Glen Eira Debates

At Tuesday night’s council meeting the two most contentious applications (Belsize Avenue & Hamilton Street) got their permits – both voted in unanimously. Hyams and Esakoff moved and seconded motions for increased setbacks and full visitor parking spots. The requirement for Construction Management Plans was also ‘tightened’ in the face of much community backlash recently. The thrust of councillor arguments was that applications should be ‘compliant’ with ResCode – especially visitor car parking.

Ostensibly these resolutions sound reasonable and justified. However, when we look at the bigger picture, we can only wonder what on earth is going on. All of council’s published documents on traffic and parking reveal that what is likely to happen is a REDUCTION IN CAR PARKING REQUIREMENTS in our activity centres. We repeat the relevant page from the recently published Integrated Transport Strategy. Please note these ‘recommendations’:

• explore a reduction in the statutory parking requirements for office use.
• Where it is demonstrated a public parking availability is underutilised during the evenings, explore a reduction in the statutory parking requirements for these commercial uses.
• allowing these commercial parking spaces to be shared by multiple users.
  

The writing’s on the wall! Council’s ‘parking’ strategy will include a REDUCTION in the current requirements. We will get parking overlays that will see waiver after waiver of both visitor and resident car parking or making the requirements for single, double, or triple bedroom places so minimal, that they amount to multiple waivers.

The relevance of councillors’ arguments on the Belsize Avenue and Hamilton Street applications become significant in the light of the above draft proposals. Both streets form part of the Carnegie and Bentleigh Activity Centre. Both are zoned Residential Growth Zone. Council’s consistent argument has been that shops can’t accommodate the necessary parking requirements, but neighbouring streets can. That means streets such as Hamilton and Belsize Avenue. So, if the eventual parking overlays adopt this approach and reduce the current regulations for offices, shops, and apartments, then these side streets will be chocka block full of parked cars.

Going a step further, we then have to ask, are the conditions placed on the Hamilton Street and Belsize Avenue permits nothing more than sheer hypocrisy and/or total ignorance by our councillors? For example, how can they in the same breath vote for a (draft) transport policy that REDUCES PARKING REQUIREMENTS, and also vote that applications in the activity centre ADHERE TO THE CURRENT SCHEDULE OF PARKING ‘STANDARDS’? Was all the chest thumping on Tuesday night nothing more than grandstanding? Will our local streets now become parking lots?

In an extraordinary VCAT Watch report Councillors have been severely wrapped over the knuckles and by implication, from the unelected bureaucracy. In short, the message appears to be – DON’T VOTE AGAINST WHAT OFFICERS RECOMMEND!

The issue concerns the VCAT permit granted for a 6 storey development in McKinnon Road. We have repeatedly , and over several years, highlighted the fact that councillors consistently lop off a storey or two, plus some apartments from applications and in the end, VCAT always grants the developer exactly what he wants. Our criticism isn’t solely that councillors have been grandstanding to the gallery, or being ‘populist’. It’s that this tactic has never worked and that councillor energies should have been directed at ‘reforming’ the planning scheme. Not continually knocking off a floor or two only to have VCAT grant the permit. The ‘fault’ as always has been with the planning scheme and VCAT itself. Councillors of course ignored this fundamental aspect of their decision making or simply didn’t have the balls, or the will, to initiate major changes in the planning scheme.

Having said all that, in a democracy, which we’re supposed to be living in, councillors have a duty to represent their constituents. It is these 9 men and women who set policy, direction, expenditure, and who are supposed to listen and act in accordance with the majority of residents’ views. It is NOT FOR THE ADMINISTRATION TO determine how councillors should vote. Their role is to provide the information, make recommendations and then leave it to the good sense (hopefully) of councillors.

The officer report represents a new line in the sand, and a public one at that, between councillors and administration. The tone is uncompromising and in fact quite insulting in our view. Here are some examples and our interpretation of the ‘message’ –

The officer recommendation was to approve the development at six storeys, however the Council decision was to delete the upper two storeys

COMMENT – laying the blame!

In reaching the decision the VCAT member was quite critical of Council’s approach in seeking a development of 4 storeys……..The Member agreed with the position of the planning officer and the expert evidence of the application

COMMENT –  to the best of our knowledge, no report has ever contained this unequivocal support for the ‘planning officer’ and the explicit ‘criticism’ of Council – ie councillors!

The best bit however relates to car parking:

The decision places the onus on Council to fulfill its responsibility to undertake the required analysis of car parking requirements based on the planning scheme provisions and not apply a blanket approach in requiring the statutory provision of car parking. 

COMMENT- There’s a wonderful irony here. Council does NOT undertake its own ‘analysis’ of car parking. Most of the time it blithely accepts the developer’s data without blinking an eye. Secondly, the ‘planning scheme provisions’ are there for a purpose aren’t they? So how can we have in the same sentence a reference to the planning scheme and then dismissing its ‘standards’ by stating that a ‘blanket approach’ on the statutary requirements is not on? This is nothing more than another below the belt attack on those few councillors who repeatedly vote for the required number of visitor car parking in permits.

We definitely live in interesting times when the tail continues to wag the dog! Whether our councillors will now have the balls to assert their rightful authority is open to question. They haven’t thus far!

The following letter features in the agenda papers for Tuesday night:

Of concern is the recommendation – once again to merely ‘receive’ and ‘note’ the letter, which will then disappear into the ether no doubt and not be heard of again. Council is duty bound to do far more. Residents are entitled to be provided with solid ‘evidence’ for the proposed changes. For example: has there been a traffic count taken in the past few years? If so, when was this done and what are the results? If in the past there was the decision to erect a ‘no standing zone’ outside 86-90 Mitchell Street, what was the reason and what is the reason now for proposing to change this? And the $64 dollar question of course is that council’s policy is to conduct surveys of local residents before the implementation of changes. Will these 40 residents now be listened to?

The crucial question is- will council now turn all our local streets into parking areas given its statement in the Transport Strategy that they will explor(e) the reinstatement of lost street parking where required. And if council is determined to introduce parking overlays that reduce even further the ‘standards’ set out in Clause 52.06, then should residents expect more and more parking overflow from the commercial centres into their streets?

We urge all readers to take careful note of the following from the Integrated Transport Strategy.

This makes it absolutely clear that council’s intention is to:

• Reduce the required parking provisions for ‘office space’.
• ‘Site specific conditions’ can only mean more ad-hoc decision making – especially for restaurants
• ‘maximise the use of existing (car parking) spaces’, can only augur more of the Mitchell Street example
• ‘Shared parking’ translates into less car parking spaces provided by developers and residents parking in multi-level car parks largely paid for by ratepayers.

Finally, the Mitchell Street example is the perfect illustration of council’s disastrous planning. Next to a heritage area, and within a flooding zone, Mitchell and its surrounding streets were zoned RGZ in 2013 – ie 4 storeys. Now 5 years later, council is attempting to undo the damage it has created. Too late we say!!!!!! The draft structure plan now wants the WESTERN side of Mitchell street reduced to 2 storey height limit (ie NRZ) and six properties on the EASTERN side of Mitchell Street, reduced to 3 storeys (ie GRZ).  But given what has already happened, and what will still happen until council achieves the gazetting of its amendments, this is literally pie in the sky planning. The horse has already bolted. Yet council has known this for years and nothing was done!

Here is the current state of affairs in Mitchell and Robert Streets. The yellow markings indicate developments granted permits.

The tally thus far is –

77 Mitchell – 3 storey, 7 units

82-84-  4 storey, 23 units

79-83 – 4 storey, 41 units

77 Robert Street, -7 units

Residents of local streets anywhere within cooee of our activity centres have much to fear we forecast!