There has never been such a set of agenda papers as released today, which reveal in full glorious detail everything that is awry in Glen Eira. We will go through each item and pinpoint the atrocities –
Item 9.1 – 68 Kangaroo Rd Murrumbeena.
Application to extend physiotherapy centre from 2 to 5 staff; extend hours, extend car parking. Recommendation – permit be granted with reduced hours.
There were plenty of local objectors to this application and one pro-forma letter supporting application. All well and good. What is not acceptable though is the following –
Under the ‘applicant category’ we get – Susan Ross (formerly) Foresite Planning & Bushfire Consultants (currently). Exactly what does ‘formerly’ mean, or even allude to? Or is this simply council trying to camouflage the fact that Susan Ross was once upon a time employed as a council planner and that the property just happens to be owned by Jacquie Brasher’s (a current employee and strategic planner) husband? We might also query how ‘ethical’ it is for Ms Brasher, whilst still employed by council, to write to objectors?
Item 9.4 – ‘apartment boom’.
This is the ENTIRE REPORT – ‘ANONYMOUS’ reigns supreme again!
Purpose
Council has distributed the attached Circular to all properties in the municipality.
It is self-explanatory.
- Recommendation
That the report be noted.
Now wouldn’t an apology for all the bullshit and lies be appropriate here? Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how much of ratepayer money was wasted on this fiasco?
Item 9.6 – Transport strategy – draft action plan 2015-1017.
This is the most amazing document of all time. Before we highlight the inanities, it needs to be pointed out that –
- all references to council’s ‘Road Safety Strategy’ are a misnomer. There is NO CURRENT STRATEGY – IT EXPIRED IN 2012 AND HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED!
- The action plan is supposed to be from 2015-2017. Yet, some of the proposed actions extend into 2018!!!!!! and even then nothing will happen because only the ‘report’ is supposed to be available.
Here are some of the ‘actions’ listed. Please note that the vast majority (which we didn’t include) involve ‘advocacy’ and even this is proposed to take years to figure out what to do! Utterly amazing! It is also stunning that it will take years to do a traffic analysis! In short, great on empty, meaningless promises and very, very short on real action!
And by sheer coincidence we received the following photographs this morning from two alert residents in Carnegie. Doesn’t this say it all about council’s ‘road safety’ enforcement and how it clamps down on developers?
Glen Eira Debates 
October 30, 2015 at 5:44 PM
Fab photos.
Fab report on apartment boom – first spend money, distribute, and then get councillors ok
Fab report in 68 Kangaroo road – shucks a little nepotism that extends to family, friends and colleagues never goes astray
Fab action plan – wait until 2018 and then maybe there will be parking precinct plans that were supposed to be done in 2002.
Overall a superb fabulous agenda that residents should be very proud of considering that residents pay for this crap.
October 31, 2015 at 6:44 AM
Just like the zone implementation – the totally offensive 11c Flyer gets Council’s retrospective nod of approval.
When is Council going to stop this one way communication process and actually face the residents in a public forum!!!!!!!!
October 31, 2015 at 9:20 AM
They the bureaucrats will never face the general public, they are happy to interface with the public via the elected councillors, who are tied up by a very undemocratic corporate styled system that Kennett organised to sideline them.
It works perfectly for bureaucrats and the big end of town
You are effectively being managed while your suburbs are being mined like coal for their social capital and amenity by a corporate machine that has profit for its motive.
The scary part is the State Government is hell bent on cramming another 4 million people into Melbourne over the next 2 decades, at the bequest of their developer mates who are reaping the profit from years of investment we have made into schools, parks sporting facilities etc. whilst they only pay lip service to the infrastructure needed to assimilate these new resident, we are running up a social and environmental debt that’s going to cost us a bomb a few years up the track when the pooh hits the fan I’m guessing that the same developer will be there waiting and wanting to solve our problems for a obscene personal profit of course. What you are seeing now is just the beginning
I think there is a lot of nod-wink corruption of our values and of our social capital, as well as likely monetary corruption at the heart of all this forced change.
When our council CEO’s get paid near the same as our Prime Minister their needs to be a reality check.
October 31, 2015 at 9:03 AM
Millions gets spent on OH&S. When it comes to public safety around building sites it is a non issue.
October 31, 2015 at 11:18 PM
You couldn’t have the Town Hall bureaucrats tripping over their own egos and hurting themselves, could you now
October 31, 2015 at 9:13 AM
The decision has been made that nothing will be done about parking for at least the next three to four years. What is required now is going through the motions of let’s pretend consultation and then the stamp of councillor approval.
October 31, 2015 at 10:00 AM
Many illegal things shown in the photos.
Blocking footpath with no signage
Truck parked facing the wrong way
If people have to cross the road then there should be the man with the flag helping them cross
Man in wheelchair has no hope of safely making it across
Double loader blocking views and forcing people to make left hand turn into oncoming traffic.
When someone gets killed that is when council will pull its finger out and do what it is supposed to do. My suggestion would be to reduce the numbers of staff in community relations and get more people out there to enforce building and parking laws.
October 31, 2015 at 1:39 PM
Fraid it’s going to take more than one person being killed – Council only addresses road safety issues after three people of hurt/killed.
October 31, 2015 at 4:07 PM
they have insurance thay could care about the peasants
October 31, 2015 at 10:33 AM
My most recent experience with Council has not been a happy one and is an example of the wider problem of its corporate culture. David Davis made a claim in public and subsequently repeated by David Southwick in Parliament that 78% of Glen Eira is zoned NRZ. They got their information from GECC, who makes this exact claim on their website. Trouble is, it’s not true.
So I asked Council via a public question what efforts they have made to correct the public record and its website, as well as how many hectares they were claiming were zoned NRZ [that way they’d be required to do due diligence]. The response, unsurprisingly, failed to provide any answers. It appears no effort was made, the website still publishes the false claim, and Council rudely suggested I work out for myself the area of Glen Eira zoned NRZ. The impression given is that they didn’t know. They did gratuitously suggest that 78% of “residentially zoned land” was NRZ, implicitly acknowledging Parliament had been misled and that their website was wrong.
I tried again, this time asking what their definition of “residentially zoned land” is, since it doesn’t match the Planning Scheme which lists them as NRZ, GRZ, RGZ and MUZ. I again asked for the area in hectares to verify they had done due diligence, and to ask who is responsible for fixing the website. Cr Magee on behalf of Council wrote back with no further information—no definition, no data to substantiate their claim, nobody responsible. Council also failed to publish the questions and substandard responses in their Minutes despite them being Public Questions.
Another question about delegated authority to request the Minister for exemption to conduct statutory review of the Planning Scheme was dodged. The lack of transparency and accountability over the secretive decision is a concern and another example of poor governance. DELWP is also to blame, as is the Minister, with DELWP admitting it doesn’t check whether Council officers making requests have the authority to do so. It leads to situations where the Minister lies to Parliament by claiming something has been requested by Council when the request wasn’t made by Council.
After several attempts Council has provided almost no information, certainly not the information requested. Under their Code of Conduct, they claim that information should only be restricted when the “wider public interest clearly demands” it. So what is the wider public interest here in refusing to supply data and in publishing misinformation and not correcting it when errors are pointed out to them? The end result is that nothing Council says can be trusted without independent scrutiny.
Comparing the Code with their actual behaviour reveals a huge gap, and it should be embarrassing to them. If Cr Magee does choose to place his responses in the Minutes of the next Council meeting, I hope my ward councillors at least ask him for an explanation for the multiple failures.
October 31, 2015 at 11:47 AM
The end result is that nothing Council says can be trusted without independent scrutiny.
For me, this is the most telling sentence from Carnegie Resident’s comments. I think it is totally true. Time, effort and expense has gone into muddying the waters, telling half-truths and leaving out vital information, on so many issues that council’s credibility has been shot to pieces years ago.
Councillors must realise that residents are not stupid and that a fair minority at least care about the future of their city and what has been happening to it. People have a right to be informed and to have a say in laws, policies, and actions that affect them. That does not mean consultation in the way that this council runs consultations. It means that people’s views be given direct credit and if rejected, then this rejection be justified. I also resent the arrogance of certain councillors and this administration where they call themselves representatives of the people yet every decision is anti community and certainly opposed to what the majority of residents want. The list is growing by the day – Frogmore, Caulfield Park Conservatory, Planning Scheme Review, Notice of motion, and even answering public questions properly. This is indeed a dismal record.
November 1, 2015 at 9:58 PM
Councillors responsible to look after Carnegie have screwed the residents beyond repair. Bad people.
October 31, 2015 at 4:10 PM
what is the correct figure if not the78 %
November 1, 2015 at 7:33 PM
77.94….Carnegie Resident needs to get a life.
November 3, 2015 at 4:51 AM
It isn’t appropriate to belittle residents even if commonplace for councillors to do so. As it happens, Cr Magee invited me to compute the numbers independently from publically available sources. I have done so. I had to make assumptions about Council’s definitions of “residentially zoned area” and “residential areas” since they refused to supply their definitions. By my definitions your number is wrong. State Government defines “residential zone” to be NRZ + GRZ + RGZ + MUZ. NRZ is 2692 ha, “residential zone” is 3219 ha, municipality is 3869 ha. NRZ is 83.6% of residential zones. NRZ is 69.6% of the municipality.
November 2, 2015 at 7:59 PM
The correct figure is well below 60% as ALL NRZ zones include roads and lanes, which are part of Public Use Zones and cannot be built on. Anyway Anon, Council should have policies, guidelines, plans and funds available for Public Realm, which is their responsibility to do. GECC has no such policies or plans like other Councils do. Simply, they do not consider that as their responsibility or priority so they do not care. As for getting ‘a life’, if you want to live out your life within your own four walls that is your prerogative, most people like to walk out onto a well designed and secure public street.
October 31, 2015 at 7:47 PM
I think it is entirely appropriate that the Transport Strategy for 2015-217 is planning on updating the Road Safety Strategy that hasn’t been updated since 2008 and finally died in 2012.
It’s a definite feather in this don’t care, do nothing Council’s cap.
November 1, 2015 at 10:34 PM
Í think the title of this post should be “Into the Abyss”, “Just about at RocK Bottom” doesn’t due justice to Councillors that don’t give a shit and let the Admin proceed on it’s merry way attitude. As a result Glen Eira has well and truly between into the cracks at the bottom and heading to the abyss.
I can’t think of a better example to illustrate this other than the Councillors determination to suddenly proceed with the crap Road Safety Strategy they let die 3 years ago. The photos, of the the guy in the wheel chair trying to negotiate Neerim Road and the truck and trailer combo parked on Neerim Road. say it all.