GE Consultation/Communication

Archived Posts from this Category

December 30, 2023

What A Year!

Posted by gleneira under GE Consultation/Communication, GE Governance, GE Kindergartens/Childcare, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
[3] Comments 

With the close of the year just around the corner, we thought we would take a look back at what occurred throughout 2023 and what this reveals about council and its performance.

February 2023

  • A resolution to spend $75,319,095 (EXCLUDING GST) for the Carnegie Swimming Pool redevelopment. That makes it well over $80M. By the time this is built we could be looking close to $90M. We also have huge borrowings and no disclosures as to the interest rate payable, nor whether these rates are variable or if fixed, for what period. One could also question whether we really need another mini GESAC?

March 2023

  • Not for the first time we have councillors complaining about the lack of information and appropriate time to evaluate officer’s reports before being forced to vote on the items. Please listen again – https://gleneira.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/711_0385.mp3
  • Given the declaration of a Climate Emergency and an Urban Forest Strategy, the adopted 2022/23 budget REDUCED the spending on the planting of new trees to $827,000 when in the 2021/22 budget it was $1,350,000!

April 2023

  • The decision to only publish ‘summary reports’ on community consultations when in the past the complete raw data was available reeks of a cover up – especially when the summary reports are vague with a predominance of such terminology as ‘several’, ‘many’ ‘some’. There is the continued failure to ensure that the actual survey questions are of quality and that they have gone through a proper testing process that involves councillors and the Community Consultation Committee.

May 2023

  • An Elsternwick forum of nearly a 100 residents turning up to voice their views on the draft Elsternwick Structure Plan. Result? No recognition or addressing the issues raised.

July 2023

  • Structure Plans that more often than not scrape through on the casting vote of the chair.

August  2023

  • Governance failures galore when Pennicuik was suddenly forced to declare a conflict of interest on the Elsternwick structure plan which meant that the final decision was again decided on the mayor’s casting vote. Several months later however, Pennicuik could vote on the Elsternwick amendment and nothing had changed since the acceptance of the draft structure plan!!! Amazing!!!
  • Miraculously, Glen Eira does have a Notice of Motion. But this was because of a huge stuff up in the writing of their governance rules and had nothing to do with the intent of the original wording. The aim was to prevent councillors from having items put on the agenda. It will be interesting to watch the upcoming version of the local law to see whether they keep trying to silence councillors in this fashion.

September 2023

  • More stuff ups in that the proposed pop-up park in Orrong Crescent was deemed ‘illegal’ since it depended on a road closure which had not been advertised and consultation called for. Ultimately this was abandoned, but how much have all the shenanigans cost?
  • More dubious consultation ‘summaries’ on Bentleigh & Elsternwick that pay scant attention to resident views

October 2023

  • Announcement of the secret meeting that decided on the ‘preliminary’ closure of the early child care centres. Consultation would now follow the decision!!!! Repeated claims about the legitimacy of the decision and the need to abide by the Local Government Act. We could not find anything in this Act which demanded a ‘preliminary’ decision!

December 2023

  • The decision to close the early child care centres for the paltry saving of $500,000 per annum. Plenty of public questions which queried the accuracy of the ‘discussion paper’ and some of the claims made by council.

CONCLUSION

2023 has largely been a disaster for residents. Here’s why –

  • the administration has steam rolled ahead with its agenda of rubber stamping major developments and structure planning that will facilitate more and more high rise – regardless of whether or not these new developments are needed to ensure that council meets the projected population growth.
  • Community views are treated as mere annoyances and basically ignored
  • Lack of transparency in decision making
  • Councillors denied timely access to all fundamental information to inform their decision making
  • No public announcements on whether or not there is progress on increasing tree canopy targets. No statements about cost savings or improved efficiencies.
  • Consultations remain nothing more than exercises in legal requirements with no intention of asking questions that would reveal what residents really think and desire.

Finally, we wish all our readers a healthy and peaceful 2024! Thank you all for your continued support!

 

December 18, 2023

Caulfield Racecourse!

Posted by gleneira under Caulfield Racecourse/C60, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance
[3] Comments 

When is ‘land management’ nothing but a euphemism for making money – especially when racing and the Melbourne Racing Club is involved? Both ably supported by government and the racecourse trust.

We have already witnessed the removal of scores of trees, the destruction of heritage sites, and now the latest application for the re-location of the Glasshouse to be immediately opposite residential properties.  We’re also facing the probable relocation of the Melbourne footy club to set up their training at the reserve. All this can only mean the further exclusion of the public on many more days plus the potential for more buildings and decreasing access and open space for residents.

It’s literally a crying shame that instead of trees and lawn areas upon entrance to the reserve we now have a tall, ugly, concrete wall. See the following photos –

Council should be screaming from the top of their lungs. All we get is a grovelling media release –

Statement on Melbourne FC’s Caulfield Racecourse Reserve feasibility study

Glen Eira has the least amount of open space per person in metropolitan Melbourne.

We always look to support creative opportunities to enhance sport and recreation in our community, with our recreation facilities hosting many local clubs including football, netball and soccer.

We recognise a move by Melbourne Football Club to Caulfield Racecourse Reserve has the potential to increase and accelerate investment in sporting infrastructure in the area.

However, we also know that investment from elite sporting clubs has been known to reduce community access in other locations.

The Caulfield Racecourse Reserve is Crown land in the heart of the Caulfield Activity Centre. It has long been identified as a missed opportunity for broad community use.

Any investment by Melbourne FC would need to be balanced with continued access to the Reserve by the broader community, including local sporting clubs, other levels of football, and protected areas for local plants and biodiversity.

We look forward to working with Sport and Recreation Victoria and the Caulfield Racecourse Reserve Trust to ensure that community use and environmental outcomes feature prominently in the future of the Reserve and are given due consideration in Melbourne Football Club’s feasibility study. 

Cr Anne-Marie Cade
Mayor

Worth remembering is that council decided to pay around $300,000 to the trust so that they might have a ‘seat at the table’!!!!! Money certainly NOT WELL SPENT judging on outcomes thus far. Perhaps council should demand a refund?!!!!!!!!!

 

December 2, 2023

More Sleight Of Hand?

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Council Meeting(s), GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
1 Comment 

Not for the first time do we have council handing over full control of planning to the Minister and the Department. We ask readers to carefully compare and consider the following screen dumps. They involve adopted amendments and the resolution to send the amendment to the Minister seeking approval for advertising and formal submissions.

The Whitehorse resolution contains no mention of the Minister or the Department as does the Glen Eira one. One may quibble as to the interpretation of ‘intent’ but giving the Minister the right to change whatever he likes can still fit into ‘intent’ given that this basically means to produce documentation for land use.

Here are a couple of other resolutions from Boroondara and Stonnington. Again, note the absence of mention of Minister and/or department.

So why has Glen Eira resorted to the inclusion of this phrasing when other councils haven’t?  The repercussions can be immense as proven previously with the increased heights for Carnegie and Elsternwick through the interim DDO’s. It also means that residents will not have any future say – it will be fait accompli. Instead of ensuring that what was decided upon remains, this clause simply allows more changes without community input.

 

November 24, 2023

Bentleigh Structure Plan – Feedback Summary

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Council Meeting(s), GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
[5] Comments 

Once again a whopping agenda that lumps together some of the most important planning issues that confront the community. These are:

  • Bentleigh Structure Plan community feedback
  • Bentleigh East  Neighbourhood Centre amendment
  • Elsternwick Structure Plan amendment
  • Carnegie Structure Plan amendment

Very little has changed in regard to the Major Activity Centres, especially in relation to heights, and overshadowing. All this despite the fact that the majority of responses were opposed to various recommendations in the structure plans and the mooted DDO’s. Carnegie did not even have community consultation following the abandonment of version one (ie Amendment C184)!!!!!!!

We will deal with each of the above as separate posts beginning with the Bentleigh consultation summary.

Bentleigh Community Feedback ‘summary’

  • There were 106 survey responses, 17 emails and a petition of 221 signatories. Council states that it sent out 4,101 letters to surrounding households. The feedback equates to a pathetic 2.56% response rate for the survey. Why? Are Bentleigh residents so apathetic that they don’t care? Have residents given up on believing that their voices can affect outcomes in Glen Eira? Or is there something drastically wrong with the way in which council communicates its intentions? We have yet to see any analyses EVER of why feedback is so low and what can be done to improve this. It serves council well to simply go through the motions of ‘consultation’ despite the fact that survey after survey has been anything but a genuine attempt to elicit relevant and valid responses.
  • Again, we are not privy to the raw data. No publication of the responses as has happened in the past. Instead we have a ‘doctored’ summary that falls far short of reporting on what was actually said/written.
  • Language used remains a problem. The officer’s report is vague and imprecise with terminology such as ‘mixed responses’, ‘about half’, ‘support for accommodating growth’, ‘some support’, etc. Very little is quantified.
  • The summary report itself is nothing more than a public relations exercise. For example: On ‘retaining character’ we find this conclusion in the report – 55 percent of participants indicated that accommodating growth above the commercial strip was better than doing it in other parts of Bentleigh. Ostensibly this sounds like a majority are in favour, but one must query the value of the question itself. There could very well be support for greater density in the commercial core, but THIS DOES NOT MEAN that respondents are in favour of 8 storeys (discretionary) adjacent to heritage homes. The value of any response and what conclusions might be drawn are 100% dependent on the quality of the questions asked. The online survey as we’ve commented on before was carefully engineered to avoid as much as possible any responses that could be interpreted as ‘negative’ or opposed to the recommendations of the structure plan.  
  • The above criticisms can also be directed to this conclusion – 51% of participants indicated they ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that measures such as height limits and upper-level setbacks for new development would help to retain the character of Centre Road. Of course people want height limits. But we were never asked what those height limits should be!!!!!!!
  • On page 4 of the summary report we are told that 20 percent of participants indicated they would like a building height limit reduction in the centre when asked about retaining character in a growing centre. This sounds like a clear minority in favour of reduced height limits. But this  alleged 20% is only from those individuals who took the option to write something in the text boxes. And again, no question asked what is an appropriate height limit?
  • More concerning is that the above cited 20% does not correlate with what is then presented in the following table:

 We’ve highlighted all those responses which could be seen as pertaining to the issue of height. The totals are far in excess of the previously stated 20%!!!!!! However, without full publication of all the responses then it is not possible to determine whether the 20% is anywhere near accurate or council’s fudging of the responses. Transparency is again the victim in this reporting.

CONCLUSION(S)

Until this council is prepared to undertake genuine consultation that includes full oversight by councillors and the community engagement committee in the drafting of survey questions then residents cannot hope to be participants in anything but a carefully orchestrated farce that fulfils legal requirements and nothing else. Nor can residents have any confidence in the resulting feedback summaries when the raw data is with-held. When council fights so hard to avoid full disclosure one must surely doubt the results.

As stated earlier, there must be a full analyses of why consultation in Glen Eira is such a failure in terms of community feedback. This should start at the first stage of notification to residents – are they provided with enough detail to engage their interest/concern? Are they expected to undertake hours of reading that involves hundreds of pages instead of succinct summaries? And how many residents have simply given up because they don’t believe that anything they put forward will eventuate? This isn’t apathy we believe. It is simply distrust of council and the predetermined nature of all decision making. If residents truly believed that council was ready to listen and act, then we are confident that feedback would quadruple and that residents could actually believe that council was acting on their behalf. Sadly this is not the modus operandi of Glen Eira City Council!

 

November 22, 2023

Boroondara Versus Glen Eira

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
[3] Comments 

Earlier this month Boroondara City Council voted in a resolution which basically condemned the flurry of planning changes introduced by the State Government over the past 18 months or so. The vote was a result of a detailed officer report outlining the consequences of these changes and how they would impact the Boroondara community.  In Glen Eira, apart from a bit of fear mongering by some councillors used to justify their voting patterns on activity centres (ie  we would get worse results if the minister calls it in, blah, blah, blah) there has not been one report, analyses, or discussion similar to the Boroondara stance. In all likelihood, residents have no idea of what these changes to the planning system entail, or what they mean for future development.

If councils are truly working for their residents, then it is incumbent on them to provide their communities with the necessary information and to work collaboratively with various community groups in their advocacy roles. None of this has happened in Glen Eira. Why not? Why can’t we have an officer’s report which is out in the open and discussed in council chambers so that everyone knows what this council stands for?

The Boroondara vote can be watched via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4f_0Tab2Ag. It starts at approximately 52 minutes into the webcast.  We’ve also uploaded several pages from the officer’s report. It was lengthy, but the highlighted comments here are important and reveal the primary concerns of Boroondara. Are these shared by Glen Eira? Who knows?

Again, we have a myriad of questions:

  • Have councillors even been briefed on what each new piece of legislation means?
  • Have options been presented to councillors on what can and should be done in response?
  • What communications have taken place between officers and departments? Have councillors been made aware of all such communications? If so, have they seen hard copies of this communication or simply had to rely on officer’s verbal summaries?

Residents deserve heaps better from our council. Or is the truth simply that the Glen Eira administration is fully behind the government’s actions in removing as far as possible all third party objection rights and allowing more and more development?

 

November 1, 2023

Wherefore Art Consistency & Transparency?

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Council Meeting(s), GE Governance
[2] Comments 

Lockdowns in Melbourne ended in late 2021. Throughout the past few years council meetings were held in public with residents present in the gallery. During this ‘return to normal’ all public questions asked, irrespective of whether the questioner was present in the gallery or not, were read out, answered, and recorded in the minutes. Yet at the last council meeting without any explanation, council resorted to its ridiculous policy of NOT reading out and answering questions if the resident was not present in the chamber. Nor were the questions recorded in the minutes. Even more bizarre is the fact that previously absent questioners’ names WERE RECORDED IN THE MINUTES. Not for the last meeting!

There are other questionable practices that require explanation. For example: historically, all proposed amendments were noted in the ensuing minutes, whether or not they were seconded and if they were seconded a vote taken as to whether the amendment became the substantive motion. Again, the current minutes from last council meeting fail to record an amendment moved by Zyngier and seconded by Pennicuik. Admittedly minutes are not supposed to be a Hansard recording of what was said. But they do have to record what decisions are made in council meetings and the voting on the issue. So we now have another subtle change in what is recorded without explanation and without reference to long standing previous practice.

A quick perusal of previous and recent minutes reveals that on the following dates council minutes DID record amendments as well as the resulting vote(s) in the minutes. The dates are: 8th  June 2021; 9th August 2022; 8th February 2023 and 28th February 2023.

Council’s approach to its governance rules and the lack of consistency certainly requires examination and explanation. But this is more than a simple case of lack of consistency. It harkens back to the central issue of lack of transparency and questions how well this council acts in accordance with its own policies, practices and legislation.

PS: here’s a couple more examples of what a mess council’s governance rules are – or more precisely, how little that is done is in accordance with the existing policies.

  1. The publishing of agendas. According to the governance rules, agendas will be available on the Friday post noon before every ordinary council meeting. Over the past year or so, agendas have come out either late Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, and even late Friday – well after the supposed 12pm time line.
  2. Public questions. We now have the farcical situation that at every council meeting there has to be a motion to bring forward the public question section nearer the beginning rather than towards the end of the meeting as pronounced in the governance rules.

Surely all that is required is for the Local Law to once and for all enshrine the simply procedures so that public questions are heard at the start of all council meetings and that definitive times are imposed on the publishing of agendas.

The governance rules also need to make it absolutely clear as to what will feature in the minutes and the constraints of word limit, and questioners’ presence in council chambers be removed. As it currently stands some questions are well and truly over 150 words, yet are permitted. Others that might be 156 words are deemed to have exceeded the limit and are not read out. The hallmark of what’s been happening is not only inconsistency, but raises the question of why bother having rules and regulations to begin with if they can so easily be ignored and bypassed when it suits.

 

October 5, 2023

Childcare

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Service Performance
[3] Comments 

The following Media Release is on council’s website –

Council made a preliminary decision on Tuesday night to close its three small Early Learning Centres in Caulfield, Carnegie and Murrumbeena.

Statement from Glen Eira Mayor Cr Jim Magee: Preliminary decision on the future of Council’s three early learning centres

We are now consulting directly with impacted families, staff, and the community before making a final decision by the end of the year.

We recognise this will be a challenging time for staff and families and are here to support them.

Council’s three Early Learning Centres were established at a time when opportunities for families to access childcare services were limited. In the decades since, a radical change in government funding and policy has led to a boom in the childcare market and slowed demand for Council’s centres.

The number of childcare places in Glen Eira has doubled since 2010, and increased from 3,966 places to 5,731 places since 2019, an increase of 44 per cent. Nine further non-Council centres now in the planning phase will offer a further 919 places.

A service review found we provide quality care and have excellent educators, however our older centres no longer meet contemporary building and service standards that modern childcare centres provide. 

Our centres are expected to operate at a loss of at least $570,000 each year. Amid increasing costs and economic uncertainty, it is getting harder for councils to run services and we need to make responsible choices and provide value to all the community.

The municipality has a vibrant childcare market that provides choice, competition and capacity. We have confidence that the supply of childcare places will meet current and future demand. Our centres now account for just two per cent of the childcare places available across the municipality.

If Council decides to close the centres, the final day of operation is likely to be Thursday 21 December 2023. We will help families find alternative care that best suits their individual needs and help staff find a new role through redeployment to another Council role or career support.

To learn more about the Council preliminary decision and provide feedback, visit www.haveyoursaygleneira.com.au/childcare.

Media contact: Alex Leamy on 0409 086 361

PS: The Age is also running a story on this issue. See: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/glen-eira-council-to-close-three-childcare-centres-before-christmas-20231005-p5e9yc.html

 

September 20, 2023

More Stuff-ups?

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Council Meeting(s), GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
1 Comment 

On Tuesday night there was a Special Council Meeting to (re)consider submissions on the closing off of Orrong Crescent/Alma Road in order to facilitate the proposed pop-up park at this corner. What is staggering about the processes involved is that council never seems to get it right – despite all their planning and traffic departments and legal advisors. It is clear that what motivates this administration is to implement something that has already been determined regardless of what the legislation requires! Council wants the pop-up park in spite of previous consultations that were strongly opposed. The first step to achieving this is the closure of the intersection. Thus the two are intricately linked. Trouble is, the law has been ignored!!!!!!

Please listen carefully to the following submission made on the night. It highlights the legal flaws in what council has done as well as the lack of required evidence to support the proposal of closing off the intersection. This new attempt comes on top of the failure to properly advertise and seek submissions on the first attempt.

There can be no excuse for what is happening here. Due legal process has not been followed; pivotal research such as traffic reports have either not been done, or not provided to councillors. Not the first time that councillors are expected to vote on an issue without all the relevant information before them! Even the officer’s report distorts what the submissions say in the claim that 4 were in support and 7 opposed. Of the four allegedly in ‘support’, the focus is exclusively on the pop-up park and NOT the closure of Orrong Crescent which is what this item is about! Council’s approach is akin to a bull in a china shop where the objective is to ram through whatever has already been decided.Hardly transparent and good governance!

 

September 13, 2023

Bogus Reports: Bentleigh & Elsternwick

Posted by gleneira under GE Consultation/Communication, GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
[4] Comments 

Council’s consultants are maestros in camouflaging the real facts and figures that should be the basis of all decent strategic planning. This of course only reinforces our view that the role of consultants is to provide any so called ‘evidence’ which will support decisions already made by this planning department.

This post focuses on the two traffic reports for the Bentleigh & Elsternwick structure plans. Both were done by the same company – yet they are very different in important components. Why?

We will start off with Elsternwick. On page 28 of the study we have this image:

We are told that: Dwellings in Elsternwick are a split of single detached dwellings (57%) and multi-unit dwellings (43%). The phrasing of ‘single detached dwellings’ would imply that these dwellings are stand alone houses and ‘multi-unit’ dwellings are interpreted as flats. Are we therefore witnessing some sleight of hand, when these figures are compared to what the 2021 Census results tell us? If our interpretation of ‘single detached dwellings’ coincides with the ABS interpretation, then these results are far more than bogus – they represent a deliberate attempt to distort and hide the true facts. Interestingly, we can find no definition in the consultant’s reports of what ‘single detached dwellings’ and ‘multi-unit dwellings’ means.

Compare the above with what the census reveals below:

38% compared to the reports 57%!!!!!!! We can only assume that the 38% has been added to the 19.3% to come anywhere near the stated 57%. If this is the case, then it is entirely misleading – especially since the consultants provide no definitions or explanations.

Another aspect of the above page is the claim that 12% of HOUSEHOLDS don’t own a car. The resorting to ‘households’ instead of dwellings is interesting. When we look at the car ownership per dwelling we get a completely different result (see below).

The Bentleigh transport report doesn’t follow the Elsternwick version. Instead we now get comparisons on page 128/9 to Windsor!!!! Readers should remember that we have been repeatedly told that we CANNOT compare one municipality to another. Yet, this is exactly what this supposed traffic analyses has done. And it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny when we find that Windsor compared to Bentleigh is an entirely different proposition!

For starters, we now are looking exclusively at PERCENTAGES and not NUMBERS in the attempt to prove how similar these two suburbs are. What is not stated are the following that completely change the conclusions. The table below is derived from the ABS 2021 census data.

Please note:

  • Bentleigh’s population is close to 3 times that of Windsor
  • The number of dwellings in Bentleigh is double that of Windsor
  • The number of dwellings without cars in Bentleigh is 446 and Windsor is 344. When these numbers are calculated as a PERCENTAGE of dwellings without cars, then of course Windsor will have a higher percentage given it has half of the dwellings in Bentleigh.

There is much, much more that could be written about these traffic reports and the invalidity of what is presented. Yet these documents are supposed to form the ‘evidence’ for structure plan recommendations. They fail dismally and are there simply to fulfill all legal requirements instead of providing an analyses that does hold up to scrutiny. We can only wonder how much these reports have cost ratepayers!!!!!! Undoubtedly money well spent when the objective is to facilitate more and more development with increased deterioration of residential amenity!

 

September 6, 2023

Elsternwick: Screwed Again

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Consultation/Communication, GE Council Meeting(s), GE Governance, GE Open Space, GE Planning, GE Service Performance, GE Transport
[8] Comments 

Last night’s council meeting included a Glen Eira first – a Notice of Motion presented by Cr Zyngier. This was permitted since council’s governance rules were once again shown to include a monumental stuff up and hence the denial of a real Notice of Motion was not possible. Admittedly we had not picked this up previously but can now conclude that the following was the reason why the governance rules (as intended) would not hold up to legal scrutiny. The crucial section is contained in this dialogue box taken directly from the governance rules –

We then get this caveat which basically undermines and rules useless the attempted Clayton’s Notice of Motion.

Thus we get a first in Glen Eira – a genuine Notice of Motion!

Please listen very carefully to the following audio of this motion. It failed once again on the casting vote of Magee after Penniciuk declared a conflict of interest and left the chamber.

What however is quite staggering in this item, needs to be highlighted and seriously questioned!

  • Why are councillors denied access to essential consultant/officer reports that would substantiate the ensuing recommendations and claims made?
  • How does this equate with informed decision making, when councillors are not privy to the evidence?
  • Why are potential inaccuracies in officer/consultant reports not open to scrutiny or review?
  • How many more times are councillors forced to vote on something of major significance without the benefit of the full data?

Transparency, and accountability, plus informed decision making by this council is clearly non-existent!

 

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