Glen Eira Debates

Once again we witness the attempt to ram through a vital policy document that will set the strategic direction of ‘environmentally sustainable development’ in the municipality for years to come. We have chosen the phrase ‘ram through’ deliberately. Time and time again, Glen Eira has produced draft policy documents that do not stand up to close scrutiny, nor do they ever address the concerns raised by residents.

On Tuesday night, councillors will be expected to vote on a policy that is inept, lacking vision and detail, and which fails to provide indicators that can effectively gauge the success or failure of the proposed objectives. In fact, the entire process needs to be critically questioned. Where has there been open discussion? Council cites one forum which took place in 2009, and then the call for submissions. The final draft, regardless of what council claims, again ignores these submissions in all important areas. Yet, the powers that be, expect this to be voted on.

If council is genuine in its desire to ‘consult’ and ‘engage’ with the community, then the following must happen:

1. The vote on this policy is deferred
2. Those submitters wishing to address council be given the opportunity to speak
3. Suggestions made by residents and not accepted by council deserve full and comprehensive reasons as to why those suggestions have not been taken up.
4. Blatant errors in the draft be explained – ie. with a staff of 1000 well paid individuals, residents should expect that correct information is supplied, evaluated, and incorporated into such strategic documents.
5. Responses to submissions deserve more than the one sentence ‘brush off’ found in council’s summary/response notes.
6. Action plans, MUST MEAN MORE THAN “CONSIDER”, “INVESTIGATE”, “INFORM”. Council needs to get its language right, and begin to realise that the public will no longer accept platitudes and motherhood statements as substitutes for ‘action’ on important issues.
7. Councillors must reject this draft; send it back to the drawing board, and insist on full, and open public consultation.

The above comments perhaps sound harsh. But we’ve taken the time to carefully digest all of the published submissions. They are thoughtful, insightful, and offer much that is of concern and value to the community. The simple fact, that most of these comments have largely been ignored is unconscionable. We invite all interested residents to read the following which are verbatim extracts from some of these submissions. Please note that there was plenty more that could have been included.

Extracts:

 …the strategy does not seem to be a particularly strategic document

Many peer councils have established sophisticated and strategic documents which do not appear to have been adapted by GEC in this instance. The absence of quantifiable and measurable targets and priorities is perhaps the single greatest gap in the strategy. There exist many measures, benchmarks and standards to assess progress towards integrating sustainability into the diversity of council powers and responsibilities. The range of actions listed in the Action Plan 2010-2012 often bear no relation to the vision or the core areas identified, nor the analysis. For example the failure to include references to e-waste in the core document but listed under the action plan reinforces the impression of a piecemeal approach.

The statement about balancing environmental with economic and social considerations appears to undermine the vision. It is suggested that this be addressed more fully and spell out how council will approach reaching ‘best practice’ and which standards or benchmarks will be applied.

There is no reference in the Strategy to Planning and urban design issues. Some references are made in the action plan, but without an overriding purpose and sense of direction. This is one area where council can have a powerful long-term impact on the built environment. Given the pace of development in the municipality, clear direction to developers is urgently needed. We are building poor housing stock which will be grossly unsustainable for many decades, due to lack of attention to basic siting, shading, water and energy consumption post development. Action to adopt the STEPS/SDS process would have a much greater impact than hundreds of information fact sheets.

It is a puzzle why the section on low cost council is included in the document. How does this relate to the community ratings and findings that council demonstrate leadership that historically has not been funded through rates or other tiers of government. How does council propose to address this growing community demand within its low cost model and where GEC wishes to position itself? Surely council cannot realistically achieve its vision without considerable growth in investment in environmental sustainability. Waiting for other levels of government to act has meant GEC has missed out on millions of dollars of partnership opportunities with State and Federal government and other providers.

Providing information as the main role to households and business is not in accordance with current best practice, nor with the leadership role outlined for Council in 2.5

Local government does not have ‘limited opportunities’ to influence greenhouse gas emissions in the community. On the contrary, Local Government has been a most active and influential player where it has committed and acted on community engagement. Local governments have developed policies, targets, programs, established partnerships, advocated and worked with the active community members to enable changes at the local level.

Paragraph 6 is incorrect. Several councils already adopted zero emissions targets, both for corporate or community emissions by varying specified dates.

The information on street lighting being a Victorian govt jurisdiction is not correct. The asset is privately owned with council responsible for the energy bills. There is absolutely no indication that state government will bear any costs for replacement to T5s. Council should look to a financial plan to change over lights. Installations are being updated elsewhere, for example, in Frankston

The action plan lists many areas for investigation without a clear intent or strategic goal. This risks an ineffective and inefficient use of council resources. ‘I investigated and found it was too costly, too hard,’ does nothing. Council must relate its practices to those best practices occurring across councils in Melbourne, set clear goals, standards and benchmarks. Setting a 5 star green standard for all new building means something. Becoming more environmentally sustainable these days does not and is no longer satisfactory performance for any municipality with the resources available to Glen eira.

In my view, the proposed waste management policy fails to meet the objectives of the vision statement. We are not getting ‘value for money’ and the policy will not help residents ‘improve the sustainability of their households’. The council needs to do a lot more homework on this issue....

An area of key interest to me concerns the protection of significant trees on private and public land….I note that this topic is covered by a two line sentence in the draft strategy, namely “to prepare options to identify significant trees on private and public land and a means to protect them.” While this is a good first step I am most concerned that it does not go far enough. In the first place the strategy only requires this action to be implemented by July 2012…..furthermore the action only calls for the development of options to identify trees and the means to protect them. It should include an implementation clause to ensure that procedures are actually put in place to protect the trees. Developing options cannot be a two year task. There are plenty of examples of procedures elsewhere.

The Draft document states that council ‘has limited ability to protect and enhance the local natural environment..’ this is clearly not the case. Council manages many hectares of park and street vegetation, and also has a role in managing water, energy consumption, pollution, pesticide and herbicide use, all of which impact on biodiversity. Council has a role in urban planning, including decisions about public open space and permeable areas mandated for developments.

The Draft document has confused biodiversity issues with other environmental issues. For example, ‘native vegetation’ is not necessarily indigenous vegetation, and ‘purchasing environmentally friendly products and services’ does not necessarily protect biodiversity. Nor does ‘effectively’ discharging storm water protect biodiversity. There is a need to integrate biodiversity strategy with other strategies, especially street tree strategy, water strategies, and urban building codes, otherwise biodiversity initiative might be annulled by contradictory policy in other areas.

Residents would expect council to be moving progressively toward building a sustainable future based on being socially sustainable, economically sustainable, and environmentally sustainable. The draft seems to recognise this objective but fails to draw up a strategic document that could be used effectively as a planning instrument to fulfil this goal of becoming a sustainable council.