Last night’s council meeting made it abundantly clear how divided this council really is. The Caulfield Station Structure Plan was decided on the casting vote of Magee. Cade was on leave so the vote to adopt the structure plan was 4 to 4. Magee as chairperson/Mayor then used his second vote to pass the structure plan.

The voting was:

FOR – Magee, Athanasopolous, Parasol, Zhang

AGAINST – Esakoff, Zyngier, Szmood, Pennicuik.

What residents must realise is that the continued propaganda of ‘only the first step’ in the process and that the (much) later introduced ‘planning controls’ will ensure great outcomes, is pure bunkum! Once the parameters are set, as this structure plan does, then the eventual planning controls MUST relate to these parameters. For example: the plan sets the height of a discretionary 20 storeys for one site and a heap of 12 storeys discretionary elsewhere. The future planning controls will NOT then attempt to reduce such heights. They will simply tinker with the edges and probably provide only ‘guidelines’ for important things such as setbacks, etc. Nor does the plan provide any firm commitment as to objector rights, overshadowing just in case the discretionary heights are suddenly not 20 storeys but 25 storeys, etc.

This process has happened again and again in Glen Eira. It is a sham, that ties the hands of residents and councillors. Further, the end result will only be formal submissions to a draft amendment that means going to a panel. In our time of observing this council only once has a panel sided with residents in recommending against council.

Over the past few years we have seen this administration do everything literally arse-backwards. This cannot be anything but deliberate we believe in the attempt to set the groundwork that furthers and facilitates the council agenda of more and more growth – regardless of whether or not such growth is needed. We now have:

  • Amendment C220 with its framework plan designating ‘incremental change areas’ BEFORE a housing strategy is completed.
  • We have structure plans BEFORE the housing strategy
  • We have the removal of residential areas from the latest DDO’s so that these have now reverted back to their original zoning of 4 storeys instead of the prescribed 3 storey mandatory that the previous Amendment C157 created.
  • We have community consultation that is anything but and the refusal to publish all feedback
  • We have the sidelining of councillors and the community consultation committee in overseeing the creation of survey questions
  • We now have councillors asked to make major decisions prior to the full evidence being provided to them – or certainly provided in time so that careful assessment, discussion, and decision making can occur.
  • We have consistent rubbish (and that is the only way to describe) the nonsense that flows from the mouths of Athanasopolous and Magee. The tragedy is that last night 2 councillors did not utter a word to explain why they voted as they did – Zhang and Parasol! Surely the community deserves to know the rationale behind their votes?

Our advice to councillors is simple. If you have major concerns with various planning proposals, then voting in favour of the proposal does not do the community a favour. All concerns need to be addressed and remedied prior to being voted in. If the plans are so full of holes, then they should be sent back to the drawing board and redone!

We will comment fully on some of the arguments presented in our next post(s).

 We would also like to commend Esakoff, Zyngier, Zmood and Pennicuik for their efforts last night. It is obvious that they have spent much time thinking about the issue. Whether the same can be said for the other councillors is questionable. They appear to be merely following whatever the State Government and other vested interests want! The victim is undoubtedly the community, and all notions of democratic and sound governance. The benefactors remain developers!