Newly elected Councils are required by the Local Government Act to produce a ‘Council Plan’. We suppose the intent of this legislated requirement is to make councils accountable to their electorates. It can define a policy re-set for the CEO and senior management following an election.

If you are to have an impact as a councillor this can be an important and powerful document.

Last week Council released its draft plan for ‘your thoughts’. To read it won’t take long: leaving out the pictures and the introductory material it’s only a few pages. We very much encourage you to comment, because the document is in need of substantial work.

Nillumbik Council employs over three hundred staff and spends more than seventy million dollars a year in collecting our rubbish, developing and maintaining local infrastructure, providing a range of services and administering the planning scheme.

Council functions are in the main routine, and we want them to be carried out efficiently, without waste. We expect our rubbish to be collected on time, our local roads and other infrastructure to be well maintained, and important services like maternal health and pre-school centres to be well-delivered. In fact the introductory section of the draft plan relates that we have said in surveys that the “delivery of Council’s core services is of most importance to the community”

You would expect, then, that a council plan would be organized under headings which related to these functions, but this is not the case: it is instead divided into four abstract  ‘thematic areas’:

• • Community and connectedness
  • Space and place
  • Sustainability and resilience
  • Accountability

Amazing, eh? What activities go where? These headings appear to be designed to deflect rather than to expose. To be fair, this is an affliction which is not particular to the Nillumbik Council, so let’s move on to the actual content.

Along with service delivery, also acknowledged in the draft is the importance to the community of the protection of our green wedge. This concern for the green wedge has been brought into focus by offences against it which have occurred under the previous council. For example the potentially damaging decision to grant a permit for the development of a one hundred and fifty seat restaurant in the green wedge in Yarrambat. That the damage is only potential at this stage is because the fate of the application is currently in the hands of VCAT. For example the worse than ineffectual response, actually the complicit response of the planning department to the dumping of fill over a span of two years in Chapel Lane at Cottles Bridge.

Indeed, a central issue in Nillumbik during the life of the previous council and at the election was the protection of our green wedge – but it rates not much more than a mention in this draft plan. This bullet point appears under the unexplained heading ‘Identity’, within the ‘Space and Place’ theme:

• “We value and admire our Green Wedge Shire, including our rural areas and leafy urban areas, which we work hard to protect”

Since this is the only specific and vaguely action-oriented reference to the green wedge in the entire document we probably should place some weight on it – but a claim that ‘we work hard to protect’ the green wedge is not a plan, and to too great an extent it has not actually been true for the past four years.

So what is the plan for the green wedge? Listed under ‘Supporting policies, strategies and plans’ is the answer: the ‘Green Wedge Management Plan’, a  document prepared by an inexperienced consultant under the previous council, supposedly based on community consultation including the work of a community panel, but which ignored the panel’s recommendations, and which community submissions indicated, in submissions to the draft, that it hated.

The draft plan is big on ‘Key performance indicators’, but there are precisely none about the maintenance and protection of our green wedge. There is no mention of biodiversity decline or conservation, and of course no reference to any proposed activities, such as controlling fill dumping and illegal clearing,  enforcement generally or any intention to address a long running issue in Nillumbik, undersized lots.

As acknowledged in the introductory section to the draft plan, surveys and other community engagement projects reveal that our priorities feature service delivery and green wedge protection at the top of the list, and business support not at all. However, within the theme ‘Sustainable and resilient’, and under the heading ‘Business and tourism’ we find four bullet points to do with supporting businesses and a ‘vibrant local economy’.

Certainly these are pretty standard phrases to be found in many council plans, but given the lack of focus on the green wedge they tell a story of priorities. This is the sort of thing that is trotted out in support of restaurants in the green wedge in Yarrambat. The concept of an ‘economy’ has little meaning at a local government level.

This is some of our thinking. But we encourage you to make submissions about what is important to you. More work on trails? Edendale Farm? Drainage? What are your big ticket items?

Vision

Relating to the council plan, and supposedly informing it, is a ‘Community Vision’. It is meant to embrace the next ten years. A draft document was approved for comment at the last Council meeting, which for some reason looks forward 19 years, to 2040! Notably, there is no mention of a ‘vibrant economy’. The extent to which this vision has informed the council plan appears to be limited!

While it is perhaps obvious that plans need to be regularly updated, this is not so obvious in relation to ‘vision’. Does the community want a change of ‘vision’ every four years? Consider the following ‘formulation of goals for the Shire’s future’:

• To conserve and consolidate the Green Wedge
• To retain the semi-rural/township lifestyle
• To preserve bio-diversity and ecological viability
• To retain productive farmlands
• To limit sub-division and prevent ‘sprawl’, confining future building to 1995 boundaries of existing townships
• To encourage the development of sustainability
• To encourage the development of environmentally sensitive/appropriate buildings
• To encourage diversity of population and lifestyle
• To retain environmental and cultural heritage

Not bad? This little list appeared in a 1997 document entitled ‘2020 vision: A PREFERRED FUTURE’.

The point here is not that our vision for the Shire has to be set in stone, but that it is like an ongoing conversation. The danger is that in the process of producing a brand new vision every four years the conversation will become shallow, lacking real substance.

Nillumbik has a vibrant, articulate, motivated and involved community whose vision and expectations for their are not met by these drafts.

The draft council plan is on the council website here, and that page also allows you to enter some comments or to upload a submission containing your thoughts. Submissions must be made by August 26.

The draft ‘Community Vision’ is here.

Your thoughts and submissions will influence the outcome! Have your say.

Having elected a Council with a majority sympathetic to responsible management of our green wedge shire, we anticipated that steps would be taken to immediately set to work addressing  carried over problems and reversing the damage done to the Council organization.

After eight months, the difficulty and the challenge confronting the new councillors and hence the new Council is becoming clear. Damage continues to be done, clearly at variance with majority views on Council.

Former mayor Peter Clarke’s signal achievement was the installation of a CEO and a planning department which was unable or unwilling to uphold the planning scheme. Highest profile failure was the Chapel Lane fill-dumping. It was only stopped after community uproar, two years late and after thousands of tonnes of fill had been dumped in the green wedge. Whether the failure was deliberate policy or caused by laziness or incompetence, the result was costly for the green wedge, Council finances and the amenity of affected residents.

The Chapel Lane debacle is historical but the Bannons Lane restaurant proposal is not. The previous Council inappropriately granted a permit for a 150 seat restaurant in the green wedge at Yarrambat, based on the transparent pretext  that it was ‘in conjunction’ with agriculture – agriculture being sixty two olive trees which are yet to be planted!

VCAT is about to hear an appeal against the Council’s decision from affected residents, and we trust VCAT will do its job and uphold the appeal. But if they do it will be no thanks to council’s planning department  which continues to support the proposal, despite it being crystal clear that, not only does the proposal violate the planning scheme, it is no longer supported by a majority of our Councillors. Incredibly, officers are planning to spend our money on  legal representation to support  the case for the restaurant at the Tribunal!

All the while the CEO claims there’s no money.

Aside from new mayor Peter Perkins and former mayor Karen Egan, all of the other councillors are first timers, and so would have been heavily occupied in getting  to grips with the major task  of what being a councillor involves. However, life moves on and decisions need to be made that will stamp the new council’s authority on future council directions.

For instruction on how councillors can make a difference there is no better tutorial than the conduct of former Mayor Peter Clarke, who used his procedural skills to cull the council organization, and particularly the planning department. But first, some background.

Anti-regulation lobby group PALS employed a noisy misinformation campaign about two amendments proposed by the 2012 Council as the basis of their campaign to have their candidates elected in 2016. Hardly anyone knew what the amendments actually contained, but the numbers ‘C81’ and ‘C101’ were presented as codes representing a threat to life as we know it. In fact these amendments, while significant, were routine. C101 was but the latest step in a long running project to update the Environment Significance Overlays across the Shire. Years of work had informed it, it was subject to public comment and particular issues with mapping were resolved in an orderly process. But a noisy group of self-interested landowners began organizing to obstruct it. Their organization resulted in crowd-threatening violence at the special Council  committee meeting convened specifically to approve sending the amendment to a Planning Panel, the proper process when there are community objections to a Planning Scheme amendment. But so intimidating was the behaviour of the crowd at this meeting, of the ‘Policy and Services Committee’ meeting held on 13 April 2016, that a majority of the councillors took fright, and voted not only not to send C101 to a Planning Panel, but to abandon it entirely!

Subsequently the Council recovered its wits and at the following ordinary Council meeting decided that the Policy and Services Committee had exceeded its authority when it abandoned C101, and voted to rescind the abandonment. Council subsequently commissioned legal advice which supported this action.

Shortly after the unfortunate, rowdy meeting Karen Egan, former Mayor and current Bunjil Councillor, formed the PALS lobby group, giving a Facebook presence to the noisy mob.

Some months later PALS took a QC to VCAT, claiming that the abandonment of C101 in April was legal and should stand. And VCAT agreed! Furthermore, PALS claimed that, since C101 had been legally abandoned, that the Council had erred in not informing the Minister of this. Remember that Council had rescinded the abandonment, and had legal advice supporting the rescission. But VCAT agreed with this too!

This is all water under the bridge, of course, but it was the starting point for the gutting of the Council organization.

The pro-development Clarke, with his faithful ally Cr Ranken, made common cause with the PALS councillors Egan and Ashton to form a voting bloc of four on Council. At the very first meeting of the new Council the key item on the agenda was a report on the two amendments, obviously orchestrated  by Clarke. A flurry of motions followed:

[that Council] Undertakes an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the failure of Council to notify the Minister for Planning of the abandonment of Planning Scheme Amendment C101 at the Special Meeting of Council’s Policy and Services Committee held on 13 April 2016.

This was disingenuous, purely a tactic. Everyone understood the circumstances. The meeting in April was the one threatened with violence by pre-PALS thugs. This was nothing more than a ruse to get a consultant in. Next:

[that Council]  Appoints Mr Christopher Wren QC as independent investigator to undertake this investigation and request that he reports directly to Council via the Mayor with all contact with Mr Wren to be through the Mayor or Council’s solicitors Hunt & Hunt.

So, note that Council specifies who will do the investigation, and cuts Council officers out of the loop, with reporting being back to the Mayor, not to the CEO.

Terms of reference are extensive and broad, encouraging the consultant to go for broke, and quickly. They include:

In order to ensure that high standards of governance are maintained, advises Council what action Council should take or procedures it should implement as a result of this investigation

This is typical wording: it’s supposed to be about ‘high standards of governance’, when in fact it’s about attacking the organization.

The QC duly completed his investigation, only the ‘executive summary’ of which was made public, but that doesn’t matter. It was not a substantial report, but it contained what was required:

the report also draws attention to complaints concerning the actions and culture within certain Council departments and suggests that these are matters the incoming CEO address

So, open slather for the new, hand-picked CEO. This was confirmed at a special council meeting held on February 22, 2017, at which an Egan /Ashton motion ‘Requests the Acting Chief Executive Officer to ..  Take the necessary actions to implement the findings of the issues raised.’

Nothing specific mentioned of course: leave it to the CEO and the Mayor.

The result was huge staff turnover, including the loss of all senior planning staff. Planning is of course a key function of Council, and proper assessments and decision making require expertise and a good knowledge of the planning scheme. As an indicator of the decline of the planning department, compare the treatment of two development applications, one at the beginning of the 2016 Council’s term, the other at the end.

The first concerned a dwelling proposed for a property in the RCZ in North Warrandyte, involving a football field-sized clearing on ridgeline. Council officers recommended that the application be rejected. This was not to the liking of Council, so they ‘called it in’ and reversed the decision, in favour of the developer. Following objections and community-driven legal processes at VCAT and the Supreme Court the development was thwarted, effectively validating the officers’ recommendation.

Four years later, none of the staff responsible for the correct, Pigeon Bank Road recommendation remain. Along comes an application for a 150 seat restaurant in the green wedge at Yarrambat. The Council had so changed the planning department that it saw its function to be the approval of development proposals, not the professional implementation of the planning scheme.

Eight months after the election we are still at the beginning of the road.