Glen Eira Debates

PS – MORE SPIN!!!! – MAGEE ON 3AW YESTERDAY

PPS: 4 houses left in Elliott Avenue, Carnegie. Thank you council!

PLUS 7 STOREY APPLICATION FOR 317-319 NEERIM ROAD – BELOW!

It is one thing for a council to disseminate its rose coloured glasses view of its performance. Spin comes with the political territory. It is another thing entirely for a council to use public funds to promulgate falsehoods with the intention of misleading and deceiving residents.

The latest outrage comes with council’s announcement on its website that it will print and distribute a letter/flyer to every single resident in the municipality. (UPLOADED HERE) The claim is that this will cost 11 cents per letter. Be that as it may, please remember that all monies collected by a council are meant to be spent for the benefit of the community and NOT to engage in damage control, or to evade responsibility for the woeful planning performances that we have witnessed in the past few years. Council can spend thousands of dollars blaming everyone else except itself, but it can’t spend this same amount of money in ‘consulting’ the community when it really matters – ie the introduction of the residential zones.

What is absolutely inexcusable is the fact that in its epistle council has committed the sin of omission – or to all intents and purposes – it has lied. Whoever wrote the letter should be hauled over the coals, and whoever authorised it, should be dismissed. In our view, the buck stops at Newton’s desk. Such behaviour and deviousness is literally beyond the pale. And this cannot be another of council’s famous ‘clerical errors’. It is without doubt deliberate, premeditated, and disgusting!

We are referring of course to the ‘conveniently’ edited table presented below –

Any resident reading this could be forgiven for thinking that Glen Eira’s total number of new apartments equals 1054. The sentence speaks of ‘apartment growth’ – full stop. What this table deliberately avoids mentioning is that the figures relate to the NUMBER OF APARTMENTS ERECTED IN BUILDINGS OF 4 OR MORE STOREYS. Nor is the table itself complete. Glen Eira is ranked THIRD in this list – which has again been conveniently cropped so that the full story is not told. Never mind the fact that many of those municipalities with greater dwelling numbers also happen to have commercial zones 2 and 3 times the size of Glen Eira’s and that is where most 4 storeys dwellings have gone. (ie Stonnington has over 6% of its area zoned as commercial. Glen Eira has 2.2%)

Yet what makes matters even worse, and which points to the fact that either we are dealing with total incompetents with no corporate memory, or that this is another example of council’s manipulation of the facts and the truth. Council minutes of June 30^th, 2015 (a short 3 and a bit months ago) featured an officer’s report on the State Government’s ‘Better Apartments Discussion Paper’ – where in fact this bar chart was first published. On page 110 of these minutes we find the following –

How convenient that residents:

• Aren’t informed that the figures relate to dwellings in 4 or more storey buildings
• How convenient that this vital information has been cropped and deleted, and
• How convenient that now residents will be sold the myths that present council in the most positive light – ie. blame everyone else but not us!
• How appalling that Glen Eira City Council can sink to this level of deception and just to rub salt into the wounds – use public monies for their own devious and unethical purposes! Surely it is time that the Code of Conduct for officers was published – as (needless to say) countless other councils see fit to do!
• The biggest question is whether any councillor will insist that this farce be stopped in its tracks and a public apology listed in all media outlets. That should sort out the sheep from the goats!

We doubt that many residents bother to read council minutes. Thus they will be assailed with ‘information’ that is skewed, inaccurate, and intended, we believe, to deceive and mislead. Finally, when residents cannot trust the information that is disseminated by its council, then we are really in trouble.

WATCH THE VIDEO FROM ‘THE AGE – DOMAIN’. IT SAYS IT ALL!

http://www.domain.com.au/news/elderly-couple-refuse-to-sell-as-developers-lay-claim-on-mckinnon-culdesac-20151013-gk7kw5/

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The skullduggery that has gone on over Frogmore and the Jewish Care aged care facility is literally scandalous. A permit application is currently waiting to be decided. It proposes to remove 88 of the 92 trees on site. Well, those trees no longer exist!

This says plenty about this council and its attitude to the environment. With no tree register and no will to stop moonscaping of sites, this is the result. We are also confident that council will not seek to impose any fine on Jewish Care for removing trees under the 12 months period stated in the planning scheme. We remind readers that the heritage report nominated 4 trees as having ‘significant’ status and to be given heritage status themselves.

It is quite appalling that this can happen. But since it is Glen Eira council, where profit and vested interests are far more important than environment, no-one should be surprised – merely outraged!

This Nearmap shot is dated 13 September 2015 – three weeks ago. They sure move fast!

The old saying of Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics depicts perfectly the spin department of Glen Eira. Definitions are non-existent and methodologies as to how various figures are derived remains unexplained. The spin doctors simply publish a figure with some neat ambiguous statement and these are purported to represent the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Far from it.

Several recent examples come from a Media Release and a sentence from last week’s Caulfield Leader (and repeated in a story this week)– “the tribunal (ie VCAT) approved 489 dwellings the council initially refused”(Caulfield Leader – page 9). The Media Release stated – “During the 2014-15 financial year, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) approved 489 dwellings that Glen Eira City Council had refused” (July 2015). What these quotes and figures don’t reveal is:

• How many of these purported 489 dwellings were the result of council no longer opposing a permit due to the developer submitting an amended application?
• How many of these cases didn’t make it to a full hearing but were ‘mediated’ or were part of a ‘directions hearing’ at which council caved in?
• Thus, is the figure of 489 based simply on ‘initial’ rejection or rejections that stood firm and were taken to VCAT for a full hearing and subsequent decision?

Much more significant, is the question of WHY VCAT granted permits for any of these supposedly refused applications? Over the past few months we have featured several VCAT decisions where the members have highlighted a litany of council stuff-ups and lack of adequate representation at the hearings. Time and again the public record of the decision shows that Council reps show up and are either ill-prepared, often provide spurious arguments, or are basically hamstrung by the Planning Scheme itself. We are in no way suggesting that VCAT is without fault and that the legislation governing this body is adequate. What we are alleging is that Council should start fixing its own house of horrors instead of continually and persistently resorting to the blame game where VCAT is portrayed as the sole villain.

To justify our claims, we’ve taken the time to go through every single published VCAT decision for the past financial year. Council claims 489 dwellings were approved. Our total is 288! (see below). Of these decisions however, we urge residents to carefully consider the comments made by the members and to note:

• Conditions set by council that are contradictory or simply nonsensical
• The lack of protection afforded by the planning scheme itself
• Policies that expired in 2007 and have never been updated
• And far too often, the lack of competence by council itself

All of this however begs the essential question. If council is finding that its claims are repeatedly knocked back by VCAT, then why, oh why, has there not been any attempt to ‘fix up’ the gaping holes in the planning scheme? Why, oh why, will there not be a planning scheme review for 6 or 7 years? And why oh why do our councillors continue to stand idly by and accept this situation?

Here’s the evidence. Hearing dates are provided together with address, proposal, and members’ comments. For ease of reading, we’ve uploaded a pdf version HERE  as well as the png images below –