Councillors Talty and Hewlett were threatened by Mayor Williams with expulsion from the Council meeting on 24 January

Mayor Williams threatened councillors Talty and Elliott with expulsion from the Council meeting on 24 January.

The new year got off to a rowdy start with Mayor Karen Williams struggling to maintain order at the Redland City Council meeting on Wednesday 24 January.

During a heated verbal exchange between councillors Julie Talty and Murray Elliott, Mayor Karen Williams loudly banged her gavel and then threatened to expel both councillors from the meeting.

Cr Elliott criticised Cr Talty’s motion seeking an officers report on opportunities to have car parks developed near the flood prone Mt Cotton Park. He accused her of attempting to jump the queue in the Council’s capital works program.

A resolution supporting Cr Talty’s motion was passed by the Council 10 votes to one, with Cr Elliott the only no vote.

This item of business can be viewed on the Council’s video recording commencing at 2 hours and 4 minutes with discussion heating up at about 2 hours and 24 minutes.

Council refuses application for ‘rooming accommodation’

41 Ziegenfusz Road, Thornlands

Councillors narrowly voted 6/5 to refuse an application for development of ‘rooming accommodation’ on land at 41 Ziegenfusz Road, Thornlands.

Councillors voting to refuse the application were: Wendy Boglary, Paul Golle, Lance Hewlett, Tracey Huges, Julie Talty, Paul Gleeson.

Councillors who opposed the refusal motion and supported the development application) were: Peter Mitchell, Mark Edwards, Murray Elliott, Paul Bishop and Karen Williams.

Neighbors have complained for some years about inappropriate use of this dwelling which is a single four bedroom house rented to multiple tenants.

The officers report states that: “The application is seeking a retrospective approval as the site is already subject to four individual leases.”

Debate on this matter included contributions from all councillors and can be viewed on the Council’s video recording commencing at about 55 minutes.

Local resident Mrs Robyn Thwait opposed this development in a speech to the Council during the Public Participation section of the meeting. Her speech can be viewed on the video recording commencing at 10 minutes.

Housing block split at Edinburgh Street, Victoria Point

Subdivision plan for 22 Edinburgh Street commissioned by Warren Pryde

An application to split a 772 m2 block at 22 Edinburgh Street, Victoria Point was approved 7/4 by the Council.

Councillors voting to approve the application were: Peter Mitchell, Mark Edwards, Murray Elliott, Julie Talty, Paul Gleeson, Paul Bishop, Karen Williams.

Councillors voting against the motion were: Wendy Boglary, Paul Golle, Lance Hewlett, Tracey Huges.

Council approval will mean that two small lots are created, 367m2 and 387m2.

Such small lots would not be allowed under the proposed new planning scheme (Draft City Plan 2015) which was approved by Council on 28 February 2017 and is still being considered by the State Government.

The developer’s infrastructure charges will largely be offset by dedication of about 20m2 of the site to the Council as road reserve to facilitate the future Moreton Bay Cycleway. Local Councillor Lance Hewlett said it was most unlikely that the land would actually be used for a cycleway.

The subdivision plans were commissioned by Mr Warren Pryde. His firm, Pryde Fabrication, donated $5,500 to the Concerned Redlands Residents Association (CRRA) which campaigned in support of Karen Williams’ successful bid to become Mayor in 2012.

No conflicts of interest were declared prior to the Council’s discussion of this item of business.

Discussion of this item can be viewed on the video recording commencing at 32 minutes.

Money and the Redland City Australia Day Awards 2018

Mr Dan Holzapfel receiving his award from Mayor Karen Williams Photo: Andrew Laming

Redlands Citizen of the Year is philanthropist and former shire councillor Dan Holzapfel.

Mr Holzapfel has made significant donations to various causes including the Redland Museum. In 2017 he gave $100,000 to the Redland Foundation which was established by former Redlands mayor Don Seccombe.

Mr Holzapfel was a donor to Mayor Williams’ 2016 re-election campaign, giving her $1,000 according to the Mayor’s disclosure return.

The Redlands Australia Day Awards were announced at a well attended, Council funded, dinner event at the Alexandra Hills Hotel. The hotel’s owners (McGuires’ Hotels) also contributed to the Mayor’s re-election campaign, via the Colmslie Hotel.

Winners of the Redlands 2018 Australia Day Awards were selected by judges Mayor Karen Williams, Council CEO Andrew Chesterman, Brian Hurst (former editor of the Redland City Bulletin) and long serving Federal MP for Bowman Andrew Laming.

 

Redlands2030 – 28 January 2018

5 Comments

Amy Glade, Jan 29, 2018

No one could be more deserving of being handed awards than Dan Holzapfel who has given so much in contributing to mayor’s re-election campaign, along with significant amounts to other worthy causes for which he has now received recognition.
I met Dan and his sister when Redlands was a Shire during years of the first Council administration with Eddie Santagiuliana as Mayor. It came to my attention Dan was compelled to sell the turf farm situated between Redland Bay Rd and Coolnwynpin Creek Capalaba, to a popular high profile local developer desperate for the land to transform into an industrial estate. Dan & his sister had no choice but to sell when council ceased to purchase turf from the farm that I could see across the creek from where I still live adjacent to Finucane Rd. It was brought to my attention by a former councillor that developer would be building too close to the creek, so decided to meet with Dan who kindly gave me a tour of the farm prior to the sale.
The creek, in later years due to intensive development, contamination of waterway, is today off limits to the local community from 19 Crotona Rd creek bank through Capalaba Central to Old Cleveland Rd bridge where at one time a walkway had been built by work-for-the-dole young men, neglected and forgotten by Redlands State & local government public servants, a terrible distressing loss that included the beautiful specially protected wetland site at 29-37 Moreton Bay Rd. Capalaba. No place is ever protected no matter how precious to the local community when developers with deep pockets set their sights on a particular site remembering my late husband Paul’s words, i.e. ‘we can all be bought!’

N Deacon, Jan 29, 2018

What precedent does it establish when elected councillors vote and act inconsistently with their own draft planning legislation presented to the State government for approval? Did the council Officers provide guidance and clarification on this, as is their job……. or was there a lack of political will enabling them to execute their duties with integrity…assuming they have knowledge of what that term means anymore, or instead, live in fear of what personal integrity might cost them in prevailing council environments, such as the potential loss of their jobs, targeted attempt to discredit, and worse?
If council elect and officers are confused, then what chance does the general public have of complying with this lot? How can rate payers comply when votes are passed in private, and revised conditions breached in ignorance, and Councillors can’t or won’t adhere to their own dictates & protocols? What a nonsense!
The whole sorry mess highlights how far and complex local government has become, in abandoning its humble utility roots, and disdaining and failing its public in 26 years of non-compliance according to QC and CCC Chair Allan MacSporran in his address to parliament, who stated to the legislature in 2017 that council and electoral offences were too endemic to prosecute (Operation Belcarra Report).
In simple language, this was the State’s authority watchdog admitting the equivalent of “the horse has bolted, and we’ve lost control”. The QC and CCC Chairman’s admission has been independently confirmed in Australian Institute Reports, and ongoing NSW ICAC investigations, and subsequent charges and arrests. Others allege it is an open admission that the CCC is complicit in events and corrupt itself.
We now have councils exceeding their authority in entrenched non-compliances to a degree denied the public, in keeping us complacent and ignorant until it’s too late to redress the damage done.
Council officers and elected officials are unable to consistently administer or recall their own votes and laws, the CCC Chair publicly admits an inability and inadequacy to prosecute while whistle-blowers and anti-corruption campaigners are prioritised over serial state tabled alleged corruption offences. (Anti-corruption campaigning Mayor Chris Loft attracted two concerted attempts to charge him for misconduct in his first term of office, while Pisasale’s affairs evaded scrutiny despite the accumulation of over 12 years of evidence alleging corruption directed against him).
Councils in deficit, including our own, are assuming State and Federal debts and jurisdictions, (amidst out-of-control utility bills and ongoing & outstanding environmental breaches and maintenance issues), while brokering, buying, gifting and/or leasing land and assets they don’t own and surrendering these to private and foreign entities with no formal or enforceable expectation of a public return-on-investment. These arrangements are more likely to represent an ongoing public toll, ransoming public attempt to use the publicly funded asset in future, whether the public is granted use of the asset, or not.
Not content with this, the LGAQ brokers a deal for rate-payers to unknowingly finance the legal insurance of councillors who exceed their authority in any manner requiring a legal defence. Did you know? Rate payers must be singularly generous and forgiving in allowing such licence against them, with their hard earned cash, and resources their council doesn’t even own, prioritising this assumed sense of entitlement over the needs of family and community in permitting it!
Such outrageous licence and assumptions exceed both constitutional and Local Government Act boundaries of office, and the skill set and capacity of its resources and rights. This is why awarding councils such powers was rigorously denied in repeat referendum by an Australian two-third majority.
Events continue to illustrate why the state should have adhered to the public mandate and ensured a constitutional result in compliance with the public’s majority referendum result. Why should the public wear the cost of individually assumed powers and contracts never awarded public knowledge, stakeholder scrutiny or constitutional support? How can Mayors inspire public trust and respect, or enforce behaviour with integrity or credibility, when they are participants in the whole, and alleged to be the architects of the ever greater licence being assumed against residents, without authorisation, notice or transparent public vote, as the Local Government Act specifies and requires?
When lawmakers themselves take license with the law, how can they be the defenders of it, or maintain order, when their actions undermine and defy the legal order and protections they took an oath of office to accept! Has the oath been amended to enable greater license again, and by whose authority, in the absence of a referendum majority result as the Constitution requires?
The entitlements being assumed do not exist in legal evidence or precedent, and should be contested by the public our councils allege to represent….. unless of course the public majority is willing to accept, in more of the same, unlimited liability and legal costs of the Councillors who contrive and offend against them. Get your wallets out, and dig deeper in empty pockets again, or hold such behaviour to account! Lucky for you political donations are still a tax deductible expense, but donations to public advocacy organisations are exempt of DGR tax deductibility and under determined threat. Any correlation perhaps?

Dennis Tafe, Jan 29, 2018

Despite the secrecy surrounding the Walker Proposal for Toondah Harbour and the misleading artist’s impressions of a picturesque fore-shore with walkways and without 10-storey blocks of units the truth of the commercial development proposal is finally coming out. This has as much to do with tourism and better parking facilities as the Raby Bay complex. Some of my friends who bought homes on reclaimed land in Raby Bay have spent many thousands of dollars to address land slippage because the developers did not employ due diligence.

Dave, Jan 29, 2018

This post does an interesting trace of the people and issues of the Redlands….

sam delawarr, Jan 29, 2018

OMG!!! talk about Hypocrisy just saw that both Hewlett and Bishop … “I am outraged ,Sir ,that feral developers are cutting up the Redlands for greed and profit “have both just cut up their own blocks for development !!!! what the Hell !!! not a mention here on 2030 while they are the “2 legs are better than 4 and some animals are more equal than others !!!unbelievable … while I have no issue with them wishing to use their land for their own benefit …. it is the BS and false outrage at others by this developer group and their council mates when it comes to people being able to do the same thing ….lost all credibility

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