Why is everything made so impossibly difficult to achieve in Glen Eira? Why is this administration so obstructionist and so determined to scuttle any councillor or resident suggestion? Why does no councillor take this administration to task and refuse to accept skewed, inaccurate and/or substandard officer reports?
The latest agenda is typical. In response to a Request for A Report on ‘Public parks & private memorials’ we have a total of two pages plus a draft ‘policy’. The wording of the Request for a Report as presented in this latest version is:
- That Council draft a policy to provide for individuals, corporations and unincorporated bodies to donate park furniture.
- The Policy must address and provide for the following:
2.1 That any park furniture be supplied by the Council;
2.2 Whether the Donor can nominate the park and where in the park the furniture is to be situated;
2.3 That notwithstanding 2.2 above, the Council be the final arbiter of where in the park the furniture is to be situate;
2.4 The size and type of plaque to be affixed to the donated park furniture;
2.5 Whether Council may re-site donated park furniture
2.6 What is to occur in relation to the plaque in the event that the donated park furniture is damaged, destroyed or permanently removed;
2.7 The period of time that the plaque shall remain;
2.8 The right of the Council to reject donations
2.9 Any Administration fee;
2.10 Any other matter Officers consider appropriate.
- The Policy must be presented by the last Council Meeting in June.
First off, it is now the end of August and not June! The ‘escape clause’ for not meeting the time line set by the resolution is this gem: A paper was considered at the Assembly of Councillors on 7 July 2015. We note that discussion on this issue was only recorded in that Records of Assembly meeting. Hence, not only was the resolution ignored, delayed, but it specifically noted the requirement for tabling at an open council meeting – not the behind the scenes secrecy of an assembly meeting! Further, in March 2015 another resolution had been passed asking that a policy be drawn up. Thus, an issue which is so minor has taken up countless hours of ‘discussion’, officer time, and verbal diarrhea in council meetings.
Readers should also note that ‘park furniture’ has now been reduced to simply ‘park benches’ and nothing else. Not what the councillors’ request for a report stated. ‘Park furniture’ is surely more than a mere ‘bench’.
The barely two page ANONYMOUS report is as always, short on facts and figures, short on substantiated argument, and big on scare mongering. There has not even been the attempt to cut and paste from the equally skewed report of March 2015. Here is an example: –
If the Draft is implemented, it is foreseeable that it may be the basis for disputation including over, cost, placement, wording etc. It may detract from the implementation of the Open Space Strategy.
How amazing that countless other councils throughout the state do not adhere to this fear. Some examples:
Port Phillip –
This Policy applies to structures, public open space, memorials, urban art, plaques, named civic buildings or rooms and other entities, where the naming is intended to commemorate a person, organisation or event.
http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/default/o29962.pdf
Moorabool
Memorial – Park furniture (i.e. park bench, seat or picnic setting), garden, art works, artefacts, tree, stone/rock or etched paving designed to preserve the memory of a person or group. This may also include memorials in the interior of buildings i.e. Halls. Memorials may also include donations to build facilities (i.e. clubrooms) as a memorial to a community member. (http://www.moorabool.vic.gov.au/CA257489001FD37D/Lookup/policies2015/$file/Memorials%20Policy%20jan15.pdf
Melbourne City council – https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/ParksandActivities/Parks/Documents/policies_plaques_memorials.pdf
There are many more that we could have cited such as Bayside, Greater Dandenong and Hobson’s Bay. What is undeniable, is that the siege mentality of this administration means that any perceived threat to its unilateral control and power must be opposed – despite formal council resolutions. Note – that by demanding the drafting of a policy (not once, but twice), it is implicit, that Council should accept donations for ‘park furniture’ and ‘memorials’. The anonymous author’s recommendation to reject the policy as an option is thus entirely inappropriate.
Glen Eira Debates 
August 28, 2015 at 11:15 PM
Glen Eira under Newton & Burke have created one of the most anti resident environment imaginable, couple this with a bunch of kowtowing councillors more interested in their remunerations than representing.
Bullies and cowards just about sums it up.
August 29, 2015 at 9:43 AM
I’m not surprised that no one, other than Administrative Officer Anonymous, wanted their name to appear on this attrocious and appallingly substandard report that the Administration has vetted and approved for submission to Councillors and Residents.
Officer Anonymous is recommending against allowing residents the opportunity of placing a plaque on a bench in a public park in memory of a loved one. This is despite the fact that placing private memorial plaques on park benches is a globally accepted practice, a practice that even Officer Anonymous’s report acknowledges is recognised by Melbourne’s Botantic Gardens.
In making this recommendation, Officer Anonymous, stands alone in the world for only he/she has identified a previously unknown major issue and decided to take a stance. By some incomprehensible stretch of reasoning, he/she has equated memorial plaques on park benches to private interests and thereby identified a competing interests issue “between private interests and public land” that needs to be nipped in the bud before it derails Glen Eira’s the 2013-2033 Open Space Strategy and/or causes widespread dissension.
(I suspect Officer Anonymous is a pretty good bud nipper who unfortunately wasn’t around during the Caulfield Park historic conservatory vs. private cafe debate and has yet to hear of the Racecourse)
GET A GRIP COUNCIL – we are not talking about private cenotaphs or huge flashing neon signs proliferating in public parks. Its about frigging memorial plaques (the size, wording and location of which require Council approval) on park benches!!!!
Condemn the appallingly substandard recommendation, adopt a policy that allows memorial plaques on park benches and start addressing the major mess your failure to undertake proper town planning has created in Glen Eira.
August 29, 2015 at 12:41 PM
Incremental erosion of power is anathema to the bean counters. Goodness knows, it might even lead to councillors making their own decisions on important matters. A walk down memory lane is littered with like instances of setting up the barricades – McKinnon basketball at gesac versus Burke’s arbitrary present to the warriors; sporting ground allocation policy over Ajax; Mckinnon bowls club versus Caulfield bowls club arrangements and now this. Piddling little issues by themselves. Seen in context, huge ramifications for who decides what.
August 29, 2015 at 8:50 PM
Typical Glen Eira – common decency is over ridden by a bureaucratic need to flex muscle. .
August 30, 2015 at 7:22 AM
I sense another opportunity for Cr. Lipshutz to utter his mantra of “Glen Eira has reasonable laws/policies that are reasonably enforced” when voting to reject the ghost officers recommendation and to permit memorial plaques on park benches.
I hope that this time around the penny drops and he considers why, given Council’s “reasonable laws, reasonably applied” philosophy, it is missing from the Officers Report.