Who did the better job of Redland City Plan consultation – the Council or CARP?
After three years of secretive hatching and inadequate community consultation the Redlands community found out that the job of making a new City Plan had not been properly completed.
A range of issues were not dealt with, held over to be amendments to the new Plan (which has not yet been approved by the State Government).
And just a few months after approving the City Plan we found that councillors were planning on the run, when housing was approved for an area zoned industrial.
The process of amending a city plan requires the Council to follow much the same process of community consultation as the process of making the original plan.
So will Redland City Council do a better job with the City Plan amendments package?
Who did the better consultation job?
In the officers report seeking approval of the draft City Plan it was claimed that Council had listened to the community during extended consultation processes. They cited numerical data: website hits, meeting attendances , mail outs, and even “columns” in the Redland Bulletin (sic)
The Council said formal public consultation was a “record 11 weeks”.
More than 5,000 submissions were made in response to the Draft Redland City Plan – ten times the per capita response generated by Gold Coast City Council during their plan development.
But was the massive response in Redlands due to the Council’s consultation process?
Well not really. Most community engagement came about through the efforts of CARP (the Community Alliance for Responsible Planning). Their efforts alerted the community to the Draft City Plan’s problems and deficiencies and prompted thousands of submissions.
By any measure, Council’s own consultation efforts yielded a poor response.
But the Council’s report on the City Plan made no mention of CARP’s role or the relative failure of Council’s own community consultation process.
What happened to “Reply Paid”?
CARP mounted a traditional campaign using a simple paper based form submission which people could post on a “Reply Paid” basis.
It was this approach which generated the outpouring of community submissions, this was the “tool of choice” for the vast majority of people making submissions.
It worked because it was simple and suited the large number of people who prefer old fashioned written communication to the council’s on-line approach.
The Council’s approach to use of Reply Paid was bizarre. Redlands2030 was advised by council officers that this facility, used for all previous Redlands planning scheme consultations, would not be made available. The Mayor even offered “if you are aware of any resident who is prevented from lodging their submission by post because of the 70c postage stamp cost I invite them to make contact with me and I will arrange for their submission to be collected and lodged”.
However, the thousands of submissions made by people using the CARP template and submitted Reply Paid were accepted by Council.
When the Council undertakes consultation for amendments to the City Plan, it should ensure that the option of making paper based submissions on a Reply Paid basis is clearly made available to all.
Why rush approval of City Plan?
When, with indecent haste, Redland City Council called a Special Meeting at very short notice to approve the new Redland Planning Scheme alarm bells rang throughout community.
Why the rush?
What were they trying to hide?
The community was told that councillors had spent hundreds of hours in non-public ‘workshops’ discussing the draft City Plan.
Any discussions, debates and decisions made at these workshops have been kept hidden from the community.
The final package of decisions was set out in more than 200 pages of agenda papers which were publicly available for less than two working days before the Special Meeting.
Some councillors made an effort to explain the proposed new plan to the community before the Special Meeting.
Cr Wendy Boglary arranged a public meeting on the 26th February to discuss the proposed plan. At very short notice about 40 people turned up to hear Bolgary along with Coucillors Golle, Huges, Bishop, and Hewlett. It seems the Councillors themselves had been given little notice of the Special Meeting and insufficient time to review the final version of the plan.
Community members attending the meeting called for the councillors to delay final approval of the plan until a reasonable time period had been allowed for its consideration. But that never happened. A motion for postponement at the meeting on 28 February moved by Cr Bishop was not supported by a majority of councillors.
So next time planning scheme changes are considered by councillors, will they ensure that any final approval is not rushed?
Getting consultation right, from the start
The most serious mistake made by the Council in preparing the proposed new City Plan was its lack of stakeholder consultation at the early phase of developing the new plan.
The only stakeholders who got a look in early on were some of the City’s larger property developers and their consultants through the infamous Development Industry Reference Group (DIRG).
Before any new process of planning scheme amendment is undertaken, the Council should be up front with the community and offer all stakeholders an opportunity to have a say about what changes should be considered.
Redlands2030 – 5 June 2017
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5 Comments
If I make a mistake I am quick to correct it and I hope the same applies to each of the councillors of Redland City Council. In my earlier email today I said that I was disappointed because Lance Hewlett for Division 4 led us to believe that he did not support small building blocks proposed by Ausbuild and other developers. I have now learned that he did vote against the carve up of land in the Thornlands, Victoria Point and Redland Bay into small blocks because the only ones who benefit are the developers themselves. It is a nonsense to talk about cheap blocks for first home buyers. The neighbouring residential properties lose value immediately and the residents are faced with increased infrastructure charges.
I have passed this information onto readers of the local groups, Redland 2030 and the Community Alliance of Responsible Planning (CARP), both of which have come about because of some of the dumb council decisions over the last two years. In order to be objective and considerate to the residents who elected them six of the 10 councillors have rejected donations from housing developers and others like Sibelco and McKenzie Aged Care because they wish to have the freedom to vote on important issues without a conflict of interest. You only need to drive through the Redlands to see that there has been a major conflict of interest between choosing the residents wishes or those of vested interests. As a result we have major congestion on roads that were easy to traverse just 5 years ago and a major loss of koala habitat.
We are all aware of what recently happened in a Council Meeting to discuss Infrastructure Charges for Ausbuild. Those voting in favour of the residents of the Redlands, and there were only four of you, were outvoted after an unnecessary adjournment right before the vote. Lance, you should have chosen to just vote and go to lunch because the changed vote from two councillors now means that residents (rate payers) will be billed with infrastructure charges while Ausbuild can laugh all the way to the bank. There was a similar poor outcome on the vote for a 5-storey unit block beside the heritage listed Grandview Hotel, with feeble excuses like “we have no strategy for heritage listing” and “the developer may challenge the decision in Court.”
Now we learn that water charges may soon be increased for all residents of the Redlands. Currently 50% of my Rates is just for water and yet we are told this charge may increase because the State Government wants to increase it. The Aboriginal Elders on North Stradbroke looked into what was happening with Sibelco Sand Mining and found that they were using huge amounts of water from the same reservoir at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore some of the tailings were being channelled back into our drinking water, however, the company claimed those tailings were quite safe. The Aboriginal Elders were not convinced but since sand mining is due to close no one has actually checked and given a report. It is no wonder that Sibelco was given a finishing date of 2019 despite resistance from Stradbroke Ferries and others.
Sometimes when dealing with Redland City Council (RCC) we can achieve a successful outcome and after 3 months we have achieved just that. After 10 weeks of no action at all from the Development Control Section of RCC, all documents were forwarded onto the Queensland Council Ombudsman. That Office found that Council Regulations with regard to both tree clearing and storm water channelling were being disregarded. The solution was quick and inexpensive but it required action rather than excuses. An unsatisfactory Building Certifier was also involved.
Did the Mayor really offer the collect and lodge submissions? Did any of the Councillors ask why? Did anyone challenge the decision?
From this story the Mayors decision was penny wise and pound foolish!
It was insulting behaviour, she should be grateful people persevered in the face of an obstructionist council.
Did any of the Councillors join the dots about the massive number of submissions being a vote of dissent against the draft City Plan. Did anyone ask WHY?
Seems too many of the current Council are not really paying attention.
Some councillors are trying to do the right thing by the residents of the Redlands. However, some councillors appear to have an unhealthy relationship with developers and it is blatantly obvious to all of us that many of these development plans in Redland Bay, Thornlands and Toondah Harbour are simply unsustainable. I feel sorry for people in Redland Bay, who have mistakenly assumed that the Council and the State Government would manage roads in accordance with housing development. Council regulations, heritage listing and land zoning are being disregarded.
So ..if the public meeting resolved to seek a 1 month opportunity to consider the agenda why didn’t this get raised by anyof the Councillors present during the debate. cr Bishop seems to have tried with a variation on the theme.
But where were the Councillors who purport to be protecting community values…the City Plan was the play of this term and what the community got was a loud “pass” (or its too hard).
The Mayor was constantly heard to refer to her 80:20 rule…is there such a thing in the Standing Orders?
It seems like the key people including the CEO were asleep at the wheel….and community values and public interest went down!
In a word it was an “Inept performance”. But thanks 2030 for reminding us, do it again in 2020.