decided against it, so they put in a submission for a price increase to IPART, what would happen if the venture didn't go ahead in relation to the pricing that they're put in?

Through you, Mr Mayor, I haven't asked that question. The reason being is that I haven't entertained a reality where council effectively reverses its decision of a firm commitment, and it's not one that I would broach with Sydney Water.

No

Thank you. Councilor Creed. Sorry, I haven't finished. I do apologise. I think Councillor O'Ryan and I are the only ones that haven't been dealing with this for A number of years, so I think we're sort of playing catch-up with a lot of the information that's been provided. I feel like— actually, there is one question. The reason why it's a nil value, the amount of upgrades that Sydney Water potentially will have to make to the network, have they given you sort of like a—or do you have a rough guesstimate of like a ballpark figure of how much they potentially would have to spend? And is that the reason why they're saying it's a nil figure and we're not taking on the debt because we're going to have to potentially spend all this other money? Is that what they've—if that's confidential, that's fine. I'm just trying to—

Yeah, through you, Mr Mayor, and this is addressed in the report when the report talks to the cash flows over the forward ten years under the current capital regime, the current expenditure regime is neutral to positive. However, once you consider the capital funding that's required over the next ten years and using Sydney Water as a proxy, that becomes significantly negative. Now, we can't run it at a loss. The only way that we could sustain those operations would be to balance that through increasing the charges levied to our customers over and above what they already are. And whilst we haven't got the numbers to support this, we, I suppose the qualitative statement is that whilst we're double Sydney Water at the moment, if we were to continue on the current trajectory, we would anticipate to be between three and four times Sydney Water's annual bill within ten years.

Question—sorry, Mr Mayor, just a follow-on question from that. That's assuming that we didn't connect anybody to the outstanding capacity at Windsor. Sewer plant, and that we didn't ever look into any alternative revenue stream coming from within that.

Through you, Mr Mayor, the report undertaken by, or the investigation undertaken by KPMG in 2022 looked at that, and the growth isn't there to address that shortcoming. The required capital uplift to deal with both renewal and the nutrient offset framework would far exceed any additional windfall that might come from the small number of connections that still remain and are still available within the catchments that we have control over, with the great majority being outside and within Sydney Water's area of operations.

Is our sewer, is that sewer plant restricted only to people within the LGA? If bordering connections were a possibility, do you think that would happen?

Through you, Mr Mayor, we aren't restricted per se. We can deal with ad hoc. I just don't know where they would come from, given the investment that Sydney Water is planning to make and is making in their own infrastructure to service these areas, particularly through the Northwest Growth Corridor. As everyone, I'm sure, is aware, due to the disruption through Richmond, Sydney Water investing a significant sum of money into connecting their North Richmond and Richmond water treatment plant, waste water treatment plant, I beg your pardon . I don't imagine for one moment that they would happily lose customers to our scheme or seek to take advantage of our capacity when they're investing such significant sums in ensuring that they can service their customers.

Thank you. I'm just trying to get my head around this to decide whether to move something. Can I just get confirmation that this is the situation? If we say to proceed with the divestment, where I understand we have previous resolutions, but as some of us have alluded to, the situation was somewhat different there. We were unaware that we would be transferring an asset and still having, you know, a large debt to pay off, so that is a difference. So if we have to give them a firm commitment, but we have conditions that need to be met, it's almost as if I feel a little bit blurry thing going on here, that there seems to be an assumption this is going to go ahead regardless, and that concerns me because of the lack of guarantee around a number of things.

Now, I'm not suggesting that that's deliberate, but that is how it's coming through with the information that is here before us. Is that correct? Is that— so, in other words, we can't say just continue with the negotiation, or we can't word it so that the fact that it's conditional on certain things being met, I would prefer to see that those conditions precedent at the forefront of what we're passing here tonight, rather than as an ancillary thing down the bottom, with the main thing being that we are going ahead with the divestment. And I understand how negotiations work, and I understand that that is a factor, but we're talking about a very, very valuable public asset here that may have risks associated with it, but we have to be very careful we're not handing it off without getting the proper guarantees in place.

Through you, Mr Mayor, that is what recommendation two seeks to— 6 to achieve is to say effectively that Council resolves to proceed only when that condition, which is outlined in the report, and Sydney Water have these conditions too, or have their own conditions precedent too, only when that is satisfactorily resolved. That is that we have either some external funding which eliminates the debt, or we have an alternative funding regime which allows us to recoup some of the savings that customers will experience or enjoy, and use that as a pass-through to pay that debt.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr Mayor, could you clarify what, is this the current motion now, or have we moved back to the original motion with something missing?

No, this is the motion before Council.

No, we

On the advice from the General Manager, I said that the word continue should go back to the word proceed.

I

Think

We have to vote on the amendment, but I think we vote on the amendment as opposed to the motion.

It's a word continue rather than proceed, was it?

Through you, Mr Mayor, the motion on the board is the proposed amendment that Councillor Lyons-Buckett moved

And the motion that's before Council is in the business paper.

Mr Mayor, I'm happy.

The motion before Council, which is from Councillor Kotlash and Councillor McMarn, is to adopt 1, 2, 4, with those changes to Part 5 and 3. No

Not 3. Mr Mayor, I'm prepared to not go ahead with my amendment on the basis that it is coming back to Council before the finalisation of it.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Brogden.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm now referring to the amendment, and— There is no— Well, it's a question, at any rate. Through you, Mr Mayor, I'd like to ask staff if there's been any consideration of the impact on this divestment on Section 73 contributions, which are the contributions that Sydney Water charges for connections.

Through you,

Mr Mayor, no, there hasn't. There's been no analysis. So could I ask you to speculate whether there may be an unintended consequence in relation to those contributions, or that levy that's charged by Sydney Water?

Through you, Mr Mayor, the only speculation I'm prepared to make is that ours would cease to exist. Our

What would cease to exist?

Developer contributions. Okay. And last question, I believe that there is a pipeline to Pitt Town that's been constructed but not being used. I know this comes at the end of a very long and torturous— Debate about this, but was there a pipeline that we own constructed to go out to Pitt Town that's not being used and therefore represents an untapped source of revenue for people at Pitt Town that are presumably currently using the Johnson scheme?

Through you, Mr Mayor, there is a council-owned and operated rising main which runs from Pump Station T, which is located in Pitt Town. That operates. It's operating right now and conveying those connected customers of Council's.

Councillor

Gamarti

Just a quick question, Mr Infrastructure Manager, and you don't have to give me the answer now. Do we know the dollar value of the parts, maintenance section, the pipes, the welding rods, whatever it is directly involved, you know, into the sewer matter? When, if they take over, are they going to take all those spare parts, pumps, whatever you name it, motors and unused parts? Are they going to take over, or are they going to give us a credit for it?

Through you, Mr Mayor, those minor stock items, I suppose we'd call them, are, I suppose, somewhat immaterial given what we're talking about. That would be part of the future transition plan in respect of how we were to deal with those. But anything of any significant or material value is an asset and is part of the 170-odd million dollar book value. That's referred to. So the exclusion to that would be the plant, so the trucks and the vehicles that are associated with the scheme. Yes. We would, in all likelihood, if we don't have a use for them or if they can't fit into our plant replacement program elsewhere, then we would dispose of them through sale.

Mr Mayor, sorry to labour it, I need to ask a question. Since you've got an ageing sewage or treatment plant within the Hawkesbury,

To replace the asset, right, and the capital works that's due for pump, liming of tanks, all the pipes that are leaking, the sub stations and everything, or the sub pumping stations, one in Windsor Downs and all around the place that we take on Sydney Water, if you have to come back and renew that, how much would we be up for and where would you get the money to do it anyway?

What would we be up for? Somewhere north of the book value of $170 million. The funding would have to come from those eight and a half thousand customers, if there weren't government grants

Councillors, I don't wish to cut the important meeting any shorter than it needs to be, but we've only dealt with two items tonight. Put the item, Mr Mayor

Councillor Ryan. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Look, I'm new at this, but I have been looking at this quite clearly. I was fortunate enough to do a tour of the South Windsor plant this morning. The staff out there are quite well trained. They're really up on their game, and to me they're an asset, and they'd be an asset to anyone else who took over those plants. So I don't think we've got a problem with our staff. In fact, I believe they would be headhunted by other individual sewer or private sewers. The sewer plant out there look quite capable and the capacity is quite good. Would there be a capacity of having the McGraths Hill sewerage transferred to South Windsor and use the capacity up there and still remain in our scheme?

Would that be a viable, probable way of doing it? It's an out of the box way, but I think I'm very concerned for our ratepayers, and that's where my first concern is. There'll be people at, if this goes ahead, there'll be people up at Bowen Mountain who'll be paying for a pump out, and then they'll probably be having a rate rise to cover this sewer plant if we proceed the way we are. And I don't really feel that's a good move for the people up there. Our main concern is our ratepayers. Can we please look at other ways where we can do this? McGraths Hill is dilapidated. It's been there for longer than I've been here, and I think we should look at these other options rather than, okay, keep proceeding with our, and I will support our motion here, but I think we have to open our eyes and look wider, wider for our community.

I was under the belief that this debt was going to go with the sewer plant when I had my training on the 21st of January this year, and I was very surprised to see that it's changed. So please, if you can answer that question now, do we have the capacity to put McGraths Hill over to South Windsor? Would that be a viable option, and can we take it from there?

Through you, Mr Mayor, we are still undertaking the necessary works to plan for the future should this not proceed. So that involves the development of an integrated water cycle management strategy. We've asked Public Works, who are doing this work for us, to pull forward the workings on McGraths Hill. That started some months ago in anticipation that we would be in this point, and it's just accelerated far beyond what we thought were reasonable timelines. So whilst we don't have— Up to date, Felix. When we last looked at it, that indeed was the plan for renewal for McGraths Hill, was to decommission the plant, construct a pump station, decommission the plant and pump the flows to South Windsor where there is capacity. That will come at a cost. That will come at a cost over and above the double charge that we currently charge our customers. So it is absolutely viable, but it will cost.

Yeah, just to clarify, Councillor, there's nothing off the books at this stage. Those negotiations, they're trying to do the best. Your concerns are well justified in the arguments that have been made by staff in relation to minimise those costs you've spoke of.

Councillor McLarn, right of reply. Councillor Kotlash, was it?

Not necessary, Mr Mayor. I think we've all grasped this one.

Thank you, Councillor Kotlash. Excuse me.

The motion before Council is the recommendation on page 128, which is 1 and 2 and 4 and 5. Part 3 is deleted.

Sorry?

Those in favour?

It's unanimous. It's Councillors Zamprogno, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett, Ryan, Djuric, McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Veigel. Reardon, Dogramaci and Sheather. Those against? Carried. Thank you, councillors. That's a

Good decision, I think. The last item that we have with the speakers is 12.1.2.

Carried. Thank you, councillors. That's

A good decision, I think. The last item that we have with the speakers is 12.1.2. There's three speakers. The first one, Mr Troy Myers.

It's the notice of motion to dual occupancy.

Good evening, councillors, council staff and members of the gallery. I'd like to thank the council for the opportunity to speak in favour of councillor's androgynous this evening. I'd like to begin by recognising the considerable amount of time that has taken to get where we are now, given we started the process back in 2015. The

Extended timeline has meant that many practical beneficial reforms have been left unaddressed, despite the fact that several could be implemented more efficiently through smaller target amendments rather than broad, complex processes . The proposal before us tonight is one such example. It's a practical, well-considered change that aligns with community need and planning logic. In the past, our approach to LEP reform was more responsive. Smaller planning proposals were regularly advanced to address emerging needs . Especially when aligned with policy signals from the State Government, this meant that we could act quickly on changes that had support and were likely to be approved. A good example of this was our previous plan, 1989 LEP. In its 23-year lifespan, it had 160 amendments. 160. One

Area I'd like to address in relation to the issue of dual occupancies detached on flood-prone land, because I know that's been spoken about quite a bit, is that currently we don't allow detached or attached dual occupancies on flood-prone land, and nor should we allow detached dual occupancies on flood-prone land because they have the same risks.

That said, in appropriate locations, detached dual occupancies offer significant benefits. They are far more cost-effective to construct.

Unlike attached forms, they often require no alteration to the existing building, avoiding the need for complex and costly changes to roof and supporting structures.

Furthermore, from a compliance and construction perspective, the detached dual occupancies simplify the building process and accelerate delivery. In relation to the motion, I agree that detached dual occupancies offer many benefits, including but not limited to supporting multi-generational living, allowing families to live together for longer, enabling older residents to age in place. I know that's something that was spoken about tonight. It offers an avenue to help with those services. Providing opportunities for younger generations to enter the property market, and I've got one here sitting in the room tonight. She's eyeing off a spot down the back, only this week. Allowing families to build an investment property on land that they already own. It's an opportunity to help people who are struggling at the moment to have that investment property on the land without having

To pay an additional cost for the land . And five, it creates employment opportunities. Particularly important given, and as you read in our operational plan, that nearly 30% of our community is employed in the construction industry. So this would allow for new jobs, opportunities for new apprentices, so forth and so on. Beyond the economic benefits, detached dual occupancies are family-friendly. They allow older parents to remain close to their children and grandchildren, offer housing options for growing families, and support independent living, all while reducing the burden on aged care and childcare systems. In considering this motion, I also believe it's critical that Council ensure any uptake of council detached dual occupancies is sustainable.

To this end, I'd strongly recommend that Council pursue a robust 7.11 and 7.12 contribution scheme for such changes. This will ensure that infrastructure and services needed to support new development such as this are properly funded and planned for and is in line with Council's current operational plan, in particular 1.4.2. In terms of planning controls, the planning controls of detached dual occupancies could comfortably sit within our existing DCP. There is no need to start from scratch. Councils such as Byron Bay, Ballina, Penrith, Blue Mountains, and many more have successfully implemented detached dual occupancy frameworks with similar constraints. Despite strong community support and ongoing advocacy, Hawkesbury remains one of the few councils where this type of housing remains out of reach.

I note in the motion, staff have been waiting since 2017 for the government to complete regional strategic framework or variation of. However, in 2018, the state government adopted the Greater Sydney Regional Plan and the Western City District Plan with forecasts through to 2056.

Thanks, Mr. Myers. Time expired. Thank you. Do we have a question? Councillor Zamprogno.

Yes. Through you, Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mr. Myers, for coming and speaking. You work professionally in this domain. Considering what I think is the relatively modest nature of the proposal, to remove one word, how long do you think it should take council staff to put together a planning proposal of this type?

I think because of the simple nature of what we're proposing, or what we're looking at, I think you could do it in three to four weeks. Because, and the reason I say that, it sounds preposterous when we know how long planning proposals do take. But there's not a lot to investigate here. We're already allowed to do attached dual occupancies. Detached is just changing the configuration on the lot. So... Like you say, there's only one word, and I don't think there'd be a lot of reports that would need to be done for a development that can already occur on the site.

Councillor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Myers. I just wanted to get your opinion. There's a point in the detached dual occupancies will be a significant source of income for Council in the form. There has been some suggestion that we won't be able to charge any sort of rates or anything like that. I understand that other councils have been able to get around this with certain contributions. Like, are you aware and what sort of things they do?

Yeah, our experience in other neighbouring council areas, Penrith, for example, you can do detached dual occupancies there. They have a 7.11 contributions plan and can cost you anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 in contribution fees when you do the development. So I don't think you can charge additional rates, but I definitely think that you could properly structured, you could have a Section 7.11 plan, a 7.12 plan to be able to pick up those costs. And I think it needs to happen. Like, you don't want to end up in the position where we have the new development and it's costing us money at the back end later on. No

Thank

You.

Thank you. The figure that you mentioned, that $10,000 or something like that, is that a confirmed figure or is that going to be variations, like, you know, in anything else? Like, you know, they will say, you know, $10,000 and suddenly it will go to $15,000 or $20,000. Do we have some kind of a set figure?

There wouldn't be a set figure. It'd be— It'd be annualised

The same as your operational plans annualised every year and your Section 711 plans are annualised now, so it'd be linked to CPI. So those charges that you have now would not necessarily be the same as the charges that you would have in two years' time or even a year's time, because it's all adjusted with CPI. So it'd be recalculated every— according to CPI and whatever council decides in their management fees.

Again, from your experience, do you have some kind of figure that, you know, how many in total, how many dwellings are we going to get or we might get?

I don't have an accurate number.

Approximately.

Well, I guess you could say that potentially every rural piece of land that's not flood affected and that doesn't have environmental constraints could have another house.

But how many?

I don't know how many rural properties are there in— I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. You're the most

Experienced, one of the most experienced ones.

I don't know, 10,000, 20,000 over a period of time. It's a guess. I really couldn't say accurately, but potentially, wherever you've got— wherever you can get an attached dual occupancy now, you'd be able to put one on with this policy. So there will be

Plenty money then?

Well, there would be a lot of development, whether you'd get it all at once, but there would be a money stream or contributions from it, yes.

Thank you.

Troy, with the applicants that come to you for dual occupancy, how many would prefer to have it separate from the, or detached?

First, I advise them that I'm a town planner, I'm not a marriage counsellor. Usually the problem that we have is that even though you love your family, sometimes six metres is just not far enough. So the majority of people would like that separation. I guess, you know, there's different family dynamics when kids get married and people want to live there. But every day, every day, I could hand on heart say every day we get someone ringing up wanting to do a dual lock because, I don't know, they're getting older, but they want to stay there. The kids need a place to start, and they want to stay there as well. They want to look after their grandkids, or they've got a sick parent. There's all these instances.

But what happens invariably is they go, Is there any other way? Like, is there any loopholes? And we go, Well, no, there's not.

You know, so people sometimes resort to just going and doing it and then ask for forgiveness later. That often happens. It's not, you know, it's not something that we recommend, but in desperation, that's what they do. So the answer is, yeah, often, at least once a day, we would get asked. Thanks

Mate

The next speaker is Michelle Makatosh , is that? Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, councillors, staff and people of the gallery.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I'd just like to thank Councillor Zamprogno and also Mr Myers for the amazing amount of Information that I've been able to gather and analysis that I've been able to do on this issue. I come here today to speak in favour of this motion put forward by Councillor Zamprogno regarding the provision of greater flexibility for landowners building dual occupancies. From my perspective, I'm particularly interested in the impact to the people of the Hawkesbury. I don't work in the industry, but I know the very real impact it has. So I'd just like to illustrate that with our own personal example. There are many, many examples of people who struggle throughout the Hawkesbury with cost of living, not having somewhere to live, somewhere safe to put their head down at night, and it really does pain me and so many other people.

So I'd just like to share our own experience. My husband and I have been residents of the beautiful Hawkesbury region for 21 years. We own a one-acre property in Kurrajong Hills that has a main house and fully detached granny flat. The granny flat was used by the original owner-builder for his family of six to live in while the house was being built. That would have been 25 plus years ago. It has a DA and is fully equipped and ready for occupation. The issue arises that we are zoned as a rural small holding and not permitted to have a detached dual occupancies. We have investigated building a covered walkway between the two buildings. However, this would not meet the required provisions of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, as the dual occupancy is not under the same roofline.

Currently, and for most of the last 21 years, we have not been able to use the granny flat for residential occupation. My compelling reason for speaking tonight is my 84-year-old father, who does not have access to affordable housing. My father is a veteran. Having served in the Malayan conflict in the early 1960s, he has mobility issues and requires the assistance and support of his family in his senior years to maintain his independence with dignity and respect. We would like to offer him—sorry, I'm getting a little emotional—we would like to offer him a home in our granny flat. However, that option is not available with the current planning regulations.

Excuse me one minute. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you. Beautiful accent. Kiwi Yes. Yes, I'm a Kiwi. Naturalised Australian and have been for about 25 years, and very proud to be Australian as well.

My father's only hope of housing is to share my brother's second-floor apartment with over 30 stairs to climb every day. This will not be a viable solution for long, and the next fall may mean a transfer into an aged care facility.

Looking to the future, we have two children who are now young adults. We would like to support them and their future families by providing affordable housing, enabling them to save for their own property purchases. This is also not possible under the current planning regulations.

There is an affordable housing crisis in the Hawkesbury. Many Hawkesbury residents are struggling with basic need of finding and maintaining a safe and affordable place to live. This is particularly distressing for some of our more vulnerable residents, such as the elderly. Who can no longer afford escalating rents, and young adults who are quickly realising that the prospect of buying their own home is now out of reach. Some people are leaving the Hawkesbury in the desperate hope of finding affordable places to rent or buy in places such as Lithgow or beyond. I think that's a tragedy. We've got such a great community here in the Hawkesbury, people that have been here for such a very long time, the foundations of this nation, actually.

And I think when we don't treat them well and they have to go somewhere else, that is an absolute tragedy. This situation needs to be urgently addressed. The motion put forward by Councillor Zamprogno advocates for the fast-tracking of affordable housing by allowing attached dual occupancies by landowners in the Hawkesbury. Mr Myers has covered the very many benefits that come with this motion. So the question must be asked: what are the drawbacks to this motion? Please consider that strongly. This is an opportunity for the Hawkesbury City Council to come together in unity and kindness to take the next step in meeting the urgent housing needs of Hawkesbury residents by passing this motion. And God willing, my father will have his much-needed home.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Thank you, Michelle. Any questions? Thanks very much. And the last speaker is Mr Lionel Bucket.

Thank you, Councillors and Mr Mayor. I'm here to speak in support of allowing the dual occupancies detached.

First and foremost, they help families keep together, whether it's ageing parents who want to maintain independence but stay close to loved ones, young adults working towards home ownership. Detached dwellings offer the balance of proximity and privacy. They also create more affordable rental options, especially critical in today's tight housing market, without changing the rural character of our neighbourhoods. But the benefits go even deeper for rural communities like ours. Unlike attached dwellings, detached dwellings respect the space and lifestyle we value in the Hawkesbury. We have the land and we value our privacy. A detached home can be positioned to preserve views, reduce noise, maintain a sense of separation, things that matter in rural life.

It's better fit than squeezing more people under one roof or altering the layout of our existing homes. Detached dwellings also support our rural economy. They create work for local builders and tradies. They allow long-term residents to age in place to generate extra income, help families stay on the land and in our community. In the mountains, with the ageing population, Bilpin School is down to like 40 or 50 kids. Detached dwellings would increase the population, which it needs to increase, and it's a quick way to do it. And something really good that the council could do, because people wait and wait and wait on the LEP to do something, go somewhere, but it doesn't, and this is something that could happen quite quickly.

Let's give our community the tools to adapt and grow while preserving the values. Over all life, I want to chase this down with the state government planning section. I rang the New South Wales Planning on the 7th of April. I asked about the Hawkesbury LEP review LEP and what the hold-up was. I was told by the planner who's responsible for LEP review that the document had been sent back to Council as all the information had not been provided again. This has happened three times, and the LEP has not yet been accepted by State Planning, is what he told me. I asked if it would be quicker to separate a planning proposal for detached dwellings from the LEP, then wait for the LEP review. He said it would be a good idea.

Thank you.

Any questions on Mr. Buckett? Thanks, Lionel.

That's the last speaker. Councillor Zembrog now.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to those speakers. Councillor Creed Thank you. The intent of this notice of motion is to confer greater flexibility to landowners to site detached dual occupancies in areas where attached dual occupancies are currently permitted. I have been surprised at the level of public support that I have received when I told people that I would be bringing this tonight. I'm told that some were turned away when registering as speakers as the slots were filled. I will try and speak for all of you. Colleagues, we have debated at length and ought to know well the advantages of detached dual occupancies. As Mr. Myers reminded us, it allows residents to let seniors live nearby to their families, yet with a degree of independence and dignity, sharing in childminding and defraying the costs of living.

It allows parents to give young families a way to get a leg up in the property market and to continue to live in the communities in which they grew up and feel some kinship. But here are some more. It allows people on acreage to build to rent and gain a source of income and perhaps stimulate tourism. It is a form of affordable housing, as the overhead costs of land purchase are negated. It creates housing under one title and not through subdivision. And if I'm known for anything in my nine years on council, it's opposing inappropriate subdivision. It continues to act as a source of revenue to council through Section 7.12 levies to fund local infrastructure. It raises no new concerns about flood evacuation, and I want to stress this point because attached dual occupancies are already assessed for this risk and are permitted in zones subject to this motion.

It acts as a bulwark in areas adjacent to high growth and goes some way to providing a buffer against the pressure for more intensive forms of rezoning and subdivision that we do not want in the Hawkesbury. Many have mentioned to me the unaffordability of housing and the social strain that comes from having to live far from work or family. There is already a large amount of clandestine dual occupancy happening now in the Hawkesbury than many might be comfortable to admit. I can think of half a dozen examples without leaving my home suburb of Oakville, most have existed for years based on the Aussie larrikin principle that good neighbours are frequently willing conspirators in thumbing their nose at a bad law.

This motion would have the added benefit of regularising those unapproved dual occs via a DA. Now, some might ask why I am bringing this as a standalone motion when the LEP process is already underway. I think we need to admit that we have made a mistake. I accepted the promise that was made back in 2018 that reforms like this one would be incorporated into a new LEP that would be completed by 2021 . It is now seven years since we were presented with that timeline, and we are still waiting with no end in sight. Back in 2020, the State Government introduced changes suggesting councils adjust their LEPs to accept a more generous definition of secondary dwellings and granny flats, nearly doubling them to 110 square metres.

I compounded my error when I was urged by people, including our State Member of Parliament, to move immediately to adopt these changes as a dot point reform to our LEP. Instead, I again accepted the suggestion that this would be best incorporated into the new LEP, and we are still waiting. I am bringing this tonight, driven by a belief that smaller changes like this are likely to succeed in being endorsed by the State Government, the claimed bottleneck, because they adhere to policies that the State are practically imploring us to legislate to provide more flexibility in housing stock. I believe that our omnibus LEP process is moribund, and I ask my colleagues, if seven years is not the point at which this Chamber decides it has to attempt a different approach, then when will be?

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Veigel

Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you, Councillor Sombrero, for bringing this motion to the chamber. In 2016, I put my hand up for this gig, and I wasn't elected. But part of the platform when I put my hand up was for attached and detached dual occupancies.

2016, we've already spoken about that it was going to the LEP. I get somewhat impatient in my role that I do, looking after a reasonable manufacturing operation with inertia when decisions are quite easy to do, but it just doesn't get done. I squarely put this problem in the hands of the state government on this, and dare I say, the coalition's been complicit, and now the Labor Party's been complicit. This is a no-brainer. I'll be supporting this. It should have gone through years ago, simply years ago, okay? Most of the questions I field is about detached and attached dual occupancy, and for the very reasons being brought by the speakers, and I thank you for getting up for the public speaking, whether it be age, with your kids, all of the above, right?

More importantly , the cost of housing is not getting any better. I suspect it's going to get worse, all right? It's your land, your family, your money. If you want to put a house, a detached occupancy in your land, we should be out of your way and not tying you up with any delays. I urge my fellow councillors to take this on and support it. What else can I say? Thanks for bringing it forward, Nathan. And I ask the chamber to support this unequivocally. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Mr Mayor . I was a bit surprised at hearing at the ... because I thought we were all in furious agreement . What we had agreed on. I don't think there's the benefits of dual occupancy, I thought, I mean that's way down the track. The problem I think that we have now is how do we get this to happen sooner rather than later. Now, I'd like to get some clarification from the staff because I don't want this notice of motion, and I'm sure that it will be supported, but I'm not going to support it if it is— I'm going to support it with a big question mark if it's not going to be timely. Because if we put a separate planning proposal in, my understanding, and I'd like this also clarified, is this will cost us some money. So the preparation of a planning proposal is not just, I mean I know Troy said three weeks, but it also, you know, it takes some resources. Okay

And charges forty grand, righto. No, no, but no seriously, my point is we have to make this decision on— What, bringing this out of the LEP process, which — To my understanding, we had already agreed on, and we were just waiting for it to happen. We've already put it in. So, I guess the clarification that I want is

How much is it going to cost to take this out of that LEP process, and is it going to speed it up? Have we done the work that we need to do to get this going? There's no use saying, Oh , you know, we want it done, we don't want it done now, if it turns out that we are waiting on the state government for whatever reason. I don't understand why we have to wait this long. I'm with everybody on this one. But I just think, you know, everybody needs to cool their jets. Is this going to get us where we think it is? And I don't want to be disingenuous with our community by saying, Oh yes, yes, we're going to do this separate planning proposal and it's going to be quicker. So can I just have those few things clarified, please?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, in terms of the question about costs, so it would depend if we engage the planning consultant to prepare the planning proposal for us, there would be direct costs involved in that, versus in-house council staff preparing the planning proposal, in which case there's resources obviously redirected towards preparing that planning proposal. In terms of, you know, single issue planning proposal, I think I've spoken before in terms of, you know, some of the issues that we've had in terms of the LEP review. Obviously there's quite a significant array of matters that are included in the current LEP planning proposal, versus, you know, what typically we receive is single site planning proposals.

So they've tended to be, you know, the state government's been able to more readily deal with those single site planning proposals versus what we have provided as part of the LEP review. So... Whilst it would narrow the amount of issues that the planning proposal would address and the state has to consider, there are some primary considerations that the state would have in terms of, particularly, and it has happened in the past when we've looked at detached dual occupancies in secondary dwellings, is the regional flood evacuation impacts. And I guess key to that, they would be expecting us to provide some realistic estimates of number of new dwellings that would be created as a result of the proposed change and then potential impacts on the evacuation route.

Thank you. If I may, could I elaborate on that? So it's not just about the number of dwellings in areas below the PMF. It's the flood route. So it's sort of a more broader decision. Is that how it works?

So I guess really what brings the state government's consideration for the flooding provisions is the PMF level. So it's, you know, above the PMF there's less considerations for them in that regard. But below the PMF, they do bring that into consideration in assessing any planning proposal.

Are you able to, when you say single planning proposals, does that mean that, if I can use your example

About particular properties, can somebody put in a planning proposal to have a detached dual occupancy? They don't have to have a breezeway or a—

In theory, yes, yeah, people can lodge individual planning proposals, but then, you know, there's considerable costs to obviously undertake the planning proposal, prepare the planning proposal, to the application fee. And I guess from our perspective, it's preferred to deal with things on a more global scale rather than individual sites, you know, because potentially up for quite a number of sites to assess as individual planning proposals if people to go down that line.

Are you able to give us how long this would take? Like, if we did this— sorry to labour this—but this is, to me, the crux of it, because I think we're all in furious agreement that this is a great idea. We need to get it done. Do you have an estimate of the time that it would take to prepare the documentation, and then it has to go back into this state government black hole, presumably.

It's not an LEP. It's not at that sort of scale. So is there a chance that this will be quicker?

I'll talk about the process. So should Council resolve to proceed with this notice of motion tonight, so more than likely it would be officers preparing the planning proposal. We would also have to then send it to the local planning panel for advice, and then we would have to bring that advice and the planning proposal back to Council to seek a resolution to submit the planning proposal to the Department of Planning for a Gateway determination. So that's the process. In terms of how long that would take, obviously it depends on local planning panel meetings and then bringing it back to Council. So I'd probably have to take that on notice in terms of how long that would actually take.

Thank you. If I could just one more thing, and this is what worries me, is we go to this expense, which is fine if, you know, if that gets done and dusted, that would be great. But it seems to me that we could go to this expense. Everybody's assuming that it's going to be quicker. We just go to this, we just take it out of the LEP, which we may get back shortly , or maybe not. So, or it to be held up with the hold-ups that are occurring with the decisions in the LEP. I guess, is there any indication that the hold-ups with the LEP are to do with dual occupancy? Is that a better way of putting

It? Not specifically, no. There's a number of issues, and a lot of it does come down to flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley, but that is not the only issue

Yeah,

Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor. Sorry. Bad time. Sorry. I think the other important aspect to consider, so we've been a little reluctant to sort of specify a timeframe it would take for us to get it through the planning panel and to gateway. What I think would be inevitable is that at the back end of the LEP process, you remember we're still very early on in the comprehensive LEP process, and that once we go through the community consultation stage of the comprehensive LEP, that process could take a considerable period of time, and I think that that is where we may see a time saving. Indeed, if The Department of Planning has a fundamental issue with an accelerated dual occupancy proposal.

They may well put the handbrake on it quite early on in that process, at what we call the gateway stage. So they would likely let us know at that point if they've got some sort of fundamental concern, or they are unwilling to progress it in the absence of that strategic flood planning work.

Can I? Thank you, Mr Mayor. That seems to be then probably the best proposition is that our staff can do this work. We don't spend money on consultants, but we take the hit that the rest of our DA process, which is obvious, you know, which I hear about all the time, the speed of which will slow down. So that's the trade-off. So if that's the case, it might be worth spending that whatever the money is. And that's the other thing I don't like about this sort of decision making. It's sort of blank cheque stuff, and that always worries me. But I'll leave it at that for the time being, and thank you for being patient with all my questions.

Thank you

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll speak in favour of the motion, but before I do, I just had a couple of questions as well, sort of leading on from what Councillor Kotlash had asked, and that was for some clarity around the existing proposal, which is of course to have detached dual occupancy, but not—it doesn't cover all rural zones, as far as I'm concerned. So this, in essence, would be introducing an additional zone. I'm going by the briefing notes from February, where it was only zones RU2. Four and five, and the environmental living zones that were included in our LEP, is this likely, because this is introducing another zone, is this likely to be a problem with the compatibility with what we've already submitted, or does that not matter?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. So just to clarify, the current LEP review planning proposal is actually to allow the detached wherever attached is permitted. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you for that, Mr Kearns, because when I looked at the notes, I couldn't see that it included RU1, and I thought that would be something that could be a problem. Of course it does in our LEP also include secondary dwellings, which I think is a quite beneficial thing for rural zones. Today when I was looking up— Around what other councils have done around this, I do note that most of the peri-urban councils do continue with the attached dual occupancy, and yet they have secondary dwellings allowable, which of course is an easier pathway for people offing than the DA process. What I would just like to do is to just raise the issue around, I mean, I'm happy to support this. I supported it for the LEP back in 2014, as Councillor Creed and Councillor Reardon would remember.

We also put in that council an application, a planning proposal, which was rejected by the state government at that point as well. It could benefit us with our housing supply. What I'm just a little concerned about is that people do understand the process, and they do understand the limitations. Of course, these are rural zones and they have zone objectives that apply to those particular zones. So it's not just reading some of the commentary around it. I think some people think they're going to wake up tomorrow and there's going to be another house sitting in their block of land, and that's not going to happen. People still have to go through a process which could require studies and could require things.

I'm not trying to dishearten them because I agree with the benefits. It's just the reality of the fact that we do still have these specific zone objectives and requirements. So people must read what's happening in conjunction with everything else around it. I think that's just an important point to make, and that we also are hopeful that when the LEP finally comes, that the secondary dwellings, which of course have a size restriction, but are in fact can be done under the complying development code, could also be a solution for people like Ms McIntosh, who was here, who says she has a granny flat, and I do hope that is sorted for your father. She has a granny flat which would— Would be a secondary dwelling in essence, which would then be permissible when our LEP comes in.

As Councillor Zamprogno said, there are already many rural properties with two houses, largely from times when new houses are built and older houses are not demolished. So I guess that gives those people the avenue to validate those through whichever mechanism. I don't know if that's a building certificate or how they do that, but it does allow those to be lived in and for that to happen. I think that we had raised earlier by Mr. Paul—Mr. Paul Morris, I think his name was, sorry, Paul—but Collins, Paul Collins. He had raised that in the future we should be looking at, you know, land adjacent to the growth sector and what sort of rezoning would happen there. So we've always got to have this as an ongoing thing.

It's very unfortunate that it's plagued by delay in the way that it is, or it's plagued by rejection once it goes in. These are real issues that we have to confront, and whereas we as a chamber may support these fully, we are reliant on approval from the state government to propel this forward. And I think that it's good that we are investigating an avenue that could lessen the time before we can get this in place. I think that that would be a very good outcome for the Hawkesbury. I like Mr. Myers' idea around the 7.117.12 contributions. We are going to have to, if we allow this, we are going to have to cater for additional infrastructure because it could amount to quite a few additional people in our area.

So I think that there's a lot of good ideas around this. I would like to see it succeed. I personally would like to see the regional land use study—actually, I believe it's done. I've been told by people it's done. It has not been released by either government, the Liberal or the Labor government.

And I personally would like to know why not. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Councillors, we've had four speakers in favour of the motion. Do we have someone against it? No, sir. We can still keep going.

I've got a question, Mr. Mayor.

Has anyone on lights-on got a question, or are we— No, I'd like to speak.

Sorry, Councillor Wheeler's got a question. I'll take a question. The night's—we're getting on with the night. We've got other business we've got to deal with. If we're all in favour of this, I'll take a question. You can't.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. A couple of my questions have already been answered.

Are there any size constraints for detached dual occupancy? I know that there are size constraints for secondary dwellings. I guess what I'm interested in is, firstly, is there an upper limit, but is there a lower limit as well that would prohibit something like an existing granny flat being regularised?

So basically no size restrictions for dual occupancies. The secondary dwellings do have obviously size limitations. The current LEP review planning proposal for secondary dwellings in rural zones is 120 square metres or 25% of the size of the principal dwelling, whatever's the greater.

But there wouldn't be a lower limit. So if we got detached dual occupancies through, but secondary dwellings were still held up by the LEP review— Could an applicant like Ms McIntosh put up an application for that granny flat to be considered a dual occupancy, and then allow that to be habitable?

Yes, they could.

Thank you. I'll speak really quickly, Mr Mayor.

I've already indicated, Councillor, we've had four speakers in favour and none against.

But according to the Code of Meeting Practice, it's only if there's two for, two against, and the meeting needs to be paused. Otherwise there is no

Way of— The

Code

Of Conduct says one speaker for, one against. There's been four in favour and none against. Yeah

But the Code of Meeting Practice doesn't actually give you the permission to stop councillors from speaking. The only way that you can turn around and stop councillors speaking is if there's two for, two against, and a councillor says the motion be put.

Councillor, you had your light on first. You go first. Why don't you do some checking here?

No, that's fine. I just wanted to briefly state that I'm thankful for the work that Mr Myers has done on this, and for Councillor Zamprogno bringing it to the meeting. Thank you for Councillor Lyons-Buckett for reminding me. We've been pushing this for a very long time, and unfortunately the State Planning Department, which is the gift that keeps on giving us NOCs back in 2014, and I'm hopeful that by doing this tonight they will actually go forward with it and we can get on with it because people have been waiting well over a decade for something like this to come to fruition. And including with the new LEP, it's, what, seven, eight years, so let's just get on with it and get it done.

Councillor Kotlash.

Councillor Scott, did you have your light on? Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, just a few quick points. One of the things that I think it's important for people to understand is that it isn't Council holding up this process. It's the State Government. The State Government currently doesn't permit dual occupancies in rural residential land. And before I was elected, I could see a lot of problems with this. It is a form of subdivision by stealth for people who have the capacity to do it, and that is a problem for councils in that then those properties, without paying additional rates, use additional services. So I agree with Mr Myers that there needs to be some mechanism for getting some money back into Council to pay for those services, particularly when we're talking about detached dual occupancy, which could be a five-bedroom house.

You know, it could house a family of ten with five vehicles, or, you know, quite easily, and that has knock-on impacts to Council services. But I think we also have to remember that not everybody will want a large secondary dwelling on their property. So I think we need to not be sucked into that hysteria of thinking that we're going to get a whole lot of houses out of this. The things that change my mind about this are the fact that I know that this is already happening and that we have no control over it. So where there are impacts on biodiversity through increased land clearing, for example, increased asset protection zones, impacts on sewer, impact on sewer that isn't even connected to the sewer that runs, you know, sheets into the bush or neighbours' yards.

We know this is already happening, and we have no mechanism of regularising and controlling this. So far better that we have a system in place where we can actually allow people to do this and do it legally and do it well. The other thing that I think significantly changed my mind was the introduction of the housing SEPP, which allowed people to put granny flats onto residential blocks of 500 square metres, but not onto blocks of five acres. So you've only got to go for a wander around Bligh Park or South Windsor and see all the granny flats that are in there, all taking up services, all using councils' roads and facilities with no increase in rates, and actually many of them below safe flood evacuation levels.

And so what we've got now is a system that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We've got flood-free land with the capacity to absorb these dwellings and flood-affected land without the capacity to absorb these dwellings, but the legal right to put those dwellings in there. So the state government has effectively got it backwards. We have the potential to change that. There's two other things that I think are useful out of this. We've seen a number of heritage properties demolished because they were the secondary dwelling. That is no longer desirable because it's too small, it's not modern, it's too difficult. We could have saved those properties if the families were allowed to put a secondary dwelling or a detached dual occupancy on those properties.

In many cases, the heritage building could have become the secondary dwelling. The other thing that we've got here is a state government that is keeping a keen eye on flood evacuation routes and the cumulative impact of development on flood evacuation. We are getting more and more large development planning proposals coming to Council asking to put large subdivisions, particularly west of the river, that will suck up the capacity of our flood evacuation routes. Why would we take those while we're telling our own residents who want to put a secondary dwelling or a detached dual occupancy on a block of land that they can't have it because of flood evacuation routes, and yet some external developer may be allowed to come in here and put two and a half thousand dwellings onto those?

So again, by not proceeding with something like this, we're making it harder for our residents long term. So look, I think I would love for the LEP to be ready to go. We're not there. If this speeds this process up, if this allows more affordable housing and more options for people to explore, for families to house their kids or their elderly relatives, then I think this is a good thing. I have two caveats. I would like to see us put an amnesty in place if this goes ahead, where we can regularise those dwellings that currently exist so that they can be legal, they can be insured, and they can be occupied without people being worried that council's going to knock on their door. I would also put in the caveat that all of the benefits around affordable housing will not be realised if this is sucked up by short-term and holiday rental, and we will end up in the same pickle that Byron Shire is in, where people can't afford to live in their own towns.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Creed, just to clarify, you're challenged. If you look at Codes of Meeting Practice 10. 2.4A, in brackets, you might be in error. In that case, I would ask, Councillors, that … not apply.

Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. Again, I can only commend those people who endured sitting in the gallery for more than four hours. I'm sorry that you have to witness the sausage being made and all of the palaver that we have to go through to eliminate one word from the statute. And no, it's more complicated than that. That's the right word. I need to dispel some people with some concerns about that. We try and blame the state government, but the problem is us. Mr Buckett was pointing out, the problem is us. I think that reforms of this kind, the state government are practically begging us to. They change the standard instruments. They increase the generosity of their secondary dwellings or granny flats.

They issue a mandate that we need to increase our stock and flexibility of housing. It's not their problem that. It's not because there are, as Councillor Wheeler says, cumulative impacts, but of evacuation. And the repeat point that I made earlier, due diligences are already permitted in the zones subject to this proposal. They are already assessed for flood risk. Attached dual occupancies are already permitted in those zones. I'm asking Council and therefore the State Government to provide a greater degree of flexibility. Twenty percent of households are multi-generational. Forty percent of children in their twenties... Now, one of this, the subject of such an upswell of support, I've rarely seen in my time on council, because it meets a need.

And Michelle was able to tell us what the human and social costs are of our inaction. This isn't right or dusty, it's second stage. It's what happens when we don't meet the community's expectation of something through sensible changes of this type. I'd love LEP to arrive tomorrow. But again, after 17 years of waiting, I am sceptical. And I think if this succeeds tonight, this foreshadows other attempts to do what Mr Myers reminded us was the approach that worked really, really well before we took on this absolutely everything, omnibus approach that this seems to have become stuck. I'm not suggesting that it's the fault of staff, but nevertheless, we are stuck, and the community's expectation is that we will do something about that.

We can't say that this is all too hard. Byron have done this, Cumberland have done this, Parramatta has done this, Northern Beaches, Hills Shire Council have done this. We're the ones that are behind, and we need to do something about it. So I hope this gets through. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno. We're dealing with the no motion 12.1.2. Those in favour?

Those against? Those in favour, Councillors Zamprogno, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett, Ryan. Djuric, McMahon, Creed, Veigel, Reardon, Dogramaci and Sheather. Councillor Costi, I suppose. Mr. Mayor, we didn't see this.

Did you mention me? I'm in favour of it.

I was going to make a comment. You can't. We've had right of reply. Well, I turned it

On several times.

Yeah, I know, but I stopped the debate, Councillor, because everyone's in favour of it. I asked, was there anybody opposed to it?

Could I not ask a quick question?

Not now,

But— So, Mr. Mayor— We've moved on. Mr. Mayor, sorry, just to clarify, I just wanted to clarify where you said I was wrong. The point A, where is it? Hang on. Let me just get it back up. The point A that you're

Talking about We'll take it up after the meeting, Councillor. Well,

I just want to

Clarify that

I actually wasn't wrong.

I'll read it to you. If the mover of the motion or the amendment has spoken in favour of it and no councillor expresses an interest to speak against it—

Yeah, that's to put the motion. You didn't put the motion because then it goes to a vote. It was just to stop the debate. That's what I was saying. You would have had to have done it as a— put the motion be put and then we voted on it to stop the debate. It wasn't just that I was saying the chairperson just couldn't stop the debate. That was all I was clarifying.

Councillors, we've got items in block.

We've got item 10.2.3. We have 10.3.1, 10.4.1, 10.4.2,

10.4.6,

11.1.1.

That's it. It's been moved by Councillor Reardon

And Councillor Veigel. Those in favour?

Against?

Carried. Those in favour of Councillors Zamprogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan, Councillor Djuric, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash is absent, Councillor Creed, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Dogramaci abstained, and myself. The motion's carried.

The next item that we're dealing with is review of delegation 10.2.1.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett or Councillor Wheeler?

Yeah. Did— was it? Yeah. Is someone— someone want to move 10.2.1?

Councillor Reardon.

Councillor McMahon.

Any discussion? Those in favour? Sorry, we have— there is discussion . Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor.

I acknowledge that we got some information about the Peppercorn delegations late this afternoon, and I hope that they satisfy people's need for further information on where Peppercorn sits in relation to Council. It is a bit difficult if you haven't seen the beast up close, I think. My concern with this motion is with the general manager's delegation. I acknowledge that we have delegations by exception, and I think that is a good thing. What I'm concerned about is tender limits and legal proceedings costs. Could I have some clarification on what the tender limit is under those delegations, please?

Thank you, through you, Mr Mayor. As it stands at the moment, the general manager's position has an unlimited financial delegation. All procurement over two and a half million dollars requires a tender. So that's it in a really simple term.

Over 250— sorry, 250,000. Yeah, no, Mr

I sign a lot of things over two and a half million , but

Okay. So a tender goes out and you're basically picking the recommended tender off the process, but there's no need, there's no limit for that to ever come back to us.

Through you, Mr Mayor. Look, that's correct. As I indicated in our briefing, there are times when I have the delegation and choose not to exercise it, particularly in respect of not necessarily things like construction tenders or whatnot, but for other things, things like the Oasis and those other types of operational service issues that, you know, that I certainly understand and appreciate are matters that I think this chamber would expect to deal with. But in terms of a financial delegation, no. And I will say, with the very significant uptick in our capital expenditure over the last three years on the back of the 2022 floods, imposing, or having a financial restriction in place, I think— I wouldn't have run the numbers, but that would create a significant amount of workload coming through this chamber.

Thanks. And the other area I'm wondering about is legal proceedings. So that would fit into that unlimited financial delegation?

No, I would think that legal proceedings would be a separate delegation. They're not really around financial expenditure, I

Would think So the decision to proceed with a legal case, what's the threshold for that coming to us?

Technically, I don't think there is one. What, again, I would say though is, if I can speak freely, I'm all about shifting responsibility where if there's something that's likely to be difficult or challenging or incur significant financial expense to the elected body and the community, that is absolutely something that I would bring. The reality is we haven't had any significant, for example, Class 4 type matters in the Land and Environment Court or any significant pieces of litigation in the Supreme Court that Council has instigated

Sorry

I fully appreciate your comments around bringing a significant amount of work back to this chamber. What I really appreciate, though, is your comments that you are happy to shift responsibility back onto us, and I think that is exactly where I would like the responsibility to be. And again, this is... I've said this on an earlier item, this isn't about a lack of trust. It's about us taking on our responsibility as the public's representatives and not leaving that responsibility with the general manager. Because we've very recently seen an escalation in criticism of staff actions in a major piece of public works, and I think that's unfair. I think this—I would like this chamber to be making the decisions that the community sees, and in a way that is transparent for the community, and in a way that the community has the capacity to bail us up at the post office or at the shops, or vote us out at the end of a council term .

It's an unreasonable impost for an employee, even the general manager, to have to wear that responsibility when we are elected to do that, to make those decisions. So I guess what I'm saying is I would like to see more of those big tendering decisions and more of those big financial decisions sit firmly in this chamber, so that if people are unhappy, it's us that they are bludgeoning on social media or in petitions or love letters to the minister, and not our staff.

Whether we do that via a discussion where we make our expectations known to the general manager, or we set that up as a delegation, I'm probably comfortable either way. But I don't think that we should just— I think this needs to be something that we, as a group, are open about who takes the responsibility for the decisions made in this place. If that means that we pull back those delegations so that that pressure is on us and not on the general manager, then I'm quite comfortable with moving something to that effect.

Councillor, I just spoke to the GM. She's quite prepared to put something together on the lines that you just spoke to so that you can assess it, and then we can put something into council.

Thank you. So, can I just get an idea of what that process would look like then?

I guess what I would probably do is bring a separate report back. What I would like to be able to do is ask our procurement team just to do a little piece of analysis around what's the best threshold there that doesn't unduly slow up the core bread-and-butter roads programs, those sorts of things, but allow that higher-value, big-ticket stuff to still land in the chamber. So that's probably the little piece of analysis I'd like to do, and more than happy to bring a report back. Sure.

So are we best to just approve the GM's delegations as they stand and review them in, say, three months when that report comes back to us?

I think that's the most prudent way forward, yeah. Thank you

Any further debate?

Councillor Reardon, right of reply.

Necessary.

So, did you have a question?

Oh, yeah. I missed some part of it, sorry. I do apologise. To be fair and to give credit to Madam General Manager, I think during the Zoom meeting she has already confirmed that some of the tenders that... She was going to discuss with some staff members, senior staff members, so, you know, that would be available to us. I thought that I'd mention that too as well. Is there any time limit that, you know, when we could have some of those details?

That can be further reported. Yeah. Thank you. Councillor Reardon, right reply?

No, not necessarily.

Okay, there's item 10.2.1, review of delegation. Those in favour?

Just keep your hand up for two seconds. That's unanimous. Those against? Carried. Councillor McDogno, Wheeler, Lyons-Buckett, Ryan, Djuric, McMahon, Kotlash, Creed, Veigel, Regan, Dogramaci, and Sheather. The next item.

Sheather. The next item we've got is 10.2.4, RAP event . I'll so move, Mr Mayor. Nathan.

A seconder? Councillor Dogramaci.

My only remark is that this is a wonderful event, and I'm happy to take all of the recommendations. I know we were in our briefing umming and ahhing about which parts we could afford. I've come to the conclusion that this is such a significant event, it would be a shame not to miss— it would be a shame to miss the opportunity. So I'll leave it to others to pick the eyes out of this by way of amendment, but I'm in favour of everything.

Thank you.

Councillor

Veigel.

Are we okay to talk? Sorry. We're talking about the RAP. Thanks for the recommendations, but I have a problem. I have a problem with holding the outdoor cinema event . Two movies, it's been proposed $42,000. That's the thing that's bugging me, is the $42,000, Mr Mayor. As with items one, three, four and five, I accept the recommendations. So therefore, I'd like to proceed this in seriatim, please. So you'd like to— I'd like to vote on each point in seriatim, please.

I want to move the amendment. I just want to vote on each point because I'm not happy with going with number two. I just don't think it's— I just can't see it recouping the $42,000. And my reasons are based on this, right? We've got two days of an air show on three sets. Everything's been accounted for. I can't see people hanging around Richmond or any town centre at a long day, and it will be a long day, and it'll be a great day, happy to promote the business centres and everything on number one and three and four and five. That's great, fantastic. I don't think you're going to get your bucks worth for $42,000. And considering we're always looking for fiscal responsibility, the post, I'd just rather not do it.

That's just me.

Mr Mayor?

To do with the items from the time, we need to vote on that.

We're still going. Sorry We're still going with the discussion. Yeah. Yeah yeah

We'll deal with the ancillary item. Those in favour? Against

Okay. Councillor McMahon.