Magee was taken ill just before the start of the council meeting and hence was an ‘apology’. We wish him a speedy recovery.
LIPSHUTZ – moved that the minutes of the Local Laws committee be deferred until next council meeting. Pilling seconded. Reason was the the minutes in the agenda weren’t ‘as full as they should be’ and that they didn’t reflect what occured, so more ‘fulsome’ minutes are required. Did say that the committee has been looking at Local Law 326 (organised sport). Said that there had been plenty of press coverage on the frisbee story and that they’d been told that kids had ‘been fined’. That then became a ‘story not that they were fined but that they would have to get an allocation’. Said he asked officers what happened and they told him that a complaint had been made that about ’30 or 40′ people were playing with ‘football boots’ across cricket pitches. A ranger investigated and found that this wasn’t true – there wasn’t any football boots and nothing about cricket pitches. In the end ‘Yoav Silverstein contacted Council’ to ask about an allocation. ‘He was told that a one off allocation cost $120 or a 6 month allocation cost $300’. Said that this is the same for eveyrone if they wanted a barbecue. Said that the ‘whole purpose’ of allocations was to provide ‘certainty’ and paying ‘means they have priority’ but it ‘doesn’t mean’ that if kids want to play frisbee they need an allocation. Claimed that there had been a ‘total blowup by the press’. Said that the ‘truth is that no-one was warned off…..welcome to play….no fine….. Went on to say that the law should be reviewed and the reason it hasn’t been dealt with as yet is because ‘our corporate counsel has been involved idn other matters’ such as the VCAT ‘which has kept her quite busy’. In the next council the ‘whole local law will be reviewed’ which is ‘far better’ than doing it piecemeal and so ‘do the whole local law as one’. assured everyone that no permit is required if they want to play ‘catchy’, football. ‘but if you are an organised sport’ then you do need a permit. Went on to say that council has ‘reasonable laws reasonably enforced’ and in this instance the law has been ‘enforced reasonably’ and ‘no-one has been fined’.
PENHALLURIACK – said he was pleased that no one was fined. Said that this issue with the local law 326 had been going on for quite a whiile. Said that Mr Varvodic was fined and then the fine withdrawn and they organised a permit. The definition of ‘organised’ has been something that he’s tried to get the Local Law Committee to look at for a long time and clarify because ‘it’s fine for Cr Lipshutz to say reasonable laws reasonably enforced but sometimes the law is not reasonable’ . Said a law is only ‘reasonable’ when it can be understood by the public. this law can’t be easily interpreted. Said he doesn’t know what ‘organised’ means any more than Lipshutz does. Said he was pleased that the ‘ex-chairman (Lipshutz)’ of the Local Laws Committee was ‘now going to be working on it’ because ‘it is long overdue’.
HYAMS – when the Local Laws Committee gets together in the new council he hoped that ‘they would get around to looking at the Alcohol free area’ in Bentleigh as ‘has been agreed they should’.
TANG: said that the meeting discussed the Tree register and there was discussion about how the laws could be enforced and there were ‘sub-issues’ that should be ‘captured in any subsequent minutes’. Admitted that the issue of organised sport has been around from even before he was on council – schleppers football team – but they were more ‘frequent’. Didn’t think this was about one individual but how to interpret what ‘organised sport’ means. Problems not about the law but ‘how you interpret it’.
LIPSHUTZ: Agreed with Tang that it was a ‘definitional problem’ and that the Local Laws Committee ‘would deal with that’. Said that he didn’t believe it was ‘coincidence’ that the issue has come up ‘two weeks’ before the election in order to ’embarrass council’ and that the reports in the media are ‘totally wrong’ and that journalists should have made ‘proper enquiry’ when the ‘allegation is simply not true’.
Public questions
At least 15 questions that we know of were declared invalid on the excuse of the electoral act and hence were not read out, much less answered. This is reprehensible since none of the questions had anything to do with ‘electoral matters’ – in short, it was another instance of avoiding accountability and responding to residents’ concerns. Even those questions which were responded to, failed to answer the question asked, or basically indulged in semantics and dissembling.
Question 1: asked if Council’s submission on the Planned Zoning Reforms would be made public. The answer stated that the ‘submission’ was already available on council’s website. Untrue and incorrect. What is available on council’s website is not the actual submission, but the Akehurst ‘report’ which was tabled at council on the 4th September 2012! The public has not seen what went in to the department! So much for transparency and answering public questions honestly!
Question 3 – asked for the results of the ‘monitoring’ of Frisbee games in Caulfield Park. The response said that there’s a “regular gathering’ in Caulfield Park by people playing ‘what appears to be’ Frisbee!
Question 4 – asked about the traffic management plans for major events at Caulfield Racecourse saying that for the past 3 events this had been substandard – either they notices went out too late, or they were incorrect. Wanted to know what Council had done about this. The response went into the need for traffic management plans to be provided and that in September Council had received from the MRC the plan for the spring racing carnival. It said that residents would be notified ‘at least 2 weeks’ prior to the events. The MRC provided notice after the 2 week deadline so that they ‘didn’t meet’ the requirements and ‘council will be drawing this to the attention of the MRC’. Big deal we say! The second part of the question remains unanswered, and as with the Camping and Caravan show, council has done nothing but a little tap on the wrist!
At this point Penhalluriack rose and said that he notified Hyams about the situation on Saturday morning – and wanted to ask Burke if any officer had gone out to ‘look at the barriers’. Also said that ‘this seems to be a consistent complaint’ from residents living in the area.
Hyams then said that this wasn’t the time to ask officers questions because that should have been done at Item 11.3 of the agenda!
Penhalluriack then said that he hadn’t ‘had the time to formalise my own response’ to the public question and that he was commenting on the answer that had been given. Since he told Hyams about this on Saturday morning he’d ‘like to think that council went out and did something about it’ because the barriers ‘were in the wrong place’ and the ‘wrong times’
Question 5 – asked about the now out of date Road Safety Strategy and why even the old one isn’t on the website and when the latest one will be prepared. The response was that the 2007-2012 strategy ‘was at an end’ and that a new one was ‘being developed’ and that when the new one is adopted it will be up on the website. Terrific! We didn’t know that ‘strategies’ disappear into the ether!
Question 6 asked about ‘advocacy’ for rail separation and whether council would table the documents related to its ‘advocacy’. The response was merely a listing of ‘submissions’ to various departments, and meetings attended by officers and councillors. Residents are obviously not going to get a look at these ‘submissions’, nor reports back from most of these meetings!
BURKE THEN STATED THAT ‘A NUMBER OF QUESTIONS ‘HAVE BEEN RULED OUT OF ORDER BY THE CHAIR AS THEY ARE NOT IN COMPLIANCE WITH COUNCIL’S CARETAKER POLICY’ REGARDING ‘ELECTORAL MATTERS’!!!!! CENSORSHIP REIGNS SUPREME ONCE AGAIN!
PS: we’ve just broken another record – 1,335 hits for the day!
