April 10, 2014
Caulfield Village & VicRoads
Posted by gleneira under Caulfield Racecourse/C60, Councillor Performance, GE Planning, GE Service Performance[12] Comments
[12] Comments
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- April 10, 2014 at 6:22 PM
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- Caulfield Racecourse/C60, Councillor Performance, GE Planning, GE Service Performance
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Glen Eira Debates %d
April 10, 2014 at 8:54 PM
So a reason for the delay in Council attaching its rubber stamp to the Development Plan has now emerged. Not that VicRoads has any statutory say any more—the bigger the development the less power a referral authority has. Had it been an application for a Planning Permit it’d be different. VicRoads’ concerns are interesting in light of the pathetic Planning Panel assessment. The letter is now out-of-date too: the latest Ministerial f__kup has had to be corrected via C119, so the key controlling document is no longer “Caulfield Mixed Use Area Incorporate Plan” dated November 2013. It has been replaced, this time by one dated February 2014. As VicRoads pointedly note, the latest proposal bears little resemblance to the one that gained approval back in 2011. Curious that the Minister thinks that previous changes made to the Incorporated Plan *without public scrutiny* were “inadvertent”. Pull the other one.
April 10, 2014 at 10:09 PM
VicRoads are saying what plenty of residents have been saying. The development plan doesn’t match the ever changing incorporated plan. The traffic analysis isn’t good enough or even believable when they haven’t touched surrounding areas and the sectrion 173 agreement is a total cockup. But will this stop council? No way I’ll bet. They’ll come up with their usual crap excuses and tiny piddling little changes and then say that everything is perfect.
April 10, 2014 at 10:51 PM
This letter is amazing in that it points to the inability of the various authorities VicRoads, GECC, DSE, DPCD and developers cannot get together to resolve issues to progress such a large area development. The critical element in this venture is clearly GECC, which should take a lead in co-ordinating and ensuring that planning is done properly. I am not really surprised at that as it hasn’t got the expertise to do that either in its planning or engineering departments since at least 2004.
April 11, 2014 at 10:57 AM
There are several advantages in council not raising any sweat about “coordinating” anything. The work load is drastically reduced if all they do is rely on developers plans rather than doing their own as has been made clear over the traffic. You’re right in that there is no expertise. The main point though is that if you are determined to see that the developer gets what he wants then why bother to do anything? What happens later is irrelevant. Getting councils nod first off is the target and if the mrc says jump then council just asks how high.
April 10, 2014 at 10:58 PM
This is all quite astouonding since the Vic Road’s representative was supposed to be mentally ill on the day he was to give evidence at the famous panel hearing. The fact that Vic. Roads did not have an emergency since it is a department of many thousand employees. What were the true circumstances?
April 10, 2014 at 11:46 PM
Vic Roads has been quite amusing all along … it was incomprehensible at the Panel hearing when the big department (yes they have several multi storeyed office towere in Kew) sent along an email or some form of message which was passed on to the panel and announced that their representative woldn’t be giving evidence as he was mentally ill.
It was thought at the time, by some residents, that Vic Roads nay have had a spare ‘player” to put forward he Vic Road’s view there and then.
April 11, 2014 at 11:27 AM
As a sidenote, the VicRoads towers stand on land that was once the terminus of the Kew railway line—just one more example of railways and public transport losing out to the car lobby.
April 11, 2014 at 11:25 AM
How did you get this letter Glen Eira Debates? Do you have an insider?
April 11, 2014 at 11:31 AM
If it was an application for Planning Permit it would be on file and publicly viewable. Have you checked whether the file for the approval of the Development Plan is publicly viewable and whether the letter is in that file?
April 11, 2014 at 11:32 AM
This is a document that is freely available to every single resident if they wish to acquire it as part of the public submissions to the Development Plan. What we would like to question is:
1. Has any councillor bothered to read all the public submissions?
2. Have they had any input?
3. Why is nothing listed in the records of assembly that would indicate that the largest development in Glen Eira’s history has even been discussed?
4. Why has council not thought it necessary to make any comment regarding the delay in its decision making?
April 11, 2014 at 11:42 AM
Gleneira the “answers” to your questions are dead easy –
1. No councillor has read the submissions because they have delegated everything to officers so have to sit back and wait until something comes back in writing from them. If they even have the courage to ask to see something then they will be told to piss off and that the matter is “operational”.
2. No, no input. Their input will be to read out the prepared notes that they are given by officers when they make their so called “decision”
3. It’s not listed because it hasn’t been discussed or the records of assembly are half fiction as Lobo has claimed.
4. Because they don’t give a stuff about the public and secrecy is all. Bet the MRC know what’s going on though.
April 11, 2014 at 12:17 PM
The Panel had the freedom to do what it wanted, and it did what it wanted. It noted that it didn’t have detailed information about traffic flows, but was dismissive about the lack of information. “Lacked appropriate traffic analysis…this congestion is not dissimilar than many other areas of metropolitan Melbourne…congestion is not so fatal as to warrant abandoning Amendment C60…can and should be resolved through preparation and implementation of an integrated transport plan”.
Having confirmed all the evidence re traffic provided by local traffic experts (residents) the Panel then ignored them and claimed it had only 3 sets of traffic evidence: from MRC; from GECC; and from Monash University. The Panel admitted it didn’t have solutions, instead preferring to believe all problems could be resolved satisfactorily in the future through the preparation of additional documents. We don’t know the full extent of the cost to ratepayers, but the S173 Agreement has already ensured we have to subsidize the development. It is likely that additional traffic management solutions will be required post-development, at our expense.