It’s time to call a spade a spade when it comes to this administration and its disregard of residents. To put it bluntly:
- Resident views simply don’t matter, especially if they are opposed to council’s pro-development agenda and its predetermined decision making.
- Council engages with residents, in the most minimalist manner on all important projects because the law says they must and NOT because there is any real intention to seek genuine resident feedback.
- Only two conclusions are possible when it comes to evaluating council’s approach to seeking feedback from the community. Either we have some completely incompetent officers who are incapable of devising a survey/questionnaire that will deliver valid results, or the resulting surveys are designed with leading questions that can only be used to support already predetermined decisions. The latest example is the Bentleigh Structure Plan survey.
- To avoid any meaningful input by either councillors or the community, the now released survey has been rushed through to publication. The original officer’s report stated that consultation would begin towards the end of the first week of August. It has been brought forward (without explanation) to July 31st. This doesn’t sound like much, but what it means is that councillors have had minimal time to evaluate the survey and that the Community Consultation committee has again been successfully bypassed!
- It’s also worth remembering that originally this administration had no wish to include a survey in its consultation – as it has done with other structure planning. It was quite prepared for the ‘quick and dirty’ route of formal submissions, and ‘meet and greet’ with officers – with 3 out of the 4 proposed times being totally inappropriate for the vast majority of residents. It was only after councillors requested a survey that we get to this point.
The resulting survey can be located via this link: https://www.haveyoursaygleneira.com.au/draft-bentleigh-structure-plan-2023
WHEN A ‘SUMMARY’ IS NOT A SUMMARY!
At the last council meeting one public question asked that a succinct bullet point summary of proposed heights, setbacks, and overshadowing analyses be part of the consultation process. The question and answer are below:
What we get is an 18 page so called summary, that is full of spin and guilty of the sins of omission! The ability to decipher exactly what is proposed from this document is impossible given that the full picture is never revealed in a concise and honest fashion. For example, when referring to proposed building heights, this administration chose to include the following map.
Why couldn’t this document include the following image that featured at the 25th July council meeting? Is it because this map is far easier to decipher?
We then get only one example (for a heritage site) of the proposed setbacks as depicted below.
What we aren’t told is anything about rear and side setbacks, for a proposed 7 or 8 storey building that is NOT heritage listed.
In short, this ‘summary’ is a carefully manipulated document that fails to fully inform the community of what the draft structure plan intends to achieve.
THE SURVEY
Any decent survey should never include leading questions. This survey is replete with either useless questions of this ilk, or questions that don’t provide the necessary information in order to elicit fair and valid responses. Here are some examples:
Question: Do you agree that we should seek opportunities to create open space in the draft Plan?
Comment: Of course, nearly everyone would answer ‘yes’ to this question given Glen Eira’s lack of public open space. But does a ‘yes’ response to this mean that everyone is in agreement with the possibility of flogging off other council owned land for mixed use development? And will the additional open space of whatever size (since this is yet to be determined) be large enough to cater satisfactorily for the projected population increase?
Question: Do you think accommodating growth above the commercial strip is better than doing it in other parts of Bentleigh?
Comment: Even if the majority of responses are ‘yes’ to this question, it does not mean that those individuals who ticked the ‘yes’ box, are in favour of discretionary heights of 7 and 8 storeys! Without revealing the full extent of the ‘growth’ proposed any answer needs to be treated with caution. But of course, council can use the ‘yes’ responses to support their high rise agenda! Furthermore, the question fails to take into account issues of adequate infrastructure, parking, overshadowing, etc.
Question: The draft Plan recommends height limits and upper-level setbacks for new development. Do you agree that such measures would help to retain the character of Centre Road?
Comment: If respondents have no idea of what the height limits and the setbacks are for various sections of Centre Road, any responses given will be meaningless. Furthermore, unless they are au fait with which sites are heritage listed, then again the notion of ‘retaining the character’ of the area is nothing more than subterfuge. How on earth it is even possible to use the word ‘retain’ when discretionary heights of 7, and 8 storeys are nominated is obscene!
Question: The draft Plan identifies the western and eastern ends of the centre as the most suitable for higher density buildings as they would be away from the more sensitive heritage shops. Do you think this is a suitable approach?
Comment: Again, the question is deliberately misleading in that what is NOT mentioned is the fact that the highest proposed heights directly abutt either single storey dwellings in heritage overlays, or other residential areas. Nor are the proposed heights nominated. Plus, the recommendations fly in the face of council’s previous decisions on Bentleigh, that high rise should be located near the railway station and not at the extremes of the activity centre. Again, no explanation for this change in approach. Nor the question of whether this is indeed good strategic planning!
CONCLUSION
There are many other questions we could have commented upon, but the above should suffice. This is the latest example of how little respect is afforded to residents and how contrived and manipulated all community consultation processes are in this council. It is more than incompetence! It is a deliberate and disgraceful attempt to bypass the community, and even councillors, in order to achieve more and more development and to fill the pockets of developers and probably to earn more brownie points from the increasingly autocratic government.
Glen Eira Debates 
August 1, 2023 at 2:08 PM
Council officers and most of our councillors rely on residents being silent and therefore taken as resident consent. Magee’s over-used statement that there is only a handful of people against development in GE is a classic example of this.
Everything as stated and my personal experiences points to a well orchestrated manipulative con-job almost to the point of being criminal in its planning and execution.
Promoting unsustainable development and unsustainable living in the age of a climate emergency should be seen for what it is, callous and reckless behaviours being masked a good town planning.
For most part council as a whole do not even come close too dealing with the issues their unsustainable living tangent dumps into our neighbourhoods. They just move on to the next nail in our coffins.
August 1, 2023 at 3:27 PM
It is a classic example of Push Polling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll
Of course it should have gone to councillors and the Community Consultation Committee first, which is probably why it didn’t. In the interests of transparency and accountability, Council should reveal who made the decision to release it in its current form and why. Once upon a time, before all integrity provisions were gutted from the Local Government Act, there was a reasonable expectation that decision-makers be accountable for their decisions.
August 2, 2023 at 8:53 AM
Folks need to have a look at the published shadow diagrams included at the link posted above. I must have very poor eyesight because the shadow lines don’t appear to move in most cases. If we’re also talking about accountability, then who is responsible for this charade? A consultant or some clown officer? No “authorship” is listed and no winter solstice diagram exists. Nor is there any written explanations.
August 2, 2023 at 4:44 PM
GE Council treats residents appallingly. Calls are screened so you don’t get to speak to the staff. To get a hearing you are required to have more than one resident seeking resolution. And/or required to put the matter in the form of an email.
Roads and parks are their only real interest. Resident concerns such as parking, street cleaning, rubbish collection, over-development et al are brushed aside in a cavalier manner.
We need and administrator.
August 2, 2023 at 5:35 PM
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but I’d say that what we need is a few more councillors with gumption to pull these dictators into line. Four councillors have voted against several important planning schemes. I commend them and accuse the other five of ignoring their residents and voting the way they have because they are either aligned with state political parties, they don’t care and haven’t critically looked at what’s happening, or are simply feathering their own nests.
August 3, 2023 at 4:55 PM
Some councillors go in with good intentions but quickly fall into line. You see, they have no power to instruct an officer to do anything. Officers have the knowledge and power. Councillors are reliant on them for advice and information. So they take the line of least resistance. A councillor who will fight the fight for a ratepayer is as rare as hen’s teeth. And, in my experience, most officers are in the business of impeding rather the helping.
At the very least an external review is essential.