This comment has come in which we repeat as a post in the public interest.
Delegation to the Minister:
On November 14 a delegation meet with the Minister for Local Government (your member Jeanette Powell) to discuss the plight of the ratepayers relative to inputs to local government.
The thrust of the discussion was to be about how ratepayers are disadvantaged when compared with Municipal Association of Victoria and Victorian Local Government Association and other high profile peak bodies.
Our intent was to solicit her help in how to get more ratepayer input into key documents like The local Government Act, and to stress the point that we are all volunteers competing against high profile organizations that have lots of $$$ from councils while we are significantly disadvantaged and without any professional staff and our voice is marginalized as a result.
After meeting with the minister, I felt like I had been blasted with the Ghostbuster Proton Pack and needed a shower.
Had I not taken my dog tranquilizers prior to the meeting I would have left Parliament house and laid on a tram track waiting for a tram to end my misery.
It was a humbling experience to visit with a minister who has no empathy at all for the plight of the ratepayer and was too busy spinning how great she was doing to actually listen.
However a snitch at Parliament House told us that the government fears inputs from an organized group who represents ratepayers as the changes to LGA1989 would have to be monumental.
So the State government, like our local government, marginalizes ratepayers and community groups.
Every time we tried to make a point she would say that our recourse was at the ballot box to vote in who we wanted and get rid of those not doing our bidding in local government.
It is obvious that she has little grasp of the real world in this instance and with this in mind it is more important than ever to address this issue.
So I am soliciting your support to use our power at the voting box and to make sure she is “unelected”.
Would appreciate any links to other ratepayer organizations I could contact.s.
If you would like a copy of the slide presentation that we wanted to make (sidelined, of course) I can provide it to you.
Cheers, Joe Lenzo; OAA, OADH, OASP:
Mornpenshire.elected2012
“demanding, nurturing, and realizing
transparency, accountability and democracy”
Mornpenshire.elected2012@gmail.com 0430.450.657
http://mornpenshireelected2012.net/
Glen Eira Debates 
November 20, 2012 at 6:24 PM
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the definitions provided at http://mornpenshireelected2012.net/definitions/—sounded so familiar to our own experience. While I would welcome the opportunity to vote out the Member for Shepparton [Jeanette Powell] over her bungling of the Local Government portfolio, sadly our democracy doesn’t give many people the opportunity to turf Ministers who are too lazy or arrogant to deliver sound governance. I can understand her being too busy to listen to the public, busy as she must be removing all traces of democracy from Brimbank. Glen Eira has also suffered from Government-imposed regime change, and some of the results are very visible in my street.
November 20, 2012 at 9:07 PM
Since Governance is a regular theme here, I’ll point out that the Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] today released a fascinating document “Measures of Australia’s Progress” [MAP]. Its subtitle gives a clue to its contents: “Aspirations for our nation: a conversation with Australians about progress”. Rather than focus narrowly on measures like Gross Domestic Product, it looks much more broadly at non-traditional measures of a nation’s progress. What really struck me was a section on Governance, about what Australians aspire to.
Trust: Australians aspire to institutions and processes they can trust and hold to account.
Effective governance: Australians aspire to governance that works well.
Participation: Australians aspire to have the opportunity to have a say in decisions that affect their lives.
Informed public debate: Australians aspire to well-informed and vibrant public debate.
Peoples’ rights and responsibilities: Australians aspire to a society where everyone’s rights are upheld and their responsibilities fulfilled.
Click to access Measures%20of%20Australia%27s%20Progress%20Consultation%20Report.pdf
November 21, 2012 at 4:02 PM
The previous blog lacks honesty. Both Harleston Park and Gardenvale Park were built using some properties purchased and just recently we had the purchase of land at Packer Park and the Carnegie Library.Further we have the addition of Mallanbool Park on the old Murrumbeena Secondary school site and the recent addition of the Booran Rd Reservoir. The major fault of Council is virtually no money is being spent to the west of the Municipality because that is where we are completely lacking open parkland and by the way these areas are the highest rated ares in Glen Eira.
November 21, 2012 at 5:52 PM
The reference to Carnegie Library requires explanation. It is a large building, somewhat incongruous in its setting, surrounded by asphalt. A park and playground was obliterated to make way for it. There is no public open space for passive recreation within 1km of Carnegie Urban Village, especially if one has to walk. Some unscrupulous developers have claimed Ardrie Park is “only” 600m away, when that would involve climbing through private backyards, scaling 2 fences, clambering over a railway line, and a perilous dash across Dandenong Rd without protection of traffic lights.
Harleston and Gardenvale Parks are at least to the west of the municipality, and the huge amount of land that the MRC squats upon is located in Camden Ward. However, open space distribution is a problem that Council has not seriously tackled, other than to dispose of land. Rather than use something as crude as open space per capita, there’s a need for a metric that includes proximity in addition to population and quantity of land, and I’d probably choose to give non-linear weight to proximity. As an example, make being twice as far from open space four times less desirable. Otherwise we’ll continue to see teenage boys kicking a football in a busy street as the least worst option available to them.
November 21, 2012 at 6:49 PM
Unfortunately your assertions are extremely wide of the mark. For the most part, when the opportunity has existed for this council to acquire further open space, they have let the opportunity slip through their fingers. There’s the recent Alma Bowls fiasco, and Booran Reservoir will be waiting for years before a penny is spent on development. At least the State Government on this occasion had the sense not to hand ownership over to Council given their record in flogging off land – they are merely committee of management.
Your claims regarding Gardenvale Park also fall into this category as shown by this Amendment – “AuthorisationNo A750
Remove the Public Acquisition Overlay from land at 53 Magnolia Road, Gardenvale as it is no longer required as an integral part of the establishment of the Gardenvale local park.”
Packer Park’s bowling green was closed to the public for years – although it does represent “open space”. The acquisition of the 2 properties was in the face of community revolt and councillors knuckling under to this pressure. If left up to the officers, as their report clearly revealed, the bowling green would now be a 3 or 4 storey residential block.
There are countless other amendments which have rezoned land from Public Use and Recreation to Residential but only a few that have worked the other way. We suggest you got to the department website to verify our claims.
November 21, 2012 at 10:46 PM
Glen Eira you may have a fancy manner of obfuscating the truth but Gardenvale Park was created by road closures and property purchases. The late former Cr and Mayor Emil Braun helped creat this park and yet retired from Council the year the Park was opened.The park has been fenced for years and it was decided that additional land was not required.Hense no compulsory land aquisition.The 2 properties aquired for Packer park have been subject to compulsory aquisition for ages , again clearly showing that you have a problem with the facts.
November 25, 2012 at 10:40 PM
Anonymous 4 here has adopted an inappropriate tone and a casual disregard for the facts. Changes to GEPS are documented in its Section 81. There you can see the properties that have been rezoned eg from PPRZ to BZx or RZ1 or PUZ. You can see the properties that have had Public Acquisition Overlay (PAO) removed. Rather than expand public open space, Council proposed selling the former Glen Eira Bowls Club land to fund acquisition of 112 & 118 Oakleigh Rd. It did indeed take a strong community voice to change the plan, however inappropriate it is to spend money on expanding open space in an area already well-served. Meanwhile in Carnegie Urban Village, GEPS says “Open space in Jersey Parade be suitably replaced in the development of a community centre in Shepparson Avenue”. Never happened. The blog post made the claim that Council doesn’t charge the maximum 5% as open space contribution from multi-unit developments. That’s a fact. It doesn’t. What money it does collect it doesn’t spend on providing open space in safe convenient walking distance of the residents who have so little private open space.
The inaccurately-titled 2010 Planning Review also talks about open space. It identified the problem: after all plenty of people including myself spoke up at its “consultation” meetings. [Incidently the Carnegie meeting was held 2.5km from the Urban Village at a time when public transport stopped servicing the meeting location.] And then the report ignored the community. Here’s what Jeff Akehurst proposed and Council duly and unanimously endorsed.
Issue: Loss of trees and open space when land is developed
Action: Pursue approval from State Government to increase the private open space requirement from 60m2 to 80m2 and consider tree protections outlined in the Environmental Sustainability Strategy (but only in Minimal Change areas).
Issue: Levies on developers
Action: Not for now. Cost benefits not likely.
The exercise was pretty ridiculous. Jeff Akehurst: “The community indicated that new unit developments should be made to provide larger areas of private open space especially in Minimal Change Areas. Public open space is becoming more and more important with the increasing population and the reduction in people’s private open space.” So although the vast majority of multi-unit developments do *not* occur in Minimal Change Areas, he saw the solution as not involving improving open space in Housing Diversity areas. Jeff: “The community was also concerned by the loss of trees and other vegetation that occurs when a unit development is proposed.” Too f__king right.
If you read GEPS or any of its reference documents, you realise that Council isn’t managing the municipality in accordance with SPPF or even its own LPPF. Open space continues to shrink, per-capita open space shrinks even faster, and there is no plan to improve the distribution of open space. The facts are there in Council’s own documents.