Council has now provided the Zoom link for tomorrow nights Housing Strategy Webinar. They have also included an agenda, presented below.
Judging by the published agenda, ‘presentations’ by officers will dominate most of the 90 minute scheduled meeting. Unacceptable!!!!!!!
Furthermore, why is the program divided into wards? Does this mean that comments made by Tucker Ward residents will not be admissable if the program is at the Rosstown ward section? Again, unacceptable!!!!!!
Furthermore, a Housing Strategy, is NOT about wards. It is about the entire municipality, and the principles embedded in the strategy that will shape land use. For example: the general residential zoning exists in all wards. What if some residents wish to comment on the proposed removal of the mandatory garden requirement, as a concept, and not necessarily how it relates to either Rosstown, Tucker, or Camden? Will they be told ‘this isn’t a question’ as stated in the agenda?
All in all, the deliberate and calculated machinations of this council to avoid anything resembling genuine consultation is quite literally unbelievable. Either those in charge have no idea of what consultation means, or they are simply doing everything possible to negate and undermine the expected flood of negative responses. But, and a big but, the URL is now available. We again urge all residents to log on and to tell this council administration, planners, and some councillors, exactly what they think of their strategic planning and continued failure to represent community views.
Glen Eira Debates 
March 23, 2022 at 5:32 PM
I’m not sure the assumptions made in the post about this meeting can be drawn from the agenda. It looks like quite a helpful structure with presentations and questions.
March 23, 2022 at 5:46 PM
It seems that you will never be satisfied! You prejudge an expected outcome before the event has occurred. Isn’t this what you too often accuse council officers of doing. If instead of judging you could have asked “why is there time being given to wards?” I then would have answered “This was a request of Ward councillors so that residents would be able to talk to specific issues that effect them with their representatives after the general session where the items you have raised would be addressed. Have you sent written questions by the way? You will also note that there will be time at the end for more questions. I have asked how long the presentations will be and awaiting a response.
March 24, 2022 at 10:13 AM
David I have seen this type of consultation many times before. I think the summary is, and will be a fairly accurate of the coming webinars, as you say it does “prejudge an expected outcome” but highly likely a accurate one.
As Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity – Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results. Here in this famous quote maybe the course of resident frustrations.
To me it is obvious the Planning Department is slowing any forward movements in sustainability living to a crippled crawl, or worse with reversals to other departments strategy goals.
David you have been on councils for a good while now surly you have realised the planning dpt. is counter productive to the urban forest strategy the biodiversity strategy, the open space strategy and more.
We hear though some officers the process of bringing the heads of the sustainably teams into the decision making process to achieve more balance outcomes is been frustrated and vetoed by the heads in planning.
David, what we have here is a power imbalanced that hasn’t been leveled. This is leading to bad outcomes for the community and our environment. This was not how the process was envisaged to work.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying any of the above is in anyway your fault.
March 23, 2022 at 7:45 PM
Not sure I agree with previous comments. The proliferation of questions in the agenda is very suspect to me. Questions aim to get answers to how, why, when,what. They are directed to getting explanations. Council will then repeat what is in the strategy like we are after more townhouses and medium density so have to rezone thousands of properties. That’s not consultation for me. It’s not feedback. Feedback is when you put out a proposal and ask what do you think about this? Ideally if council was really following the consult/involve aspect which is what they claimed they would be doing, then residents would have had a say a lot earlier before the draft was put out. The whole process is nothing higher than consult which means we’re going to do this and you can have minimal input that will almost certainly be ignored.
March 24, 2022 at 12:43 PM
Anyone wanna lay bets that we’ll get at least 30 minutes of blah blah from officers and no more than 20 questions that will take another 15 mins of blah blah blah answers.