A fabulous turnout at last night’s Save Glen Eira inaugural meeting with an audience of over 100 concerned residents. And, their concern, anger and distrust of Council was palpable.

The evening began with several presentations from 5 residents. Four of the presentations honed in on current planning applications, their impacts especially on neighbouring sites and how little Council has done to ensure that such outrageous applications are doomed to fail at VCAT. The final presenter queried council’s prognostications as to the required housing needed to cater for the expected population growth and showed that at current rates Glen Eira’s building boom is close to double what is needed. The question thus was: why double the size of activity centres? Why insist on 12 storeys across the board? Where is there any strategic justification for such a ‘vision’?

The evening was then thrown open to the audience for a Q & A session. The questions and statements covered a range of topics, including:

  • Lack of genuine consultation and help from council
  • The need for sustainable development (and please remember that Glen Eira has no tree protection on private land)
  • The power of lobbying and lobbyists
  • Unifying community voices everywhere
  • Electing councilors who will truly represent the community

Much, much more was said. The overall feeling was that Save Glen Eira had taken a very positive step in uniting residents across all areas of Glen Eira. Planning incompetence touches everyone, especially when we have a council that refuses to listen to its residents. This was the real take home point from last night.

Also present were David Southwick and Kelvin Thompson.