Glen Eira Debates

Council presumably pays big bucks for its expert consultants. Residents should therefore expect a lot more than what is ultimately produced. Featured below is an extract from page 30 of the recently released ‘economic analysis’. Putting it bluntly, we do not know whether to laugh or cry at the arguments presented and the assumptions inherent throughout.

THE ASSUMPTIONS

• a given amount of office space in one location will equate in agglomeration benefits to the same amount of office space at a different location. And let’s not worry about car parking provisions which are far less for office space, etc.
• The largest assumption of course is that companies will decide to rehouse to Glen Eira. In a March 2017 article written by the paper’s economic editor, the reverse was found to be the case – that companies are drawn to the CBD rather than the suburbs or regional centres. See: http://www.smh.com.au/victoria/melbourne-booms-while-the-rest-of-victoria-wilts-and-itll-only-get-worse-20170307-guslcg.html

Thus we have a 58 page document that is basically endorsing council’s proposals rather than objectively analysing and backing up its recommendations with sound data. A couple of other paragraphs from this report provide the overall tone and we believe, intent.

While there would be expected to be strong demand for office suites from various small businesses, the capacity for office development within activity centres is limited by developer‘s preference for apartment development. Council has the opportunity to facilitate office development on its car park sites through either planning controls or conditions placed on the sale of these sites.

There is the opportunity for Council to play a leading role in facilitating the development of new office space through its ownership of a number of car park sites within the Bentleigh, Carnegie and Elsternwick activity centres. This may take the form of either office suites or co-working spaces. Additional opportunities also exist within Commercial 2 zoned precincts on the Nepean Highway in Elsternwick and Moorabbin

Council‘s ownership of the two car park sites provides the opportunity to influence the scale of development and size of individual apartments in order to meet the needs of downsizers and families.

For the past year we have illustrated time and again how development in Glen Eira is at least double what is required to meet the housing needs for the various population growth projections. Residents have queried council’s reports since they all fail to answer, much less address the most crucial questions:

• where is the justification for the claim that another 9000 net new dwellings are required in the period from 2016 to 2031?
• Where is the existence of any calculations that include the addition of anywhere between 4000 – 6000 net new dwellings as a result of the Caulfield Village and the Virginia Estate developments?
• Given the above, how on earth does council justify the expansion of the activity centres and the proposed rezoning of hundreds upon hundreds of properties to cater for higher, and hence denser, development?

To reiterate:

• Plan Melbourne Refresh sets two rough targets for the Inner South Region of 4 councils – Bayside, Boroondara, Stonnington and Glen Eira. The period for this ‘required’ growth goes out to 2051 and not 2031. There is the ‘aspirational’ target of 132,000 dwellings and the other target of 125,000 divided between the four councils. Glen Eira’s ‘share’ is thus roughly either 33,000 or 31,000 over this time period. Divide these numbers by the 35 year time spread and Glen Eira’s ‘quota’ becomes a mere 942 dwellings per annum, or 885 dwellings per annum.
• Since the zones were introduced in 2013 Glen Eira has been averaging more than double the ‘quota’ figures stated above. Last year alone the number of building approval permits granted totalled 2012. Planning permits for the first quarter of the current financial year tally 453. Thus we are looking at a full year of at least another 1800 net new dwelling permits granted. To argue as council has done that less than half will be built is sheer nonsense in our view. Once a developer goes to the expense of buying the land, hiring architects, planners, and eventually getting a permit, there is every incentive to build and sell in order to recoup his costs. Even with land banking, we would find it extraordinary for any developer to sit on his land for 35 years!

Until council and its hired guns directly answer the questions posed above (as promised), we have little faith that what is occurring is any different to what has gone before – ie a council determined to stick to its pro-development agenda to the detriment of the community.

Apologies for this long, long post. It concerns the agenda for Tuesday night’s council meeting. There are many items that deserve comment – some good, some bad, and some particularly atrocious and misleading!

THE GOOD

After years and years of complaint regarding council’s lack of transparency and accountability, there does appear to be some movement at the station –

• Item 9.8 recommends a tender be decided for telecasting both ordinary and special council meetings. We certainly welcome this and hope that those councillors who previously opposed such a move will now vote in favour. One proviso however is that no mention is made of when this will be up and running (if voted in).
• For the first time there is now a running sheet of motions to be put forward at the MAV state conference – including how council will vote on the various motions. Previously these were all decided behind closed doors, so again a welcome new initiative. However, we also note that the rationale behind council’s position on many of these motions has not been included.
• Another item features the review of the Community Engagement Policy. One important advance is the promise to ‘monitor’ and ‘evaluate’ the outcomes. For some unknown reason however, the actual policy is not included in the online agenda!

THE BAD

The most important item for this section is council’s application for an extension on the interim height amendments for Bentleigh and Carnegie. The current amendment expires on December 31^st 2017. Council is now requesting a one year extension. What this basically means is that residents will not have the structure planning work completed and gazetted for the major activity centres until at least mid 2019! Worth remembering is that there is not even any ‘interim’ protection for Elsternwick! Further, no mention is made of the current neighbourhood centres – these could be waiting well into the 2020’s! Our concern is that with the constant delays more and more development will occur that will undermine the very objectives of the structure planning work itself. For example: it will be very hard to argue for a 5 storey mandatory height limit when countless buildings already exceed this height and which leaves the door open for similar developments over the next 2 to 5 years. What is certain is that if development continues as it has, especially in neighbourhood centres, then any attempt to rein in development will be that much harder if not impossible!

The above leads onto questioning council’s whole approach to their planning process – namely:

• Why has it taken til now for those in power to realise that council’s approach to consultation has only now become ‘tangible’ to residents? What does this imply about the intent of the ‘consultation’? We have remarked previously on the lack of detail provided, the lack of strategic justification provided, the lack of genuine reporting of community feedback. From the first stage we have queried the validity of council’s approach – ie asking questions such as ‘what do you love about your shopping strip’ only serves to focus residents’ attention on the commercial strip itself. It does not guarantee that feedback will focus on the primary issues of development, open space, traffic, infrastructure, etc. As an example of what should have been done, and could have been done, readers may find the following screen dumps informative. They come from the Banyule consultation on Fairfield. Please note that the same consultants were used by Glen Eira. The difference in approach is staggering. Why is it that for the Banyule consultation this company included direct questions on height, traffic, etc. and in Glen Eira none of these queries were specifically included in the initial consultation. Surely the only reason to explain this is the brief provided to the consultants! In other words, hired guns again doing council’s bidding!

Plus some screen dumps of the initial ‘consultation’ processes employed in Banyule. Compare this with what Glen Eira did!

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• Given the amount of work required why has it taken over a year to advertise for an additional 4 planning staff (ie consecutive ads over 2 weeks). And this is on top of continued planning applications, VCAT appeals, etc. and council repeatedly bemoaning the fact that they have been inundated with applications and that more and more cases end up at VCAT. This trend has been evident since the introduction of the zones but it has taken 4 years to act!
• Making matters even worse is item 9.2 in the agenda. For a ‘simple’ 2 double storey application in Thomas St, East Brighton, council couldn’t reach a decision in the required 60 days. This, despite the fact that they admit the following – The application was lodged on 28 November 2016. The application was advertised from 27 April until 15 May 2017 and 1 objection was received. The applicant lodged an appeal at VCAT on 6 September 2017 against Council’s failure to make a decision within 60 statutory days. Our sympathies to the developer in this instance since it is unfathomable why such an application should take forever to finalise! Of course, this means more money spent by ratepayers at VCAT! Please note we are not commenting on the merit of the application – merely on the unbelievable time lines.
• We also observe that in the past year or so the number of refusals for 2 double storeys in the NRZ has gone through the roof. Invariably, our analysis indicates that in over 95% of cases that end up at VCAT, the applicant gets his 2 dwellings!
• The only ‘positive’ out of all this is that council has at least had the good grace to publicly admit how inept it has been – there has been community feedback regarding the overall process including:
  • Requests for city-wide dwelling forecasts that inform the structure planning
  • Improved communication to all residents and landowners within the study area for the next stage of engagement
  • An appropriate level of detail for best consideration of positive and negative impacts of the proposals

Ensure the next round of consultation period allows affected parties enough time to read through the released information in detail, attend information sessions and provide a response to Council.

Surely this should have been a given right from the start? 

THE UGLY

The ‘ugly’ aspect of this agenda is council’s continued inability to reveal the truth in an honest and upfront manner. Instead we are presented with the usual spin and misleading statements designed to basically cover up what actually happened. Here is the offending extract –

We have commented on this issue previously, (see: https://gleneira.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/inept-or-indifferent/) but will repeat the evidence which shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that:

• Senior officers knew of this ‘error’ back in July 2013
• That from the department’s point of view this was not an ‘error’ but a required trade off for the introduction of the residential zones
• Council also knew that at least one case went to VCAT where the developer tried to use this clause to his advantage (unsuccessfully).
• To now turn around and claim that this ‘error’ has only been ‘recently’ discovered is a blatant lie! Even if Akehurst and Camera (the ‘architects’ of the residential zones) are now gone, Torres is still at council as are many other senior planners. Where is corporate memory? Why can’t council simply admit the truth?