Below is the latest Friends of Caulfield Park email –

Council “thumbs it nose” at the Community

Like storm troopers, the secret executioners gathered in the early hours of this morning and, instructed by the administration and its officers, swooped on the 39 trees and cut them down.

The mayor said all the Councillors were behind this move.

He said there was nothing wrong with this action.

We disagree.

We know not all the Councillors were behind him and were kept in the dark about this destruction.

We believe that the Mayor and the administration realised that the FoCP petition of over 500 names (gathered in less than a week) would be presented to Parliament tomorrow and that their plan to cut down the trees would be in jeopardy.   They thought once cut down they were gone and they could proceed with their ill-conceived plan in peace.  With the Festive Season upon us we would all forget their contemptuous action and let them get on with it.  This is bureaucracy at its arrogant worst in overriding community wishes.

We have shown how their justifications for cutting down the trees are fabrications.  So what is the real reason for their determination to proceed, no matter what the community thinks?  If anyone knows the background to their hidden agenda, please drop a note to PO Box 2511 Caulfield Junction 3161.  It appears that they are somehow beholden to sports clubs above all other interests.  Something is rotten in the City of Glen Eira

David Wilde is handing in the Petition on the Parliament steps tomorrow at 9 am and would like others to join him.  If you are able to do so, then ring him on 0417 032 437 tonight up to 9 pm. We realise this is short notice, but please do your best.

What next?  The Council thinks it can thumb its nose at us.  They need to learn that the community is not impressed with their anti-social, anti-community behaviour.  There are two issues here. The one is the loss of the trees, and the other is the Council’s total disregard for the expressed concern of the community about this matter.

Let the Council know what you think of them.  Here are their contact details.  Email, message and phone them and tell them their behaviour is no longer acceptable.  Tell them we want those trees replaced with mature trees where those that were cut down previously stood, and that they cannot spurn the community in this way.

David Wilde

President

We’ve deleted the list of contact details for councillors and Newton!

PS: NOT ONLY DO THEY COME IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, BUT THEY MAKE SURE THAT ANY ‘EVIDENCE’ IS REMOVED QUICK SMART – so unlike what happens to other trees that are removed and the trunks can lie around for days, if not weeks, untouched. This section of Caulfield Park is now a total wasteland! Residents should remember that the original ‘timetable’ announced that the trees would be removed IN JANUARY!

PPS: And from today’s online Leader (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/central/glen-eira-council-culls-21-trees-at-caulfield-park/story-fngnvlpt-1226779662643)

Glen Eira Council culls 21 trees at Caulfield Park

Cranes were used to help remove the mature trees at Caulfield Park. Picture: RICHARD CORNISH Source: Supplied

GLEN Eira Council stands accused of organising a dawn raid tree chop in Caulfield Park without telling residents who were campaigning to save the trees.

Contractors removed and mulched 21 mature trees at the north-eastern end of the park this morning and Friends of Caulfield Park president David Wilde found out while walking his dog in the park at 8.30am.

“This is a deceptive and manipulative move by the administration,” Mr Wilde said.

“When I rang the mayor he said they had done everything by the book … If the book involves deception and manipulation then the book needs to be rewritten.”

Glen Eira Mayor Neil Pilling – a member of the Greens Party – said councillors were told preliminary works were about to start ahead of oval redevelopment but were not told an exact date.

Council signs erected in the park a month ago said redevelopment works for ovals three and four would start in January.

The council is now saying that does not include today’s “preliminary” works.

 

Trees being chopped up for removal from Caulfield Park. Picture: Derrick den Hollander Source: News Limited

Cr Pilling said the council had listened to the community and reworked its plans to reduce the number of trees that needed to be removed for oval refurbishment.

He refuted allegations of deception and denied councillors had been told not to tell residents.

“No, certainly not,” he said.

“We didn’t know exactly what day it was going to happen. We were advised a week ago that preliminary works would start in the second week of December and that included the trees.”

Caulfield MP David Southwick is also understood to be livid.

He had planned to table a petition to save the trees, containing about 600 signatures, in Parliament tomorrow.

His office confirmed this morning that he was not told about today’s tree chop.

“We had no idea it was going to happen today,” spokesman Adam McKee said.

Caulfield resident Richard Cornish, who photographed the tree chop at 8.20am, described today’s events as a “disturbing, devious dawn raid”.

Residents had vocally opposed plans to chop the trees down, organising protests and lobbying the council and government.

Cr Pilling was swept up in a storm of community outrage last month after news of the council plan to rip out the trees around two sports ovals to “improve” open space at the park’s eastern end.

The ongoing saga of the intended ‘relocation’ of Caulfield Park ovals and the originally proposed removal of 39 trees should be a lesson to all Glen Eira residents. What has been made clear is:

• The lack of straight talking and honesty from this administration and its councillors
• No such thing as community consultation and certainly not adopting any community suggestions
• When found out telling porkies simply change the argument and find another bogus excuse
• Councillors, as always, remain superfluous appendages to the plans hatched by officers
• Open space is becoming the exclusive preserve of sporting clubs under this regime
• The environment, and especially trees, and tree management come in as very low on the list of priorities for this council

The arguments for the proposed expenditure of what we anticipate to be close to $800,000 have changed continually. Yet, in the fine print of various documents, the truth emerges – that is, if the poor resident can even find, collate, and then consider the implications of the buried, nebulous figures. Presented below are statements extracted from the last three Quarterly Reports. Taken together they provide the raison d’etre for what is happening now.

September to March 2013 – Summer season 2012/13 one social cricket club did not request an allocation. Team numbers down this summer season, the reduction was mainly with junior cricket teams.

Summer 2013/14 season team numbers dropped from 235 to 204, (31 team decline) the decreases were:• Softball 1 senior men’s, 3 senior women’s & 2 juniors

• Cricket 2 senior women’s and 23 juniors

Winter 2013 season team numbers have increased from 249 to 272 (23 teams) the increases were:

• 13 soccer teams

• 4 AFL teams

• 6 lacrosse teams

We do not take issue with the need for sporting fields as such. What we do take issue with is the lack of transparency by this council, the continual dissemination of deliberately misleading information, and why residents should always be the last to know what the real corporate vision is, the costs involved, and the deviousness with which plans are implemented. This is all best summed up in the latest email from the Friends of Caulfield Park!

Dear Mary

Thank you for coming clean yesterday about the real agenda driving the enlarged ovals.

We now know that it is not insurance and the buffer zones, they were simply a pretext; it is about cramming in as many junior soccer ovals as possible and cutting down trees that the kids might run into.  Further, it finally clear that the intent is to use the sports area at night since there is, for the first time, the stated intent to put in lights.  As usual, there was no consultation and it is certainly not in line with the Master Plan.

So it turns out that in objecting to the justifications given for cutting down the trees that we have been chasing a trail of red herrings while those in the know sat and smiled.  No wonder this Council keeps us all in the dark!  The paradigm of mushroom management is obvious.

Also, a benefit of enlarging the playing fields that is given in the Council website news update is typically misleading.   It compares the present number of available junior grounds with what could be achieved under the administration’s proposed plan. The real comparison should be with the number that would be available under the FoCP plan.  The difference would be far smaller.

We looked back at your election flyer where you stated that you will “work hard to preserve the beauty of Glen Eira, to increase the livability of our wonderful suburbs”.  How can you reconcile these undertakings with supporting the transformation of one of Melbourne’s premier parks, a park not owned by the Council but administered in Trust, into a treeless green wasteland?  Instead of the treed ovals of the past, we are left with interlocking treeless areas with a few saplings round the periphery.  Perhaps you can rationalise it, but those people who elected you have a much harder task.

We realise that the insurance need was a red herring, but we did as I believe that you suggested and we contacted the MAV about the insurance situation.  We were reliably informed that while all councils have an obligation to protect the safety of users of property for which they are responsible, there is NO set directive about buffer zones and no specific insurance requirements about buffer zones. Furthermore, contrary to what may have been said, there are no discounts on premiums as a result of having these buffer zones.

It seems to us as though the Administration is either deliberately misleading Councillors or is simply providing selective information to support its programs.  Certainly each time we demonstrate the emptiness of a justification to cut down these trees, a new one pops up.

Kind regards

Spike Cramphorn

Secretary FoCP

PS: the latest FoCP email

Dear Mary,

Thank you for your phone call.  You are right the phrase to “come clean” is not appropriate in this context and does not reflect what I intended to convey.

What I should have said was that after talking to you and looking at the Council’s new information, the total amount budgeted, and the amount allocated for this portion of the work, it had become clear to us that the the Council’s intent had always been to expand this area to accommodate lots of junior football fields whilst talking cricket ovals.  We then surmised that the uncommitted amount in the budget was for night lights and felt that we, the Friends of Caulfield Park had been unable to learn any of this until as late as possible.

It has been said that the FoCP are always negative, but this is only because we, the only representatives of the informal and casual users of the park, are left out of any consultation process on matters that affect Caulfield Park.  When there is a material departure from the  Master Plan, as in this instance, we believe that this is not appropriate and that often, with some minor adjustments, we could achieve much better outcomes for all.

None of this was attributable to you personally and I did not intend to convey this.  To the extent that it appeared to do so, I apologise without reservation.

Yours sincerely,

Michael

Item 9.14 – Audio Visual Recordings of Council Meetings

Delahunty moved a motion that more information be provided on how Kingston and Melbourne City Council operate their recordings of council meetings. Magee seconded.

DELAHUNTY: said that she basically wants to ‘increase the participation in local government’. This would let people see what council does at ‘a time that’s convenient’ for them. Thought it was very important that they keep looking at the various ‘options’ around and how other councils have ‘found solutions’. Said that ‘I’m quite okay with spending some money in the next budget’ on this. Wanted information on streaming as opposed to ‘digital recordings’ because choices on costs are involved here. Looked forward to the report coming back.

MAGEE: said that many people don’t come because of various reasons like shift work or child care and can’t make it. But they say that they ‘wished’ they could and want to know what happened. The minutes of meetings ‘doesn’t fill in all the blanks’ like ‘who said what, when and where’. It’s also good as a ‘historical’ record or ‘archive’. Said that all the history of GESAC is gone and that’s a shame. Also schools would benefit when they’re studying local government. Mainly it’s a way for the ‘other 140,000 people’ to find out what’s going on and they probably don’t even know when council meetings are on at the moment. People might only be interested in one thing like a planning issue so with this they could look it up and see what happened. Said he wasn’t in favour of live streaming but it’s something that ‘could be released with the minutes of the meeting’. Saw it as a ‘tool’ for the future.

HYAMS: supported the motion to ‘increase’ involvement and would like to see more people in the gallery. Even the reporter is absent tonight but with this they could write up their reports from the office the next day without attending because ‘we all know how cash strapped the Leader is’. Said that there are probably a lot of reasons why people can’t make it to meetings so it’s worthwhile to ‘at least examine’ the issues.

LOBO: said it was an ‘important tool’ so residents will know how ‘we are performing’. Said that residents have told him about councillors coming and ‘knocking on their doors’ and that they ‘know nothing about the candidate’. Therefore this should help people ‘gauge how the councillor is performing’, ‘how they are behaving including banging on the table’. Also ‘how they are gossiping, how they are passing remarks’ .

PILLING: thought it was a ‘good idea’ to ‘investigate’ this further.

DELAHUNTY: reiterated the point about increasing participation. Thought that there ‘was all round merit’ to the motion.

MOTION PUT and Lobo asked for a division. The only councillor to vote against was ESAKOFF.

COMMENT

Once again there is a motion for ‘more information’. We interpret this as an implied criticism of the original report though of course not one word to this effect was uttered by anyone. We also find it interesting that Lipshutz, Okotel and Esakoff remained silent throughout the discussion. According to the Code of Conduct councillors are expected to voice the grounds for their votes. Surely it is incumbent on both, and especially Esakoff to state her reasons for voting against the motion? We predict the logic of their actions go something like this:

1. This is only the call for another report. The real ‘debate’ will happen next time around when there could possibly be a motion to install audio/recordings. Better to keep our powder dry until this eventuates.
2. This gives them time to ‘work’ on their colleagues and to concoct some further spurious arguments against
3. To be seen to reject a motion for a report is not good public relations. As Hyams has so often said, to reject a report would imply that they are not ‘democratic’ and open to new ideas and that they’ve got something to hide!

We will be watching this with great interest but doubt that if it eventuates it will be clear of ‘editing’ and ‘censorship’. The only certainty is that this is all still a long, long way off. Further, does this call for another ‘policy’? Inclusion into the Local Law? or merely another set of ‘guidelines’ that are entirely ‘flexible’ and open to interpretation. If the former, can we expect that the Local Laws Committee will be involved? We also remind readers that not so long ago Hyams made the comment that he was opposed to recordings since there were often ‘asides’ that might be picked up! All in all, the potential permutations and combinations are fascinating to contemplate! Decisiveness is definitely not the hallmark of this set of councillors!