2022-11-28: Amen and Amen (and AGM)

Most people come to a council meeting looking for something to happen. They might be advocating for or against a planning item, or have a question to ask, or just want to be there when a big thing happens.¹ Whatever the case, if you watch enough,² you will come to the conclusion that, for factors no one involved seems to be in control of, most people don’t and indeed cannot get what they want.

Tonight, in what turned out to be a bumper meeting, I present a slice of this philosophy, as an uncaring planning system sends much of a packed gallery home unhappy.

Council’s policy on Public Question Time³ provides that it will last for at most fifteen minutes⁴, that members of the public may each ask one question without notice, though the chair has discretion to allow further questions, and perhaps most important to tonight’s proceedings, that “All questions and answers must be kept as brief as possible,” and that it “provides an opportunity for people to ask questions about Council’s activities, not make statements.”

Opening tonight’s questions without notice is David Beard, a councillor over in Tasman who is also the General Manager of the Motor Yacht Club Tasmania. Beard requests the opportunity to ask, and does eventually ask, two questions, but his first question is preceded by a considerably lengthy segment of largely irrelevant background, much of which is spent inviting Councillors to visit the Club.

Across the river in Hobart they more explicitly define their terms: “Individuals will be allocated 60 seconds combined to provide a background and ask their question.” The background to David Beard’s first question is two and a half minutes long. When he does eventually get to asking the question, it turns out to be one staff can’t answer, because it relates to the assessment of a planning application that is still being assessed.

Beard’s second and thankfully much briefer question relates to Pindos Park in Tranmere, a play space for which will be going out to tender early next year: Will it be delivered within the financial year? Dunno, depends on the contractors.

Really, as a councillor from another council, and not a new one either,⁵ Beard should know better than to pull this sort of thing during public question time, but a bigger question I have is why the Mayor didn’t push him to get to the point. Early instalment jitters again? Probably, but either Blomeley needs to learn to put his foot down or Clarence’s policy needs to take a leaf out of Hobart’s book and put explicit limits on question length.⁶

Tonight’s other question without notice comes from thrice-unsuccessful Council⁷ and once-unsuccessful state Franklin⁸ candidate Michael Figg, who wants to know where Lauderdale’s stormwater management plan is. As we find out later tonight, stormwater engineers are in pretty short supply. 2026-27 is floated as a potential timeframe for flood risk mitigation projects in Lauderdale, but with the supply issues I get the impression even that might be generous.

These two planning items have caused me much consternation and delay. Trying to cover them has completely discouraged me from putting in the work, which is why this post has taken so long. For the sake of my sanity, I will keep my comments general.

There were deputations on both planning items tonight, one on the Clifton Beach application and two on the Cremorne application. The Clifton Beach and one of the Cremorne deputations came up against the three minute limit imposed by Council policy,⁹ and the Clifton Beach deputation additionally brought a presentation that couldn’t be shown. My recommendations to aspiring speakers to council include:

• Ensure that you can comfortably relay the information you have to give within the three minutes allotted.¹⁰ You will not be allowed any sort of extension.

• If you have any sort of supplementary material, you should provide it to councillors ahead of time.¹¹ Each councillor has an email address listed on council’s website.

• Barring that, bringing hard copy/s of said supplemental material to be distributed amongst councillors is a reasonable play.¹²

• And you can just talk to them, if you can rustle up the spoons to deal with social interaction.¹³

The similarities between the two developments are impressive: Both coastal properties, both facing concerns around setbacks, one with further concerns around bulk and scale and the other overdevelopment, both begrudgingly moved by Councillor Hulme and again begrudgingly seconded by Councillor Walker.

Nobody comes away from tonight’s planning segment in high spirits. I glance across the gallery. The absolute despair and disdain on the faces is really impossible to capture in words. The councillors make their own displeasure clear, but at the same time all admit that planning scheme, the planning commission, TASCAT and the state government have combined to tie their collective hands.

Councillor James wonders why no one came to the meeting with an alternative motion to refuse ready for either item, but admits he doesn’t have one ready either, as he’d been hoping someone else would. Councillor, “someone will get to it” is exactly how no one gets to it. Councillor Mulder is unconvinced any alternative would have legs, anyway, and I would tend to agree based on the debate.

Both items’ recommendations are struck down, in the end, but with no alternative provided the road becomes murky. The CEO takes a rare opportunity to talk to an officer in private just after the first vote, and returns with the advice that he will ask the proponents of each development for an extension to come to a decision, but barring that it will go to the planning staff by deputation, at which point the recommendations will go through anyway.¹⁵

I should be clear that I do not blame the planning staff at all for any of this. They’re all working in the same system (and with less staff than they’d like to have) and provide councillors with their best judgement as to what is the correct decision.[^legal]

[^legal] In the legal sense of the word correct.

If you feel in any way disillusioned by this turn of events, welcome to the club. Planning is where most dreams go to die, and there’s so much to go around. That the system has developed to this point is an absolute travesty, but I have no grand solutions to offer you, no words of consolation to soothe this pain. This is the way things are, and it is bad.

Congratulations to the Rosny College Springboard Kizuna Drummers on their (largely) successful partnership grant application for a new project in their ongoing Taiko program, and commiserations to the other applicants, missing the mark for various reasons. Polish up those plans, and better luck in the next round.

Another month, another TasNetworks easement. Substation moving 30 metres up the road. Nothing exciting, obvious unanimous vote.

A land swap with Homes Tasmania as they aim to build some houses along Chipmans Road in Rokeby, as well as a small land purchase by a neighbour, reduces the public open space at 36 Duntroon Drive to a small chunk in the corner. Cr Mulder notes a missed opportunity in conjunction with Rokeby Beach, which now abuts several industrial developments and a gymnastics academy.¹⁶ In exchange, Council gets 17 Goodwins Road in Clarendon Vale, apparently critical to the Bayview Sporting Precinct. Rokeby isn’t really at a loss for open space, though I note the objectors’ concerns about flatness.

As expected, the once-every-three-weeks Council meeting schedule continues. There’s brief mention that the 16 January meeting might not happen if nothing comes up, though I’d be concerned about the regulatory requirement for at least one meeting per month.¹⁷

The big surprise for me is what didn’t happen at this meeting. Committee membership remains in limbo, and the mooted moment of recognition for former Aldermen Peers and von Bertouch didn’t end up happening. I’m sure we’ll get to all that eventually, but I am no less confused for that certainty.

It’s a bit scary looking at the flood maps Council released back at the start of 2021. I have to wonder, with the frequency and intensity of recent flooding events, whether they aren’t already out of date. Setting aside homes, I worry about the key infrastructure we’ve put in the low-lying places flooding affects most badly, y’know, shopping centres, schools, we set much of the Tasman Highway in a valley next to a rivulet, these things add up, they have consequences.

Much of the conversation revolves around whether the motion is actually deliverable in the current resourcing environment, but the word from the CEO and the Group Manager Engineering Services is this was the sort of thing Council was probably going to do anyway. They really can’t stress the resourcing problems enough, though. Councillor Walker asks about the private sector, but no, they’re in the same boat.

Council reportedly has a literal “rainy day fund” by the good foresight of a previous Chief Financial Officer, an amount set aside every year to build up and be spent when current stormwater assets… All come due at about the same time? Well that doesn’t allay my worry at all.

As climate change barrels on, this will be one of the many problems facing not just this LGA but everyone. Councillor Mulder seems to have gotten the impression there were a couple of against votes coming, but he needn’t have worried…

For many years, Council has opened its meetings with a prayer, which reads:

Almighty God, we humbly beseech thee to vouch safe thy blessing upon this Council. Direct and prosper its deliberations to the advancement of thy glory and the true welfare of the City of Clarence. Amen.

The prayer was carefully drafted to (supposedly) remove it from any Christian context, but in doing so failed to remove it from its religious context. This sort of thing, religious observance in meetings of government bodies, has always been weird and wrong to me, and so, in March, when Councillor Warren put up a motion of notice that would have moved the Acknowledgement of Country to the top of the agenda and replaced the prayer with a minute’s silence, I quickly drafted a deputation and headed for chambers. By the time I got there, removing the prayer had come off the table. C’est la vie.

A new Council arrives and very quickly the motion above shows up. And so, armed with new data, I threw together another deputation and once more found myself on a bus to Eastlands. I get the impression my speech received a mixed reaction from the gallery,¹⁸ but no matter, my target audience were the twelve councillors seated in front of me.

Almost an hour and a half later, the debate proper began. The debate was entirely calm, and largely relevant, barring a strange contribution from Councillor Goyne regarding the Lord’s Prayer,¹⁹ which is: a) not the prayer under consideration nor as far as I am aware has it ever been council’s official prayer; and b) does not in any way mention the Commonwealth²⁰ as she suggests. Birthday or not, I do generally expect people to bring pertinent arguments to the table, and this is not a good start.

I categorically reject the idea presented by some councillors that anyone is actually excluded by not having a prayer at the start of a council meeting, and indeed, the data shows that more people are already excluded by its inclusion. I think the original motion was set to pass,²² but some councillors got hung up on the idea that the prayer would be replaced with moving on to the next part of the agenda until further discussion could be had.

Frankly, I’d’ve been fine if it’d been left at that, the idea that Council needs some sort of statement of intent is a bit silly to me, it doesn’t make any difference to what actually goes on in the chambers, which as I’ve seen the past few years can be far from professional. It’s swapping noise for noise, and a waste of time, IMO.

Unfortunately, even when we get what we want we can’t always get exactly what we want. Councillor Walker requested an amendment to the motion, which was accepted by the mover and seconder, and after some exhaustive drafting, redrafting and reredrafting, it then read:

Which seems to be on course to take up about the same time as the prayer did. My suspicion is that we’ll get to the end of the trial and this will become the status quo, which is mildly disappointing to me. Ignoring my objections to the religious element of the old prayer, I can’t help but feel that both it and this new thing are getting in the way of getting on with things.

The story from Councillor Chong about her mother was nice though, and even though it wasn’t a complete victory, I will take what I get here. This could’ve been worse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m largely happy. I… exhales Moving on.

Tonight’s keywords: Potholes, abandoned service stations,²³ playgrounds, derelict buildings,²⁴ Arm End,²⁵ Department of Defence,²⁶ Pass Road,²⁷ Snap Send Solve

And I’d stop there if not for having taken so long to write this a whole Annual General Meeting happened in the interim, but nothing particularly interesting happened that wasn’t the usual mayor, CEO and CFO presentations.

There was confirmation at that meeting that Monday’s meeting will include the long-awaited and potentially-final-but-something’ll-probably-come-up-later next chapter in the Chambroad Kangaroo Bay saga. And then it’s the holidays. At some point I’ll be doing a quick flick through the candidate expenditure returns for the elections just past, but that’ll depend on how quickly the Electoral Commission forwards them through to Council.

Come back… Next week? Ack. Sorry again. This one was rough.

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