Redland City Council News – 26 July 2015

The next meeting of the Redland City Council will be held on Wednesday 29 July, starting at 9:30 am.
Here is a link to the meeting agenda.
A few items which may be of interest to residents and ratepayers are discussed below.

Proposed service station in Redland Bay (Item 11.3.3)

The officers report says:

The application has been assessed against the relevant provisions of the Redlands Planning Scheme and the proposed development is considered to conflict with the scheme.

The application was impact assessable. During the public notification period Council received 22 individual submissions, one petition containing 180 signatures and one petition containing 154 signatures. The officers report discusses 14 matters raised in submissions.
The report concludes with:

It is considered that the proposed Service Station conflicts with the Planning Scheme and adequate grounds to justify an approval despite the conflict have not been provided. Therefore, having due regard to the Applicant’s proposal, the submissions received and the relevant planning instruments and legislation, the proposed development is recommended for refusal.

More pay for Economic Development Advisory Board (Item 11.3.4)

Councillors are being asked to approve revised terms of reference for the Economic Development Advisory board so that the CEO can:

“determine remuneration for the Board Chair and Board members that reflects their experience and knowledge, consistent with remuneration of other Council Boards and Committees”

It appears that Council has been unable to fill the role of Board Chairman because payment of $175 per meeting is “insufficient”. Councillors are also being told that the current budget of $30,000 per annum for this board will need to be increased.
Councillors are given no indication as to what this board will now cost! In essence they are being asked to give the CEO a blank cheque.

Policy for community reference groups (Item 11.2.1)

Council resolved in April to put in place a new policy to cover all  of its community reference group. This was a reaction to concerns raised, initially by Redlands2030, about the secrecy of Council’s Developer Industry Reference Group (DIRG). The lack of tramsparency of the DIRG was also discussed by Peter Wear in his opinion piece: The Council crisis we had to have.

Despite calls for the complete minutes of the DIRG to be released, so far the Council has only made a summary available.
The policy which councillors will be asked to approve on Wednesday requires that the terms of reference for each group be made publicly available through publication on the Council’s website. However, the policy does not require that meeting minutes be made publicly available.
This means that the policy which councillors are being asked to approve can be used to perpetuate the lack of full transparency about operation of the DIRG.

Proposed development – Taylor Road and Woodland Drive in Thornlands (Item 16.1.1)

This item is to be discussed in closed session. The officers report has not been made publicly available because the item relates to legal proceedings.
However, the matter was discussed in a Redland City Bulleting article published in October 2014: Council tight-lipped on Thornlands sub-division.
It relates to a proposed subdivision on the corner of Taylor Road and Woodlands Drive in Thornlands.
Minutes of the Council meeting on 8 October (Item 16.2.1) show that Mayor Williams had a conflict of interest on this matter because the developers “attended a couple of fund raising events”. This conflict did not cause the Mayor to leave the chamber during the debate on this matter but the record shows that she left the chamber before the vote was taken.

Report by Redlands2030 – 26 July 2015