CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillors, Council officers, members
of the public gallery and the broader community following
the meeting via livestreaming, welcome to the 27 June 2023 Council meeting.
In accordance with Council&apos;s Governance Rules, members
of the community were afforded the opportunity
to provide a written statement or request to speak in relation
to eligible agenda items for tonight&apos;s meeting.
This meeting is being recorded and streamed live on the internet
to enhance the accessibility of Council meetings
to the broader Bayside community.
The recordings are archived and available on Council&apos;s website.
All care is taken to maintain your privacy.
However, as a visitor in the public gallery,
your presence may be recorded.
A reminder also to councillors, officers and members of the public gallery
to check that your mobile phones are switched off or placed on silent
during the meeting.
Thank you, councillors.
We will now commence with the items on the agenda.
Item 1, the prayer.
I would like to invite Councillor Samuel-King
to read the prayer.
Could all present please stand.
CR SAMUEL-KING: O God, bless this City, Bayside, give us courage, strength
and wisdom so that our deliberations may be for the good of all.
Amen.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Acknowledgment of Country.
Please remain standing.
I would like to invite Councillor Stitfold to read the Acknowledgment of Country.
CR STITFOLD: Bayside City Council proudly acknowledges the Bunurong people
of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners and custodians
of this land and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging
as well as any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community
members with us today.
Council acknowledges the Bunurong&apos;s continuing relationship to the land
and waterways and respect that their connection
and spiritual identity is maintained through ancient ceremonies, songlines,
dance, art and living culture.
Council pays tribute to the invaluable contributions
of the Bunurong and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders
who have guided and continue to guide the work we do.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Moving to item 3, apologies.
There are no apologies for tonight.
Declarations of Interest, Councillor Samuel-King,
I believe you have a conflict of interest you wish to declare?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
It is 10.6, the rezoning of the Yalukit-Willam Nature Reserve
and Highett Grassy Woodland.
It&apos;s a general conflict of interest.
My partner has been appointed project lead or strategic consultant
of the Yalukit-Willam Nature Reserve Masterplan Development.
I have filled out the red form and will be leaving the meeting.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
What about item 8.4?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Forgive me.
8.4, exactly as I just said.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
And Councillor Stitfold, I understand you also have a conflict
of interest you wish to declare?
CR STITFOLD: I have three conflicts of interest: 7.1, 9 and 10.4, all related
to Melrose Street.
I live within 50m of Melrose Street.
I filled out the form and submitted it.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
We&apos;re moving to item 5, adoption and confirmation of the minutes
of the previous meetings.
CR MARTIN: Happy to move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Do we have a seconder?
Thank you.
Would you like to debate?
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem
and it is carried.
Item 6, public question time.
In accordance with Council&apos;s Governance Rules,
there will be a maximum of 15 minutes allocated
for public question time.
The questions and responses read out during this time
will be published in the minutes.
All questions, even those not read out in the allocated time,
will be responded to in writing.
No more than two questions with a maximum of two parts
to each question are permitted per individual.
The reading of each question will be limited to the question only.
Any associated preamble will not be read out unless required for clarity.
It should be also noted that on occasion, the CEO or Mayor may determine
to redact or disallow a question on the basis that it does not comply
with Council&apos;s Governance Rules.
We start with question number 1 from the Hon.
Timothy Wilson.
The Hon.
Timothy Wilson submitted a question regarding Council&apos;s Citizenship Ceremonies
and Mr Wilson asked: how many Bayside Citizenship Ceremonies were held
between 2 July 2016 to 2 July 2017 and how many
of them did our then Federal MP Tim Wilson attend?
And part B: and how many Bayside Citizenship
Ceremonies were held between 21 May 2022 and 21 May 2023 and how many
of them did our Federal MP Zoe Daniel attend?
Response through the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, in response to part A of the question,
during the period July 2016 to July 2017, six Citizenship Ceremonies were held
and the former Federal Member attended four ceremonies.
In response to part B, during May 2022 to May 2023,
10 Citizenship Ceremonies were held and the current Federal Member
attended one ceremony.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr CEO.
Question number two also from the Hon.
Timothy Wilson.
The Hon.
Timothy Wilson asked: an article in The Age newspaper published
on 26 April 2023 includes quotes from an unnamed councillor that questions
being put to Council by ratepayers is &apos;annoying&apos;.
Is this the position of Council?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, as previously advised to Mr Wilson
in writing, dated 3 May 2023, the comments quoted in the newspaper
do not in any way represent the position
of Council.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Moving to question 3 from Mr Alf Marrocco.
Mr Alf submitted a question regarding Wishart Reserve and he asked:
has the Council taken into consideration the local residents
who live close to and back on to Wishart Reserve with regards
to noise levels with the current off-lead dog park
and the potential new changes to the off-lead dog park and, if so, how?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, a four-week community engagement process was held
to gather community and stakeholder feedback
on the overall concept design.
Community engagement was conducted in accordance with Council&apos;s Community
and Stakeholder Engagement Policy.
An engagement plan overview was published and was available to view
on Council&apos;s Have Your Say engagement website.
Feedback was gathered via a survey, an online question and answer forum,
two on-site develop-in sessions, written submissions, a petition,
social media and additional site meetings.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question number 4: Mr Alf Marrocco submitted a further question
regarding Wishart Reserve and he asked: can Council discuss the design
of Wishart Reserve?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, a report will be considered later
in this agenda this evening where Council will discuss the proposed design upgrade
to the area of Wishart Reserve that is designated as an off-leash space.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question 5 from Mr David Low.
Mr David Low submitted a question regarding Council&apos;s use of pesticides,
and Mr Low asked: Council has committed to reducing its use
of toxic pesticides in the management of unwanted vegetation and other forms
of unwanted life, such as unwanted insects.
Can residents please have an update from Council officers
on what progress has been made toward fulfilling this agreed commitment?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, Bayside Council aims
to progressively phase out the use of hazardous chemicals
across the municipality in its open space operations.
Council has expanded its use of steam to treat weeds in or near playgrounds,
kindergartens, childcare centres, Council Community Centres
and Council Vegetable Gardens.
Any use of hazardous chemicals must be done
in accordance with the relevant safety data sheets
for each product and in line with industry standards set
by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority
and WorkSafe.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Question number 6 from Mr Jeff Naylor.
Mr Jeff Naylor submitted a question regarding Changing Places facilities
and disability elements within Council playgrounds,
and Mr Naylor asked: Part A, how many Changing Places bathrooms has
Bayside City Council built in the 2022/23 financial year and, part B,
how many wheelchair and other disability elements have been
installed in Bayside playgrounds
in the 2022/23 financial year?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, in response to part A of the question,
there were no new Changing Places facilities built in the 22/23 financial
year.
However, a number are in various stages of development.
Projects include Halfmoon Bay Life Saving Club,
Beaumaris Arts Centre and the Yalukit-Willam Gateway Building.
More information on upcoming Changing Places locations can
be found on Council&apos;s Changing Places Locations
website.
In relation to part B of the question, there were no playgrounds renewed
in 22/23 due to a realignment of the capital works program following
COVID.
All playgrounds designed at a regional or district level have
inclusive play elements and accessible connective pathways.
However, playgrounds classified as pocket parks or local parks have
restrictive budgets that do not extend to equipment of this type.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question from Mr Maurice Ekanayake.
Mr Maurice Ekanayake submitted a question regarding Wishart Reserve
and Mr Ekanayake asked: I am very disappointed with the survey questions as
they were skewed in favour of the dog owners who bring their dogs
to the park.
Can the Council please provide evidence that the questionnaire was, in fact,
reviewed by an independent consultant to review any bias?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, the survey was drafted
to help understand community sentiment regarding the proposed design
for the Wishart Reserve dog off-lead area and
to implement the Wishart Reserve concept design, including options
for improving dog off-leash opportunities in order to deliver
on the Council Plan Action 3.1.3.1.
Feedback came from different sections of the community.
The survey asked respondents why do you visit Wishart Reserve.
Answer options included categories of dog Walkers, neighbours,
playground users or others, to understand their connection
to the reserve so feedback could be attributed to different user groups.
The survey was one of a number of methods used to gain feedback
from different site stakeholders within the community.
All feedback was analysed and reviewed by an independent
and suitably qualified research consultant who produced an engagement summary report
which Council will consider at tonight&apos;s meeting.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question number 8 from Mr Geoffrey Leigh.
Mr Geoffrey Leigh submitted a question regarding Council&apos;s level of rates,
and Mr Leigh asked the question: since Council this year made a profit
of $32.6 million and have cash and investments worth $110 million,
how can our councillors justify an increase of our rates by 3.5%?
Response from the Chair.
CEO: Through you, Chair, the $32.5 million surplus includes capital
funding for specific projects as well as non-cash contributed assets.
Once those one-off items are stripped out, the underlying operating surplus
of $14.9 million provides the cash required to invest in the replacement
of community infrastructure and ensure that Council assets are meeting
their service needs.
Council&apos;s cash reserves will be drawn down by $17.1 million in the 2023/24 Budget
to support service delivery and the capital program.
The Council has budgeted to deliver a capital program of
over $210 million over the next four years and cash reserves will be used
to fund a significant part of that program.
The capital program will deliver significant new assets
including the new Warm Water Pool and the replacement of sporting
and Life Saving Club pavilions, early-years infrastructure
and the ongoing transformation of Elsternwick Park.
CPI has increased significantly in the last 12 months, peaking at 7.8%
in December 2022, well above the &apos;22/23 rate cap of 1.75%,
with CPI expected to remain well above the rate cap of 3.5% set for &apos;23/24.
This has, and will continue to, negatively impact on Council&apos;s service
and construction costs.
Despite this, the net cost of service delivery will increase
by 3.5% compared to the &apos;22/23 forecast and will require Council
to carefully manage a very tight budget in the current economic climate.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question 9.
Ms Nola Clark submitted a question regarding Wishart Reserve,
and Ms Clark asked: during the consultation period, I,
like many small dog owners, requested a separate area
at Wishart Reserve for small dogs to use.
This would benefit all dog owners, as having large and small dogs together
in play can cause injuries due to a mismatch in size.
I would like to know why this opportunity was
overlooked, given the various submissions on this point.
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, a wide variety of feedback was collected
during consultation process.
The designs proposed are in accordance with industry practice outlined
in the Technical Manual &apos;Planning Design and Management of Off-Leash Areas&apos;.
Council provides a wide variety of off-leash areas
to meet the diverse needs of Bayside&apos;s dogs and their owners.
The space at Wishart Reserve is designed for dogs who are comfortable
in a fully fenced off-leash area.
A dog&apos;s ability to play and socialise with other dogs is not governed
by its size alone.
Owners&apos; views about their dogs&apos; size and behaviour is also likely
to be subjective.
Owners must also have effective control of their dog at all times.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
We have question number 10 from Ms Sharon Nicholls.
Mrs Sharon Nicholls submitted a question regarding Wishart Reserve
and Mrs Nicholls asked: please can you consider moving the digging pit away
from the edge of the park to reduce disruption
to those properties that back on to the digging area to reduce the impact
of dust, dirt and noise to property, as suggested in option A?
Suggest moving it to a more central location in the middle
of the park to reduce impact on residents.
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, following a design review, the digging pit
is proposed to be moved further towards the centre of the reserve
in both options A and B outlined in the report which
will be considered later in this meeting.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Question 11 from Mr Ashley Moore.
Mr Ashley Moore submitted a question regarding Council rates,
and Mr Moore asked: noting that the Budget delivers an underlying surplus
far in excess of the Council rates increase,
14.9 surplus versus 3.2 million incremental rates,
why has Council prioritised increasing the surplus over moderation
of the increase in rates to citizens and ratepayers?
Response from CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, the rate increase of 3.5% is required to fund the increase
in operating and capital expenditure.
The net cost of operations is budgeted to increase by 3.5% compared
to the &apos;22/23 forecast in an environment where CPI will be well
above the rate cap.
The operating surplus of $14.9 million provides the cash
required to invest in the replacement of community infrastructure and
to ensure that Council&apos;s assets are meeting their service needs.
It should be noted that Council is budgeting for a cash deficit
of $17.1 million in 2023/24.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question number 12 from Mr Kevin Nicholls.
Mr Kevin Nicholls submitted a question regarding Wishart Reserve,
and Mr Nicholls asked: regarding Wishart dog
reserve development proposals, 85% love it or OK seems
to reflect an aggregating of responses to imply that a significant majority are
strongly in favour.
This might be disguising a large variation between responses which might give
a very different impression.
What were the specific response options to the questionnaire
and what was the actual percentage breakdown by each response?
Response from CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, a complete breakdown of responses
is published in the community engagement report,
available in the Council meeting agenda and published on the projects Have
you Say webpage.
The aggregation referred to in the question was published
as a high level summary.
All feedback was analysed and reviewed by an independent
and suitably qualified research consultant who produced an engagement summary report
which Council will consider at tonight&apos;s meeting.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Another question from Mr Kevin Nicholls
regarding Wishart Reserve, and Mr Nicholls asked:
regarding Wishart Dog Park redevelopment, almost three-quarters, 62.5%,
of respondents who live nearby and will therefore be impacted the most
have some concerns, 37.5%, or don&apos;t like it at all, at 25%.
Given the majority of local residents, how can two revised plans be proposed
that are almost identical to the original design in all
but detail when those objections and concerns contain significant issues
like the lack of parking around the park, broader community park use
and the increased noise, dust and soiling of the park associated
with additional use age and new amenities?
Response from CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, the projects specifically looked
at how Council could implement the Wishart Reserve concept design, including options
for improving dog off-leash opportunities.
The use of land for purposes other than the dog off-leash
reserve was out of scope for the consultation.
All community feedback was analysed and reviewed by an independent
and qualified research consultant.
CR EL MOUALLEM: We have a question from Mr Leigh Funston.
Mr Leigh submitted a question regarding Bayside 2050 Community Vision
and he asked: given the power of this Bayside 2050 Community Vision
document to influence and guide Bayside Council&apos;s expenditure
priorities and policies, why did Council entrust just 28 people
who were not elected by the 100,000-plus residents of Bayside
to develop the Vision document?
And part B, what were the specific criteria
by which these 28 people were elected?
Response from the CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, in response to part A of the question,
all Victorian Councils must develop a Community Vision using deliberative
community engagement practices under the Local Government Act 2020.
To create the Bayside 2050 Community Vision,
more than 850 local residents shared their ideas and feedback
for the future via a range of activities including workshops,
discussion groups, interviews, pop-ups and a survey.
A representative community panel considered this feedback
in the development of the Bayside 2050 Community Vision.
In response to part B of the question, an open expression
of interest process was held, inviting all residents that live in Bayside
to register to be considered for the Bayside 2050 community panel,
which attracted more than 200 applications.
Community panel members were selected via a random stratified selection process
independently managed by an external consultant.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
That concludes public question time as the 15 minutes allocated has expired.
The remaining questions will be responded to in writing.
We are moving to section 7, that is reception and reading
of petitions, 7.1, petition for Council to proceed
with the proposed temporary road closure of part of Melrose Street, Sandringham.
Can I have a mover?
CR EVANS: Move that the petition be received.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Sorry, Councillor Evans.
We have a conflict of interest.
CR EVANS: Oh, very sorry.
Didn&apos;t see that.
Sorry, Councillor Stitfold.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Evans, you may proceed.
CR EVANS: Sorry about that.
I move the recommendation that the petition be received and considered
in conjunction with the substantive report on this matter included in this agenda.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Seconded by Councillor del Porto.
Would you like to debate?
CR EVANS: No, thanks.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Cr El Mouallem, and it is carried.
Can we please call Councillor Stitfold back.
Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
Moving to section 8, minutes of Advisory Committees.
8.1, records of meetings held under the auspices of Council.
Can I have a mover?
Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
And a seconder?
Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Any debate?
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
8.2, minutes of the Audit and Risk Committee meeting held
on 15 May 2023.
Can I have a mover?
CR EVANS: I move the recommendation.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Councillor Martin, thank you.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Just a question, Mr Mayor.
Just regarding the risks that were identified by the risk and audit committee
- high risks, I might add, four of them, what is Council doing
about the cybersecurity risks that were identified by the Audit
and Risk Committee?
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
OFFICER: Through you, Mr Mayor, Bayside City Council have a really
robust cybersecurity posture.
Whilst the internal audit identified that there were strong controls in place,
there wasn&apos;t a strategic approach in relation to cybersecurity.
Bayside have already undertaken some work around implementing
- commencing a road map and have also gone out to market to secure a resource
to be able to implement those actions.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further questions or debate?
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
Moving to 8.3, Minutes of the Disability Access
and Inclusion Advisory Committee meeting held on 29 May 2023.
Councillor Martin to move.
And do I have a seconder?
Councillor del Porto, thank you.
Any debate?
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
I believe we do have conflict of interest on 8.4?
CR SAMUEL-KING: I will leave.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
8.4, councillors.
Minutes of the Yalukit-Willam Nature Reserve.
Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Seconder?
CR EVANS: Seconded.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, I just wanted to say that the committee was established
in 2022 and I had the pleasure to chair it for the first time the other day
with your support.
I thought it went very well.
We looked at an update on proposed gateway building, update
on Yalukit Willam wetland project, and the Nature Reserve management plan
workshop.
It&apos;s a very impressive committee.
Members are highly intelligent, really knowledgeable about the topic,
so it was a pleasure to be there with you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Yes, the update on the proposed gateway building,
again I see this as one of the prime buildings
within our municipality as a gateway building
and wish everybody the best of luck to get it going and I see
- I&apos;ve been talking to the Director of Infrastructure about the way
in which we should be going so that we can choose very good architects
to do that particular building because I think it will be a building that
we should be proud of and is at the start of our municipality.
So I wish them all the best with their endeavours
in choosing an architect and also getting on with the gateway building.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Any further comments?
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem, and it is carried.
Can we call Councillor Samuel-King, please.
Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
We are on section 9, reports by Special Committees.
I believe we have a conflict of interest on the 9.1, minutes
of the Special Committee of Council held on 19 April 2023 to hear submissions
in relation to the proposed temporary road closure
of part of Melrose Street, Sandringham.
Councillor Stitfold.
Councillors, can I have a mover?
CR EVANS: Move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Seconded by Councillor Martin.
Would you like to debate?
Any debate from the floor?
No debate.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Cr El Mouallem and it is carried.
Can we call Councillor Stitfold back, please.
Moving to section 10, reports by the organisation.
Councillors and members of the gallery, there were nine Written Statements
received for tonight&apos;s meeting.
In addition there were 12 requests to speak received.
In accordance with Council&apos;s Governance Rules, the names
of those who have submitted a written statement will be read out
at the commencement of each item and recorded in the minutes.
However, statements are not read out to the meeting.
We will then hear from any registered speakers who
will each have two minutes to make their presentation.
The time will be electronically displayed on the screen above and
after the time has expired you will hear this sound.
(Buzzer).
A reminder also to the speakers to contain your presentation
to the subject matter.
Please also ensure your comments are respectful and refrain
from making any derogatory or defamatory comments of any councillor, member
of Council staff or member of the community.
Should you be in breach of this requirement, your presentation
will be immediately terminated and you will be asked to return to your seat.
Should you have any documents or pictures to be circulated to councillors as part
of your presentation, please indicate when you approach
the speakers table and the Governance Manager
will review the documents first and assist in distributing them to each councillor.
Moving to 10.1, which is Council plan 2021-25 year 3 Review
and Annual Action Plan.
No requests to be heard received tonight.
CR DEL PORTO: Moved.
CR EL MOUALLEM: And I have a seconder.
Do you mind standing up, please.
And seconded by Councillor Samuel-King.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I&apos;m happy to move the third year review of the Council plan 2021-25
and the Annual Action Plan 23/24 for adoption following community
consultation.
Under our Planet goal, we will act on the climate emergency
and environmental sustainability, protect and enhance Bayside&apos;s biodiversity
and conserve our wonderful natural environment.
I am particularly proud of the Bayside community progress
in reducing the amount of waste we send to landfill,
with diversion rates leaping to 71% from 49%, Mr Mayor,
over the last four years.
For our people, it
will encourage community health and resilience, foster connection,
social capital and mental wellbeing.
A highlight of this goal is our strong commitment
to supporting our ageing community through increased
and comprehensive aged care services.
Our Council has proudly chosen to not only stay in this space
but also expand our commitment.
Enhancing our place means we will create and maintain places
and spaces where our community can connect , gather and celebrate.
Key projects under our place to be realised this year include delivery
of the Dendy Beach pavilion, Tulip Street basketball stadium,
continued work on the Warm Water Pool, Beaumaris Arts Centre
and Wangara Road park masterplan.
I am happy also to see the Billilla Mansion
and precinct restoration program beginning to take shape, ably assisted
by the Billilla Advisory Committee.
I commend the Council plan and Annual Action Plan
to my fellow councillors.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: This is an incredibly proactive plan
by an efficient and effective and go-getter Council.
From a person perspective, I too am incredibly proud, Mr Mayor,
of what we&apos;re doing in The Aged care space.
The Warm Water Pool is another one very dear to my heart
and I look forward to many of our residents being able
to enjoy a really beautiful space to recover from illness.
From a climate change and biodiversity perspective,
we&apos;re reviewing the Biodiversity Action Plan, also developing an ornamental lake
management plan: I would love to see those lakes restored
to their former beauty.
There&apos;s much, much more we&apos;re doing and I&apos;m very much looking forward
to being a part of it.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Any further debate?
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Mr Mayor, just a very small point that is taken up on page 40.
But it&apos;s an important point for some of the aged care people
and I completely agree with Councillor Samuel-King,
the work that we&apos;re doing in our aged care to keep our aged care at home
is absolutely marvellous.
It is something that we as a Council should be very supportive of.
But just as a little trick one in here on page 40, 12 submissions
on a petanque piste, Mr Mayor.
I&apos;ve been on about a petanque piste for a little while and I&apos;m glad
to see that they&apos;re already included in the Budget and actioned by some
of our elderly members of our community.
So one of the little gems that&apos;s in our Council plan, action plan,
that has been coming into fruition after a couple of years of advocacy.
So thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Any further debate?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, I just really want to highlight the major projects cited
in the plan, including the Dendy Street pavilion,
the Beaumaris Arts Centre, the Warm Water Pool,
the Wangara Road masterplan, the Tulip Street Basketball Centre
and the Billilla Mansion and precinct restoration.
We already know that the Dendy Street
- the Brighton Beach Life Saving Club has struggled through its entire proposal
and recently the project has been stalled, but it has been
- CR CASTELLI: Sorry
- CR EL MOUALLEM: We&apos;re not debating, Councillor Castelli.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: So we wish them well with this plan to get it completed
and ready to go.
I did note some activity on the site is starting this week and it&apos;s really good
to see that the basketball centre at Tulip Street, even
with that trouble we were able to upgrade the landscaping
and keep things moving on-site and hopefully that project will continue.
There&apos;s thousands and thousands of basketballers that use that facility
now and they&apos;ve been looking forward to the forecourts for a long, long time
and these sorts of projects are so important,
they have been troubled.
We&apos;ve also got the Netball Centre that will be opening over the next 12 months,
another state of the art project.
It&apos;s a regional Netball Centre that is so much been looked forward to by many
of our netballers across our municipality and beyond.
And I was down there recently and saw the extent of the facilities and
they are absolutely breathtaking.
It&apos;s an incredible project and brilliant to see the progress being made
and I know the Sandringham secondary school and all of the sporting groups that
will get to use that place cannot wait for it to be completed so I wish
that well as well.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any further debate?
I&apos;ll just say a couple of words myself in general.
I&apos;m actually happy with the direction of the Annual Action Plan
but I&apos;m hoping that in the future years we can pay a bit of attention
and align the plan to our community satisfaction surveys.
I have had a quick squiz at the community satisfaction surveys
and looking at what our community is concerned
about or the top issues in the community and also the percentage of disagreement
with specifically goal 1: planet, it seems to me that it&apos;s worthy of us to look
into the satisfaction and try to align this plan next year.
I&apos;ll mention here looking into the top issues for city
of Bayside are car parking, building planning, housing development,
3 is rubbish and waste issues, 4 is traffic management and 5
is road maintenance and repairs so I am hoping in the future
we can consider this and see how we can attend to them.
Councillor del Porto, back to you.
CR DEL PORTO: No, thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
Moving to item 10.2 and it is 2023/24 budget
and we have received four Written Statements: Mr Ashley Moore against,
Ms Joanne Bryant against, Mr Thomas Sullivan against
and Mr George Reynolds on behalf of Bayside Ratepayers&apos; Group,
Ratepayers Victoria Inc also against.
We have received three requests to speak and we start with Mr James Newbury MP.
Mr James Newbury, do you mind coming forward, please.
Mr James Newbury, when you&apos;re ready.
MR NEWBURY MP: Mr Mayor, councillors, staff and members
of the wonderful community we represent, as elected members we&apos;re obliged
to be both a strong voice for those we represent
and have a deep respect for any taxes raised and the way
they are spent.
For me, a guiding principle for government expenditure
is that sound economic management must take place to benefit people
like the Hampton East community.
Bayside is economically sound, sitting on 110 million in cash reserves
and proposing $179.6 million budget, but the budget also includes a maximum
of 3.5% rate increase on the back of a dozen interest rate rises.
What the budget misses is an acknowledgment of the economic pain
the community is experiencing and targeted spending where it&apos;s sorely
needed, like the Jack Levy Pavilion in Hampton East.
With some constituents shutting off their connection to power,
is now the time for a 3.5% rate increase?
With our age demographic, should our pavement tolerances be set
at 25 mil, five times higher than neighbouring
councils?
Why shouldn&apos;t disabled visitors to Church Street be able to park
and unload their wheelchair?
After conducting a community consultation on the Hampton Hub two years ago,
why is Council proposing new concerning designs?
And with a 30% increase in aggregated burglaries,
shouldn&apos;t we already have a plan to roll out improved public lighting following
the request from Victoria Police?
Despite pavilion upgrades over recent years,
some have had no date for completion, including the Jack Levy Pavilion
in Hampton East.
Councillors, Bayside budgeted for an upgrade to that pavilion in 2014,
&apos;19 and &apos;21, yet pulled the promised funding
which each year arrived.
The Moorabbin Kangaroos Football Club, some of whom are here tonight, deserve
more than this.
Councillors have an added responsibility to lean into delivering into suburbs
like Hampton East because the State Labor government refuses
to fund the Brighton electorate.
With respect, Councillors, this budget gets a big economic tick
but it does not get the balance right in acknowledging the economic times,
delivering for the people we represent, like the Moorabbin Kangaroos
and Hampton East.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Newbury.
(Buzzer).
MR JAMES NEWBURY MP: With one second, Terry.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Do we have any questions?
Councillor Samuel-King?
We have a couple of questions for you.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes, Mr Newbury, you spoke about the Hampton Hub
and I think your words were &quot;new concerning designs&quot;.
Could you clarify or expand on what you were referring to?
MR NEWBURY MP: Thank you.
A couple of years ago I know that I attended
a number of Council-led community consultation events
where designs for the hub were considered and the Hampton Neighbourhood Association
who are a wonderful organisation are behind me tonight
and I acknowledge their ongoing work.
The budget includes a discussion later tonight or there
will be a discussion later tonight about proposed designs
and what that may look like.
One of those could be
a development partnership model.
What we&apos;re seeing in Hampton is mass development, mass development,
because the State Government has identified Hampton as a hot spot, and so
- just one second there
- and so I am concerned about the proposed design
of the Hampton Hub if it were in any way going to add
to that mass development, which is a concern I think
for the Hampton community.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Newbury.
Any further questions?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you very much for coming down, Mr Newbury.
Look, I got a bit confused.
Are you asking us to bring the rates down or are you asking us
to keep the rates the same?
MR NEWBURY MP: I&apos;m saying that you&apos;ve proposed the budget includes a 3.5% rate
increase and I don&apos;t think that acknowledges
the difficulty people are facing at this time.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Newbury.
Any further questions?
I actually have a couple of questions.
I heard from you
- you mentioned some expenditure on footpaths and 25 mil.
Do you mind explaining?
MR NEWBURY MP: That is an issue raised with me very, very regularly.
We have one of the oldest demographics, especially this part of Melbourne,
and I was looking at the recent community survey
and I noted that footpaths in Brighton and Brighton East, as an issue
for the community, has jumped in the last two years.
I just had a look at the &apos;21 survey and the &apos;23 survey.
So in Brighton East, it was an issue for 2.6% of people
and was the eighth order issue.
Now it&apos;s a fifth order issue with 8% in Brighton.
It was 4.3.
It&apos;s now 10.
Just as the local member, I can say it&apos;s an issue
for elderly people in the community
- not just elderly people, but including elderly people
in the community
- and the tolerance is five times higher
than neighbouring electorates.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Newbury.
So what I understand is you support the extra expenditure
on reducing that tolerance?
MR NEWBURY MP: I&apos;m concerned at what the tolerance is.
I wouldn&apos;t want to be rude and be blunt about it.
I just say I&apos;m concerned about what the tolerance is.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
I&apos;ve got another question.
We don&apos;t get a Shadow Minister for Climate Change here every night.
So the question is what is the expenditure of the current government
on climate change?
Can you explain to us where they are heading?
MR NEWBURY MP: Yes.
I actually was looking at this today because I asked the Minister some
questions around climate change expenditure
and the Minister has just replied back to me.
They&apos;re halving climate change expenditure in the forthcoming budget.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Sorry, I didn&apos;t hear that.
MR NEWBURY MP: They will be halving climate change expenditure
So there is a mass cut of programs in the
climate change portfolio.
Effectively halving.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Very interesting.
Any further questions?
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Mr Newbury.
Very eloquently said and got it within the slotted time.
Well done.
Just with the pavilions, I think we&apos;re all probably with you about justification
of which pavilions come where and how.
But Hampton Hammers and Brighton Beach are in your electorate too.
Are you concerned about those too?
MR NEWBURY MP: They&apos;re fantastic.
What Bayside have done with the pavilions is great and
over time what they&apos;ve done is great.
So you shouldn&apos;t read my comments as a criticism of work being done.
But what I&apos;m saying is if you&apos;re a local community
like Hampton East, who, to be fair, they are not big beneficiaries
of Council funding and they have been promised three times
over 10 years that they receive funding, which was included in budgets,
and then those moneys are ripped away from them effectively.
The community feels like it&apos;s a broken promise.
So I totally support the work that&apos;s been done by Council in terms of pavilions.
All I guess I&apos;m saying is the job&apos;s not done yet
and the Hampton East community are well deserves.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr James Newbury MP.
You may take your seat.
And I call on Mr Leigh Funston please to the speakers&apos; table.
MR FUNSTON: Good evening.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak.
It&apos;s the first time I&apos;ve spoken at a Council Chamber meeting.
I&apos;m speaking against the budget and specifically
against the 3.5% proposed rate rise.
We live in a cost of living crisis, so described by the Australian Government.
Recession looming.
The Commonwealth Bank and the HSBC organisations say
the prospects of recession are around 50%.
AustralianSuper&apos;s CIO says a recession is most likely.
AMP&apos;s Deputy Chair economist says the prospects are growing for a recession.
In a recession, the young, the needy and the old are the ones most exposed
because they have limited financial resources,
yet Bayside City Council has $110 million in the bank
and has made a 33 million dollar profit this year.
Council&apos;s proposed rate rise of 3.5%, the maximum allowed,
shows scant disregard for ratepayers.
Glen Eira Council rates are $451 on average less than Bayside, which means
on one side of the road a Bayside ratepayer
is paying $450 more than his neighbour across the road in Glen Eira.
Bayside Council needs to focus on the bread and butter issues: it says
the budget rise will help us deliver on the fundamentals,
yet these fundamentals represent less than half of Council&apos;s costs in the budget,
I believe.
Let me turn to the Bayside 2050 Community Vision
developed by a panel of just 28 people.
Council required to ensure decisions align
- moving closer to this vision, yet how can Council allow a body
of 28 people to influence such a grand building
campaign that we heard announced earlier today.
Council needs to focus stronger on the budget fundamentals.
It needs to push back against cost shifting
by the State Government and it needs to push back too
against the State Government&apos;s moves to increase pressure population
in the Bayside area and we need to focus on the fundamentals, focus on the bread
and butter issues ...(Buzzer).
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Funston.
Do we have any questions?
I have a question to the CEO regarding cost shifting.
You may take your seat and I&apos;ll ask my question to the CEO.
Can we get an idea about the cost shifting.
It&apos;s been making the news lately and are we impacted by cost shifting
from the State Government and to the tune of how much roughly?
CEO: So, yes, through you, Chair, cost shifting from State Government
and the Federal Government but mainly the State Government
has been a decades-old problem.
Some examples of where Councils have been requested
to provide services on behalf of the State Government with match funding
from the state include library services, maternal and child health
and school crossings.
That&apos;s just to name a few.
And over time the State Government has failed to index the moneys coming
to Councils in Victoria to provide those services,
so what that means over time is that more and more of the costs of those services
is being borne by local residents; that is, over decades that the erosion
of those grants has led to millions of dollars of expenditure being required
from Council to continue to provide those services that should be
coming from the State Government.
Other examples are for a three-year period there was a freeze
from the Federal Government on the untied grants that Council receives
from the Commonwealth, three years of frozen grant levels
despite costs escalating.
For many years the statutory planning fees were frozen for many years,
which reduced the available income, and once again the community via its
Council ended up shouldering much more of the burden
of delivering the statutory planning services that are providing
important outcomes for the community.
And the State Government also increases a range of costs to Council,
including the landfill levy, so for every tonne
of waste that goes to landfill, they charge a levy.
That has escalated dramatically over the last five years
and once again that is a cost published up by local residents.
It even extends to issues such as the provision
of lifesaving infrastructure, for example at the Black Rock Life Saving Club,
it&apos;s going to cost $6 million or thereabouts
of which $2 million comes from the State Government
and the community is expected to pick up the balance.
So since when was Local Government a key funder
of emergency services infrastructure, one might ask?
And it goes on and on.
On the one hand, the State Government caps the rates and on the other,
forces a whole heap of costs on the Council and ultimately that&apos;s what
the community end up paying.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you very much, Mr CEO.
We&apos;ve got a question from Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I&apos;ve got to a question to Ms Colson regarding the Hampton East pavilion
and the north Melbourne Kangaroos playing there because I&apos;m very concerned
about what has been raised and I know all councillors are worrying
about when that can be funded.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, money in Council&apos;s four-year
capital program has been allocated for that particular pavilion just shy
of $4 million with design commencing in 2024/25, so next financial year,
and then construction thereafter.
So we&apos;ve allocated 164 in &apos;24/25 for design
and then construction thereafter to the tune of 3.96 million dollars.
CR DEL PORTO: Additional question.
I wonder if we could inform the club.
All the members have left.
I wonder whether we could
- not all the members have left.
Hello.
How are you?
Thank you for those pies last year!
So if we could just inform the club.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, happy to do that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
I&apos;d just like to clarify this, Ms Colson.
So are we bringing the design phase early for that club or not?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, it&apos;s allocated in &apos;24/25.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Even the design of it?
OFFICER: That&apos;s correct.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I&apos;ve got another question, if you don&apos;t mind, on this.
Would it be possible, for example
- because under new initiatives, there&apos;s a number of them that falls
under your Department.
Let&apos;s say habitat linkage or biodiversity action plan, which
they cost 185 to 350 each.
Would it be possible to move some money from one of these new initiatives
to the design of that and bring it forward so
we don&apos;t impact the budget?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, that&apos;s, of course, up to Council to decide.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Sorry, I didn&apos;t hear you.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, if Council decides to do that,
that&apos;s something you would need to
- CR EL MOUALLEM: It can be done?
OFFICER: Yes.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Good to know.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Just another question of the CEO.
He did mention Black Rock Life Saving Club as a grant of 2 million
from the State Government for a 4 million dollar.
Can you tell us what they gave us for Brighton Life Saving Club
and what we had to pay?
There&apos;s a huge difference between that as well.
CEO: So in the example of the Brighton Life Saving Club,
the State Government allocated $1 million towards that project.
The cost of
- there are a number of elements to that project.
I think the delivery of the lifesaving infrastructure
as a component of that would be in the order of 8
to 9 million.
CR EVANS: So one million for eight.
Two for four.
CEO: Two for six.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
I might ask a follow-up question on this.
I understand we own the land where the Dendy Life Saving Club
is going to be built, so effectively we own the building.
Is that the same scenario for the Black Rock Life Saving Club?
CEO: So the Black Rock Life Saving Club is built
on crown land that Bayside City Council is the Committee of Management
for that land and the building is controlled and essentially owned
by Council.
CR EL MOUALLEM: But we don&apos;t own the land where the building
- CEO: No, we&apos;re the long-term Committee of Management of crown land on that area.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr CEO.
Any further questions?
We have one more request to speak, and that is from Mr George Reynolds
on behalf of Bayside Ratepayers&apos; Group, Ratepayers Victoria Incorporated.
Please, Mr Reynolds, come forward.
MR REYNOLDS: Mr Chairman, on this, I just want to point
out that I sent a submission in and it was published this morning
but essentially we have been working for a number of years
to get these accounts that Council does in accordance
with the Accounting Standards and correctly done
according to regulations, and they&apos;ve never been that way,
and Council have steadfastly refused to admit to having own-source revenue.
Now, we found out today, or in this session, and in the right-hand
column of the document I sent in today, there&apos;s an adjusted income
and expenditure column.
They use own-source revenue in schedule 3 of the Local Government regulations and
they tell us that 9.2% of that total which is the adjusted income is taken
as a profit through own-source revenue.
62 million of your capital is set down to own-source revenue
and our figures show there&apos;s 14.6 million
- 14.8 million produced.
That allows us to calculate the costs associated
with own-source revenue.
And that 33 million 506 of costs has been allocated
to be paid mainly by the rate charges and Council has never,
ever produced the ... (Buzzer).
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you very much, Mr Reynolds.
Do we have any questions to Mr Reynolds?
There&apos;s no questions.
You may take a seat.
Councillors, I&apos;m in your hands.
CR EVANS: Mr Mayor, I move the recommendation.
CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;ll second.
CR EVANS: Move as printed, thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor Evans.
And we&apos;ve got a seconder, Councillor del Porto.
Please go ahead, Councillor Evans.
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
This budget consolidates our investment in contemporary community infrastructure
and will help us deliver for our community now and also
into the future.
We are dedicated to helping our large and active sporting community
with $68.5 million committed to capital projects,
including the Black Rock Life Saving Club as we talked about renewal, and a walkway
to connect both the stadiums for our basketballers.
This budget will see the continuation of the construction
of the Fern Street Early Years Integration Children&apos;s Centre,
which we visited the other day and is a great thing, for a total
of $2.5 million allocated in the four-year capital program.
The early years infrastructure of 2022-2028 will be reviewed
in light of the 4-year-old kinder program reform.
In Bayside, rates and charges make up 63% of Council revenue and are essential
for us to continue the delivered and wide ranges of our services
and also our infrastructure.
The decision to increase rates is never taken lightly, Mr Mayor,
but is critical for Council to continue delivery
of the valued services that our community appreciates.
This year&apos;s rate cap of 3.5% is in line with the Victorian Government&apos;s rate cap.
Our strong cash reserves are the result of careful
and also prudent financial management and they will be drawn down by $17.1 million
in 2023/24 and 27.9 million over the next four years
to support the ambitious capital program.
I think we all as councillors appreciate that this is a challenging year for many
in our community and I also urge any person or residents
experiencing financial hardship to contact our Council so we can assist
you under our hardship policy, and again I stress that
if people are doing it tough, the Council is there under our hardship policy to help
out, so please let the residents that have problems in financing anything
to contact the Council and we are there to help.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Yes, I support that as well.
Mr Mayor, I&apos;ve been on Council a few years and for the first 18, 19 years
as a councillor in Bayside, Bayside Council had a huge debt,
mostly inherited from the old Councils that we amalgamated from,
but nevertheless, we also built that up as well, and at one stage, Mr Mayor,
we were paying over $1 million in interest every year.
In fact, I think that Mr Shanahan once told me that
we actually paid more than a $1 million a year or two.
So we don&apos;t have any borrowings anymore.
We&apos;ve paid it all off.
So whatever we&apos;re doing right now will be done with our money,
with ratepayers&apos; money, and whatever will be billed in the next few years
- there will be some years that it will cost more; some years depending it
will be costing less, depending what it is that we&apos;re actually undertaking.
We don&apos;t expect to have to borrow a cent.
So I&apos;m very proud of the fact that we&apos;re doing it
without borrowing any money.
We had to resist that temptation a few years ago when interest rates were
very low.
Remember discussions between councillors and some councillors
- not on this Council at this stage but in former Council,
saying money&apos;s so cheap, we don&apos;t we try to borrow some money
and I&apos;m glad we didn&apos;t because right now money is not that cheap.
So I&apos;m very happy to support this budget.
I&apos;m very happy to support the Warm Water Pool
in Brighton, very happy to support Billilla and the opening up
of this wonderful jewel in Bayside&apos;s crown.
I&apos;m very happy to point out to you that 3.5%, which
is what we&apos;re actually increasing the rates to, is actually just
over half or less than half what the inflation rate has been.
The inflation rate is now 6.8, so it&apos;s very close to double.
So, Mr Mayor, we&apos;re actually in a way decreasing
the cost of the rates, given that inflation
is actually nearly double what the rate increase is.
Mr Mayor, in Bleazby ward, which is my ward, which covers Brighton
and Brighton East, this money will go to renew the Billilla mansion
for $2.9 million, the Brighton Clock Tower renewal
works would be $380,000, William Street Reserve Pavilion 1.2
million, and Lancox Park lighting, which I know has been a source of angst
for a lot of people in Brighton East, will be costing $474,000, and that will
all be done hopefully this financial year,
- well, the budget is there.
As long as we can get the contractors to keep going, it will be just fine.
So very happy to support all that.
The rate increase will result in an increase of $68
for the average ratepayer.
I know that people will say, &quot;Look, my house is actually a lot dearer than
that.
It will cost more than $68&quot;, but if you think about it,
we&apos;re doing a lot and we&apos;re not paying a cent in interest
to any bank or financial institution.
The money that&apos;s in the bank now will go to pay for infrastructure that we&apos;ve taken
on in the next four, five years, so that money is not sitting there just
because we like to have money in the bank.
If we don&apos;t have that money, we will not be able to undertake the work
we want to do.
We want to redo all our pavilions, including the one in east Hampton,
and to do that you need to have money in the bank.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Any further debate?
Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
This budget is a very, very good news budget.
Unlike our State Government, we&apos;re actually in surplus.
This is no accident and it&apos;s got a lot to do
with the beautiful financial management that we&apos;ve seen happen right
over the last 20 years.
It is also good news that it is effectively a reduction in rates,
in that it&apos;s 3.5% increase is around, as Councillor del Porto said,
around half the rate of inflation, and it is also despite massive cost shifting
that our CEO has outlined.
So we are using the $38 million surplus to fund our capital works program.
We are not borrowing like the State Government is.
We&apos;re not putting our Council in dreadful debt,
but we are using efficient money that we have saved
to complete our sporting pavilion program and I&apos;m incredibly looking forward
to seeing not only the Hampton East pavilion
completed but also the Brighton Beach pavilion
completed, and without this surplus, that would not happen.
We&apos;re funding a Life Saving Club.
We also are saving to fund the Hampton Hub renewal project,
and that is one that is a huge priority for me and, unless we continue
to maintain a healthy surplus, there is no way we would be able
to fund that Hampton Hub project into the future.
We&apos;ve also got the Warm Water Pool, Mr Mayor.
That one is incredibly important.
2 point million over the next financial year
of a $17 million project.
In Castlefield, the Hampton Hub, we are continuing
to develop the concept design, and I&apos;ll speak more to that later.
The Boss James Pavilion renewal, the Dendy Park athletics pavilion renewal.
So it&apos;s a good budget.
It&apos;s a budget based on money we have saved and on efficient and effective management.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Councillor Stitfold?
CR STITFOLD: This budget is looking after the present but we&apos;re also planning
for the future and that&apos;s incredibly important.
It continues to emphasise our responsibility to protect
and enhance the environment in Bayside for current
and future residents while also advocating for environmentally sustainable
infrastructure.
Bayside still has the foresight to remain committed
to implementing the Climate Emergency Action Plan and in many ways this
is another level of cost shifting, when we are developing educational
programs that encourage residents to work with us
to safeguard our natural environment and mitigate the effects of climate change
and a number of other programs which are perhaps no
longer going to be considered at other levels of government.
Our commitment to becoming carbon neutral through the greenhouse gas emissions
reduction project is reinforced in this budget.
Working with our residents, we continue to seek ways in which we can minimise
and decrease our carbon footprint.
Additionally, moneys being put towards the reconciliation action plan, which
is an essential step towards reconciliation
with our First Nations communities.
Investment in this area will help promote greater awareness
and understanding of Indigenous culture within our wider community.
In particular, in Boyd ward, the key projects are the Sandringham
Athletics Centre Pavilion redevelopment, Hampton foreshore precinct, the all-access
improvements and the Masonic Hall upgrade.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
Any further debate?
Councillor Castelli?
Your turn now.
CR CASTELLI: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Now, I&apos;ve heard what Mr Newbury had mentioned.
Tick to this budget.
And I believe
- and it is a good budget.
Very, very well done and we&apos;ve got some really good experts
here that juggle up the money and pay off some of our developments
and get our aspirations going, which is a really great thing.
Especially in these challenging times.
Now, I am going to probably say something different.
I&apos;m going to refuse the budget tonight.
Why?
Even though it is a great budget, because 3.5 is quite a high rate.
We have people out there
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Can you speak into the microphone, please.
CR CASTELLI: People out there are suffering.
We&apos;ve met them, OK.
I have also spoken to someone in the community who
is a great leader in the community that at this moment there&apos;s a flow of people,
even from Brighton, going there for food parcels, which is amazing,
isn&apos;t it?
For Brighton.
Look, it&apos;s very hard for me to say this because it&apos;s just something that I&apos;ve
never had for the six years or seven years ever
refused the budget.
So, sadly, this is a daily reality for our community, for some people
in our community, forced into homelessness, and you see that.
There&apos;s a lot of it happening.
Losing their homes.
By increasing cost of living pressures, families unable to pay their rent and
at risk of homelessness.
Even if we don&apos;t see it, which we don&apos;t, homelessness is all around us.
Hidden homelessness can happen to anyone through no fault of their own.
So we have spoken to so many people.
They query this, 3.5, isn&apos;t that a bit too high?
Look, I&apos;ve got some lovely emails I could read as well.
So &quot;I am disappointed that the Council, by prioritising non-core projects such
as an allocation of funds for climate change are increasing rates
at a time when Bayside ratepayers can least afford it.
I am sure that the Council are coming to understand the effects
of rising inflation on the cost of living for ratepayers.
I request that Council review all expenditures that is non-essential
and makes efficient delivery of services in Bayside their focus&quot;.
So if that doesn&apos;t say it all, I&apos;ll go ahead with that one.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you, Mr Mayor, and yes,
I definitely hear Councillor Castelli and you&apos;re a fantastic advocate
for those residents that aren&apos;t doing that well and,
as Councillor Evans has said, the Council has got some very
generous and really well-funded hardship provisions within the Council
for those residents, those Brighton residents,
that own their homes that are having this rate increase, that
they can access that and it is quite confronting
to hear that people who own homes in Brighton are going to food parcels.
I wasn&apos;t aware of that.
So thank you for your advocacy on that.
Tonight, Mr Mayor, I&apos;m very proud
- this is my 7th budget.
I advocated to come on Council when I was down there in Beaumaris going to pavilions
and other facilities that I didn&apos;t think actually could still be allowed
to be used, they were that bad.
And over the seven years, we have turned that around
into a place that people are really proud of, really proud to see the type
of facilities that we have put out there, and I think that&apos;s been spoken tonight
and I&apos;ve heard the member speak about that tonight, and it has been done
by hard work, but I think it was a lesson that you can&apos;t just do one thing,
pay all the money off and then not invest in your buildings, because in the end,
you end up with all the buildings at the same time having to be replaced,
so we don&apos;t want to ever do that again, and a small amount
of borrowing isn&apos;t something that I&apos;m too concerned about, but we do need
to make sure we never run down our buildings like we did in the past
and this budget really is just about to finish that huge program of investment
off, which is very necessary.
But I really want to talk about the most vulnerable people
in our community, that this Council has made a stand,
unlike many other Councils, when they were under a bit of pressure, they ran
to the hills.
Well, we didn&apos;t.
We doubled down and we invested in our elderly community.
That&apos;s probably one of the most proudest things I&apos;ve done
because I don&apos;t agree that our elderly just get contracted out
and it&apos;s a cost per unit for a PCA to do a transfer from a bed to a Chair
and a shower.
That&apos;s not the society I want to live in.
I want our Local Governments to reach in there and be the Governors
of our own elderly people, and that&apos;s what we&apos;re doing, and, boy,
have our elderly people
- they are driving into our systems.
They want Local Government to be their person next to them,
and that&apos;s a fact.
That is happening, and there&apos;s other Councils now I think
becoming a little bit regretful for what they&apos;ve gone and done,
and I think you&apos;re going to see some really big amount
of study trips into Bayside to see how we actually did that,
and that&apos;s what this sort of budgeting is doing.
Last night, Kingston approved their budget at 3.5%.
There&apos;s no problem with that because, as Councillor Samuel-King
has said tonight, it is actually half the price of the CPI
at the moment, and it is in a rate-capped environment
and we are a Council that does have no debts, and that is a place where we should
all be very, very proud of.
It is still a prudent budget tonight, though.
We are not going out and doing things that are not necessary.
Everything that I&apos;ve read through, the page after page of this budget,
are necessary things.
There isn&apos;t much to cut, unless there&apos;s going to be a major effect
on our services or our delivery.
So I would just like to finish by a big shout out
to the Beaumaris Arts Group, the centre that is part of this,
but also the relocation of the Cheltenham Scout Hall.
I think that&apos;s a really big project that is being looked forward to down
at our end.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
I assume it is my time now to say what I think, and considering that
after tonight they will probably talk on behalf of Council, I owe it to myself
to stay true to myself on what the people of Bayside
and specifically Brighton elected me to do.
So here I am.
There is something I would like you to see on the screen while we&apos;re debating and I
will get you to digest it just in case you forgot the budget
of last year.
I put two comparison pages from the budget
- one from last year and one from this year.
While I&apos;m talking about this, I&apos;d like to mention about not much to cut I heard
about tonight from one of our councillors, but at the same time I heard from our MP,
who is the Shadow Minister for Climate, that the State Government
in its own words may cut programs for climate change; expenditure
on climate change has halved.
What I&apos;m saying here in our budget
- and I can guarantee you
- if we follow the footsteps of the state, we probably don&apos;t need
to increase the rates at all.
My understanding is the 3.5% equates to nearly $3.2 million.
I might be wrong but that&apos;s what I was told.
$3.2 million.
I can see savings.
I really didn&apos;t go through the capital works line by line,
but I&apos;m seeing line items
- for example, climate change ESV reserve, 500,000; feasibility reserve,
another 100,000.
I see future project escalation costs of 3.1 million.
At the same time I look into our contracts and I see escalation cost is built
into our contracts.
One of them is actually to the tune of also 3.1 million.
What I&apos;m saying here, I know we&apos;re doing an amazing job.
The team is doing a fantastic job managing
the budget.
We won&apos;t have $110 million in the bank if we don&apos;t have a good team behind it.
And I salute the CEO and his team for the good work they&apos;ve done there.
But the reality is we are Local Government.
We are elected to deliver on the basics.
We&apos;ve heard about the footpath tolerance, which is more than double than any
of Kingston.
Kingston approved 3.5.
I doubt they have $110 million in the bank
I don&apos;t believe they do.
We have $110 million.
We are doing $32.6 million in surplus.
We are double dipping and triple dipping in our capital works projects.
Now, to this slide in front of you, I&apos;ll just take you
to the interest received.
Last year in the &apos;22/23, we budgeted 979,000.
And guess what?
What is the forecast actual for &apos;22/23?
It&apos;s actually 5.2 million.
If you haven&apos;t done the math yet, it&apos;s $4.225 million more.
So just to rephrase it, the interest we received
from the $110 million, on top of what we budgeted last year, is actually
more than the 3.5% rate increase.
I can keep going on and on and on but also we&apos;ve got $108 million
in rates and charges.
We actually collected 110 million.
So, councillors, when you&apos;re seeing an increase
of 450% approximately just on the interest, and where this interest
is coming from, it&apos;s coming from money that our ratepayers already
paid us for us to do works for them, the basics, but because we haven&apos;t done
the work or we&apos;re carrying forward 20 million year on year,
we&apos;ve accumulated a nice amount of money in the bank
and here we are making $5.2 million from interest from the ratepayers&apos; money.
I really urge you to really look hard at what you&apos;re deciding on to night.
The community out there is struggling.
I&apos;ve heard from so many of them.
I hope you listen to me.
I hope you will listen to the community that elected you.
I am not going to be in support of this budget.
Councillor Evans, I&apos;ll put it to you to close?
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I&apos;m disappointed that you&apos;re not.
You&apos;re the Mayor and I&apos;m disappointed.
Let me just go through the process of the budget.
The budget is a process of seven councillors,
where seven councillors have an opinion and on every line item,
every single line item, it is not gone over once, it is gone over twice,
three times.
Seven people come to a joint decision about what they would like in there.
The ones the people who are not supporting the budget have said that they wanted
to exclude were not accepted by the seven councillors.
So when you&apos;re talking about not supporting a budget,
you&apos;re saying things that seven councillors as a group will not support.
Let me go past that and go on to highlight what I think Councillor
Martin alluded to.
One of the best things this Council is doing is in our aged care.
I have been in not-for-profit aged care for 30 years and I&apos;ve not seen something
like this that a Council has come into in aged care packages that supporting our
- one of the councils that are going into it
- Councillor Martin alerted to it, it is something that I am absolutely proud
of, Mr Mayor, and it is part of this budget, part
of something that I want to support.
So, again, by supporting this budget, I&apos;m supporting something that I think
is absolutely crucial to our aged care people and, again,
I think it is just one of the sensational things that this
Council has done.
I named a couple of visionary things.
One was the Yalukit Willam in my 25 years around.
But I think this is one of the boast things that I think
we have done for our aged care.
I fully support our budget.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin, Councillor Samuel-King,
Councillor Stitfold.
All those against?
Councillor Castelli, Cr El Mouallem.
And it is carried.
Moving to item 10.3, declaration of rates and charges.
We have received two written statements from Mr Philip Lovell against,
and Mr George Reynolds on behalf of Bayside Ratepayers&apos; Group,
Ratepayers Victoria also against.
We have also received two requests to speak, and we start
with Mr Geoff Leigh.
Please come forward.
MR LEIGH: This is the first time I&apos;ve ever done this too
in a lot of years.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Leigh.
MR LEIGH: Right.
Can I say I think you&apos;re all living in fantasy.
At the moment we have Federal Government, State Government
and Councils upping charges, rates and the rest of it.
You collectively are one of the biggest impediments for our country
because you&apos;re helping to drive up interest rates through the Reserve Bank
- CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, point of order.
The resident is actually saying things that I find embarrassing to me and I would
like him to retract.
He is here to tell us what his views are about the declaration of rates
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr Leigh, do you mind rephrasing it?
MR LEIGH: Rephrasing it?
Right.
Well, the Reserve Bank Governor has actually
made comments about the cost of what the state, federal
and local governments are putting their charges up.
Not me.
The Reserve Bank Governor.
So I&apos;m not saying it.
The Reserve Governor only has one lever, and his lever
is interest rates across government, people, houses, mortgages and the rest
of it.
So from my perspective, I think what governments have to do
is we have to also look at where we go and what we do.
For example, I noticed that when it was raised
- and I&apos;m definitely opposed to the $110 million and the $32 million.
I agree with surpluses but I think what is happening,
you are going along with the cost shifting being put on you
by the State Government.
Glen Eira is trying to do its best at least to stand out and do something.
And you have to be conscious about doing it and stand up
and say something as well.
It&apos;s not about which side of politics it is.
And there are things like the benchmark efficiency indicators,
the best Council is Glen Eira, the worst Council, surprise, surprise,
the City of Melbourne, and you are listed there as number 8
as the worst Council.
Now, in my view, there&apos;s two things you can do.
You should also look at what you run inside your Council.
For example, I don&apos;t think any politician, government official,
a paid public servant that&apos;s got a full-time career
and not going to be sacked should be getting a pay raise this year, period,
otherwise we&apos;re going into recession and I can tell you now, I&apos;ve lived
through three of them and they&apos;re nasty things,
but people who work through the taxpayer by being paid employees, they are not
- (Buzzer).
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you very much, Mr Leigh.
Do we have any questions to Mr Leigh?
I have a question to the CEO regarding cost shifting.
I heard that Glen Eira
- I actually read it in the paper, and Glen Eira and others
- Can you just explain to us what we are doing
and what can we do?
CEO: So through you, Chair, Council has been calculating the annual
cost of the state and Federal Government cost shifting on
to Local Government.
It would go back to at least 2011 and we published those numbers
in our Annual Report.
When we meet with our representatives of particularly the State Government
and the Mayor and I met with several recently,
where this issue was raised as one of our key advocacy points, so we can
- we have attempted to raise those issues with government.
We&apos;ve had some
- I think a good hearing from some of the Opposition members
of the State Parliament.
We have been unable to change the dynamics that, to be fair, have been in place
under both Liberal and Labor governments in the past.
We can advocate.
We can&apos;t change those dynamics and we can continue to work
with our state MPs to try to take that issue forward.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr CEO.
I&apos;m going to call on Mr George Reynolds.
Mr Leigh, you can take a seat.
Mr George Reynolds on behalf of Bayside Ratepayers&apos; Group,
Ratepayers Victoria Incorporated, please come forward.
MR REYNOLDS: Councillors, I can tell you how to contribute
to the cost reduction.
Just do your accounts correctly.
In that document which I put forward, you will find a row which says NS
on the bottom, which is the net cost of the raise
- the Municipal Charge and the waste service charge.
Now, you&apos;ve mucked up and amalgamated all the costs into one statement,
which is the total, but you&apos;re required to report under section 8(5)(c)
of the Local Government regulations on what the cost
- the estimated cost of that service is to be, and you haven&apos;t done so,
and you haven&apos;t done so for years.
And my figures here, which are brand new for this year because I haven&apos;t been able
to find out what the cost would be, tells me that in this budget,
you are charging
- you are incurring a cost of $87 million, yet you&apos;re raising 113,
and that generates $25 million of surplus, which being a rate and a charge,
you&apos;re not allowed to spend on anything other than the purpose
for which it was raised, and go to the Accounting Standard AASB 1004,
which is a special standard raised for government
and pseudo government bodies, and they will tell you that, 12 to 19,
you can&apos;t spend money that&apos;s been raised as a ...(Buzzer).
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Reynolds.
Thank you.
Any questions to Mr Reynolds?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Not to Mr Reynolds but to the CEO.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr Reynolds, you may take your seat.
There&apos;s no questions.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Look, on both accounts, Mr Reynolds has alleged that the Council
is not compliant I think with a number of accounting processes
and he&apos;s also just cited we&apos;re not compliant with regulations.
Can I just check in to see whether we are compliant
with the various regulations that have been cited
over the two statements tonight?
CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr CEO.
CEO: Through you, Chair, unfortunately Mr Reynolds year in and year
out makes completely unsubstantiated allegations in this regard.
Council&apos;s accounts are prepared in strict accordance
with the Accounting Standard, the Local Government Act and regulations.
Our accounts are audited by Victorian Auditor General.
They are scrutinised heavily by our internal audit committee,
which has got very eminent, independent representatives.
Mr Reynolds in the past has taken his allegations
to the Minister for Local Government, who rejected them.
He&apos;s taken them to the Local Government Inspectorate,
I believe.
And they&apos;ve rejected them and he&apos;s taken them to the Ombudsman,
who has rejected them.
There is no foundation to what Mr Reynolds continues to propagate
and all I can say is that we&apos;ve got the highest professional
standards from Mr Shanahan and his financial staff
and Council should be really pleased with the service it gets
from its finance team.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr CEO.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you.
I have a question regarding the statement that Glen Eira
is running a very tight financial ship, our neighbours.
I&apos;d like to ask Mr Shanahan whether he can clarify for us
whether Glen Eira actually has any debts at this time and
whether they&apos;re paying interest on it or not?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, Glen Eira&apos;s current debt position
is $62.7 million in debt.
They&apos;re currently running at deficit.
62.7 million in debt.
And they&apos;re currently running a deficit.
CEO: Through you, Chair, can I also add there was an assertion made
at the last meeting when the budget was put around the fact that the Glen Eira
residents over the border from East Brighton pay less rates than
those properties in Bayside.
As a result of that comment, which I was unsure about its accuracy
- a similar suggestion was made tonight.
Glen Eira&apos;s rates are lower on average than Bayside&apos;s rates
but we did some analysis on a property, so we tried to pick a sort
of average valuation, $1.9 million, they calculate their rates using
a slightly different system, but for a $1.9 million property
in Glen Eira versus a $1.9 million property in Brighton East, for instance,
the Glen Eira property pays approximately 5% more in rates than the property
in Bayside in Brighton East.
So that assertion is incorrect.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Questions?
I just want to ask a question.
So using the averaging then is not a proper reflection of how much
an increase might be when we&apos;re looking to the budget?
Is that what I understand?
CEO: What I was trying to do was compare the same valuation
across the two municipalities.
So Glen Eira, their average property rates is based on a whole range
of properties that are of lower value, and so the further away
you get from the coast, the property values in Glen Eira decrease,
and those properties will pay less in rates
because their properties are worth less.
But for a property of equivalent value in Glen Eira and Bayside,
the Bayside property pays less.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: I was going to move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Moved by Councillor del Porto.
Seconded, thank you, Councillor Martin.
CR DEL PORTO: I won&apos;t be long.
I just want to ask another question of our financial Directors
and ask them what the borrowings are from Stonnington Council, which
is very similar in demographics and in socioeconomics to Bayside.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, the borrowings
at Stonnington are $73.3 million.
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you.
Mr Mayor, I would like to congratulate the officers
on the work they&apos;ve done for our rates and charges.
The increase in the average generates and Municipal Charge will be 3.5%
in compliance with the rate cap as mentioned before.
This is in line with the fair go rates system,
which has capped rate increases by Victorian Council
to the forecast consumer price index.
A key decision of any Council is to determine the level
of rate increase that will address funding levels
for capital works and service provision for the municipality,
and improve Council&apos;s long-term financial sustainability.
3.5% increase will provide exactly that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, I&apos;ve just got a question too.
Has the City of Stonnington and the City of Glen Eira contracted
out their aged care services or have they stayed in the scheme as Bayside did?
CEO: Through you, Chair, Glen Eira still provide their aged care
service at this stage.
I understand they are reviewing where they go into the future,
and I&apos;m not sure about Stonnington.
I&apos;d have to take that on notice and come back to you.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you.
I just wanted to point out
- and I have a question regarding the rate increase
in our waste management charge.
In a percentage form, we know about the rate cap at 3.5.
In percentages what is the increase in the waste charge?
OFFICER: Through you, Mr Mayor, the increase in the rate charge
is 3.2% for &apos;23/24.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you for that.
I did note in the report that the Bayside&apos;s investment in the weekly
food and green waste collection has had a profound effect on the amount
of waste going into landfill and that waste going
into landfill was going into a landfill on the other side of Melbourne, it had
to go over the Westgate Bridge and go into one
of the lowest socioeconomic areas in the metropolitan area of Melbourne and
by us investing in this waste, it has reduced the amount of landfill,
which has had an impact on our ability to keep the increase to a moderate level
of 2.2%, and it&apos;s very, very important.
And I see in the report here that a shared 80-litre bin will increase
from $284 to $291, and in my maths, that&apos;s less than $6 a year.
I mean, in an environment where we&apos;re really
struggling to find places to put our waste, that is miraculous.
I was the waste delegate for Council for a number of years and it was a crisis
and we have invested in it.
I&apos;ve gone out to visit the composting facility
with Councillor Castelli and I remember some shoes that were being
worn that day!
I did warn them we were going to a waste facility, but anyway!
What we saw was green waste and food going into a state of the art system
and not six months, that was the old way of composting,
but within six weeks, coming out the other end and being transported
to our farmlands in Gippsland.
It&apos;s a fantastic system and there&apos;s still some more way to go.
So this is the type of investment that we get and this
is the type of strategic
- the strategic stuff, the hard work, this is what our residents are enjoying
now through the hard strategic effort that takes years,
and when I see an increase like that, I&apos;m very, very proud of that
and I&apos;m hoping one day that we won&apos;t have to increase it at all.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Just another question.
I&apos;m a simple soul, Mr Mayor, but I&apos;ve just heard Glen Eira
borrowing 62.5 million, Stonnington are borrowing 73.3 million and
they must pay interest on that, which forms part of their budget.
So part of their budget is interest on those borrowings.
Can you just confirm that?
OFFICER: Yes, through you, Mr Mayor, in their profit and loss, they
will be paying an interest charged on those particular borrowings.
Around about 5 to 6%.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor Evans, would you like to debate?
CR EVANS: No.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further debate from the floor?
No further debate.
So I am finding myself saying a few words.
I&apos;m glad you brought up Stonnington and Glen Eira and they got debts of 62.7
and they are putting their rates up by 3.5%.
My information tells me that our next door neighbour, Council
of Port Phillip, who have a surplus of probably $1 million if I&apos;m correct,
not 32.6, 1 million, they decided to put their rates up by 2.8 and not 3.5.
So it&apos;s good if we&apos;re going to pick some Councils, to pick them all
and not pick the ones that work to our favour.
So I voted against the budget.
That doesn&apos;t mean I vote against the projects.
I voted against the budget because I believe we can finetune what
we have and direct the expenditure into certain areas.
If it&apos;s good enough for the state to cut certain expenditures by half,
I thought it&apos;s good for us too.
Now, considering that I voted against the budget,
I feel that I cannot support the declaration of rates and charges
on this one, thank you.
I&apos;ll put it to you, Councillor del Porto.
CR DEL PORTO: I just
- the reason why I picked Glen Eira is because it was raised by the speaker.
I agree with you.
I think you should pick from both sides but that was not selected by me.
That&apos;s all.
CR EL MOUALLEM: All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin, Councillor Samuel-King,
Councillor Stitfold.
And against, Councillor Castelli and Cr El Mouallem, and it is carried.
We are moving to 10.4 and I believe we have a conflict
of interest from Councillor Stitfold.
Councillor Stitfold, would you like to leave.
Thank you.
Councillors, requests to be heard are not permitted to this item
and I am in your hands.
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Happy to move the officers recommendation.
CR DEL PORTO: Second.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Mr Mayor, this has been through great community consultation
and I&apos;m moving it mainly because it used to be my ward
in the Sandringham days and I have a great affinity
to Sandringham village.
Mr Mayor, I was disappointed that a number of people spoke against the shutting
of Melrose Street and again I absolutely hear what they&apos;re
saying and I think part and parcel of a councillor&apos;s duty is to listen
to people.
Sometimes they go against the sort of things that you believe
but again that&apos;s life.
And Mr Mayor, I have been down to a number of people at Melrose Street who spoke
against the shutting of Melrose Street and most of the people that I have talked
to in the Sandy village are still very, very interested
in greening Sandringham village.
They didn&apos;t particularly like that for all sorts of different reasons and some
of the reasons I don&apos;t agree with.
However, that&apos;s part and parcel of listening to a community.
But I do think that the greening of Sandringham village
is something that we should be leaning forward to and, again, part and parcel
of this is the last bit of investigating place making options
in Sandringham village in undertaking major interventions
consistent with the intent of the Sandringham Streetscape Masterplan.
Again, this is part and parcel of the greening of Sandy village.
They are doing a terrific job down there with all their artwork
and again just talking about artwork, the Clock Tower looks magnificent,
Mr Mayor.
I&apos;ve had a number of people say things to me about that,
but that&apos;s another story.
But I just thought I&apos;d mention it.
But again, I don&apos;t think this is lost on the Sandringham village.
I do think that we really do need to go back and revisit this and look
at other areas to green up the village.
I think this is something that most of the people that I have talked
to are interested in and, again, very saddened that we had a sort of split
between people in the village, traders within the village.
It sort of disappointed me a little bit but again I think there&apos;s light at the end
of the tunnel and I think most people will encourage
- be encouraged to green up the village just in some different way
other than shutting down Melrose Street.
So happy to move that, moving forward in that sort of light, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, thank you very much for that
and I support Councillor Evans.
Mr Mayor, the residents and traders have given us a clear message,
in the sense that we&apos;ve received 120 written submissions in response
to formal S223 process, and of those 79 out of 120, which is 65.8%,
didn&apos;t want it.
But there&apos;s more.
The following table on page 434 summarises the feedback
from people that have direct connections with Melrose Street, which
is the street in question, Mr Mayor, and of the 21 people that actually
responded, 18 opposed it.
That&apos;s 85.7%, Mr Mayor.
But there&apos;s more.
We actually
- the report states that a number of traders, businesses,
had red coloured stickers opposing the proposal,
which far outweighed the number of green-coloured
stickers supporting the proposal.
So I would conclude quite safely that the traders don&apos;t want it.
Now, that&apos;s because they&apos;re very wise, Mr Mayor.
They&apos;re very wise people because they&apos;ve seen what other shopping
centres have gone through.
In Acland Street, Mr Mayor, as you and I know very well, it was proposed
to be closed in 2016 and Acland Street has a vacancy rate of 27.5% vacancy rate.
It&apos;s the highest in Melbourne.
In comparison, Church Street has a vacant spread of 0.6%,
probably the best in the country.
So why is that?
It&apos;s because, according to the actual people that used
to have shops there, it was proposed by Port Phillip Council to close it.
Owners of shoe outlet Globe posted a sign on their old store
in Acland Street pointing out that the store&apos;s decline
and its decision to move to Port Melbourne coincided the death
of the street on Monday, 8 August 2016 when it became a dead-end
street.
Mr Mayor, we all love the greening of shopping centres.
I&apos;m very supportive of it.
I would like to see more of it if possible in all our shopping centres.
But we have to remember that shopping strips are,
first of all, ways in which businesses can actually sell us
goods or services.
Now, if they can&apos;t do it because they haven&apos;t got enough clientele,
then that shopping centre will die.
So that&apos;s the ultimate criteria.
And Mr Mayor, as a councillor, my number one commitment is
to protect our businesses and traders, and I think the best way to do it is
to actually support this report.
I am sure that other councillors will talk about the issue to do
with the Fire Emergency Services Victoria, which also is against the proposal,
but I won&apos;t go into it now.
I am sure other councillors will raise that.
Mr Mayor, I think we&apos;ve done the right thing here
and I think we should first of all listen as Local Government does to residents,
traders and businesses.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Any further debate?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, look, I support the partial closure
of Melrose Street, I absolutely do.
We&apos;re not closing Melrose Street.
We&apos;re partially closing it for a six-month trial to say if we can reinvigorate
a village that is in stress.
It&apos;s in stress and it has been, and it will continue.
I heard all of this before when I was living in Fremantle.
When they were going to partially close South Terrace,
where the cappuccino strip is now, oh, my god, it was going to be the end
of Fremantle.
It is now one of the most greatest places to go.
I was there last year.
You can sit down on the cappuccino strip and they&apos;ve calmed the road down.
They go down very slowly, single lane, two lane, parts of this, part of that.
They&apos;ve done it really well and the place has boomed.
The partial closing for a trial at Melrose Street I think would have been
extremely successful and we would have seen the village come
back to life.
But I&apos;m actually supporting the motion tonight, Councillor del Porto,
because I can&apos;t bring myself to support a motion
- or to push against a fire issue.
So when the fire Commissioner is not supporting it,
it would be a brave councillor, I think we all would, to do that.
That kind of took the wind out of my sails a bit.
It&apos;s a pretty hard one to get over.
I did note the report said we could come up with some conditions
and move some fire hydrants but therefore it&apos;s not really ready,
and it&apos;s June and we have so get cracking if we&apos;re going to do it.
So that&apos;s my main reason.
I actually have no problems whatsoever of a six-month
trial partially calming Melrose Street, to bring people out on to the streets
and enjoy the summer and enjoy a place without buses and trucks going everywhere.
The place is
- the life is slowly dying out of it.
It&apos;s not a really great place to go.
They&apos;ve traffic-calmed Church Street.
They have actually calmed that over the years.
They&apos;ve calmed it.
So tonight is not the night for this proposal but something&apos;s got
to happen down at Sandringham village.
The traders down there have to unite onto something.
They have to start uniting.
I&apos;ve been here for seven years now and it&apos;s just division, division,
vested interest versus vested interest.
Not great for the residents, not great for the actual people who use it.
It&apos;s just the vested interests have all the say.
So change is hard, it&apos;s scary, but sometimes you need leadership
and that leadership can produce the classic, &quot;Oh,
why didn&apos;t we do that years ago?&quot;.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any further debate?
No debate?
I&apos;ll just say a couple of words.
Councillor Castelli?
Please do.
Please go ahead.
Put your microphone on.
Councillor Castelli Councillor Castelli just very, very quick.
Happy to see this go through as printed.
I wasn&apos;t very fond of closure and as you know, there&apos;s been some closures
in Acland and I&apos;ve been to Acland.
Down there there&apos;s a variety of shops and, in particular, boutiques
and a coffee areas and other various.
And I have driven down there and it&apos;s very difficult when you have
taken out a whole heap of parking to find parking is hell.
I avoid it now, totally, because I just give up.
I totally give up.
So this is probably why businesses like this and things like this do close
off businesses like this die because there&apos;s not enough parking.
And I&apos;ve been down the Sandringham
- it&apos;s a beautiful little village of course but I think it needs a lot more.
As mentioned, perhaps a lot more greenery, but not closure.
I don&apos;t agree with closure.
I don&apos;t like the idea of a six-month trial.
It just means six months for businesses to fail.
That&apos;s how I look at this.
So I&apos;m sure there&apos;s other avenues, some other ways, maybe more shops,
maybe more people in the area.
So that&apos;s my view on this.
So I&apos;m glad to put this through the way it is.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
I support the recommendation from the officers on this one
and I do remember Acland Street, Councillor del Porto, 20 years ago.
It was actually performing better than Church Street,
believe it or not.
I remember that clearly, and what I&apos;m hearing
from the traders there is probably the closure didn&apos;t help
the street.
So, now, I mentioned the satisfaction
- the community satisfaction survey earlier tonight and in Sandringham, the top issue
they have in Sandringham is actually car parking.
Believe it or not, I&apos;m reading it here, on page 149 of the satisfaction survey,
it is car parking.
When I heard them on 19 April Special Committee meeting,
I heard the submitters, it was clear to me that we did not consider that some
of the existing car parking is actually on private land and if the owners decide
to build on it, we&apos;ll have probably close to zero car parking in that area.
The other concern I&apos;ve had is the compliance of that roundabout,
to get people to turn around and come back.
I do drive personally a big car myself and I find it hard to navigate,
especially when there is fire hydrants and furniture around.
Now, I&apos;m not surprised that the Fire Rescue Victoria declined to support this.
I&apos;m glad the officers reached out to them.
Looking into it, there would be some concerns, for example,
in regard to fire hydrant coverage, if someone also decided to build or extend
on their building.
I am 100% in support of the recommendation and I am glad we are putting this
to bed now.
Councillor del Porto, would you like to
- sorry, Councillor Evans, it was you that moved.
Would you like to close?
CR EVANS: Yes, thank you, Mr Mayor.
Mr Mayor, with all due respect to Councillor del Porto and yourself too,
saying it equates to Acland Street is just a little bit past the pub test
as far as I&apos;m concerned.
On the northern side of Melrose Street, there&apos;s Sidebar going down
to the audio place.
There&apos;s about five shops on that side.
On the other side, there&apos;s the Greek restaurant and
about two shops, before the car park going into the pub,
which was the area that was set aside to shut down Melrose Street.
So let&apos;s be quite clear about that.
There were about five or six on the northern side and
about two or three shops on the southern side.
So the comparison between that little stretch
between Station Street and the entrance to the pub, and considering Acland Street
is a little bit far-fetched.
I was just pointing that out.
However, let me say that the most important thing here I think is for we
as councillors to listen to people, even though we don&apos;t agree with them
in certain things.
Again, that is what I&apos;m voting for.
I did support the closure, the temporary closure,
to see how it would go, so that people would have a look
at something that&apos;s a little bit innovative.
People didn&apos;t want it.
We had a strong message.
So again I think we have to listen but part of the message I still think
is that the shopkeepers down there want a green village.
They have had a zero village there now, Village Zero, and they are committed
to that.
So again I think that&apos;s part and parcel.
The only thing I do hope is that the Sandy traders
and the new commercial
- the commerce whatever it&apos;s called, the commerce
- the Chamber of Commerce aren&apos;t splitting our traders,
and that&apos;s pretty sad.
So again let me just say I support the recommendation that we do go up
and green a little bit more.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
We&apos;ll put this to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Cr El Mouallem and it is carried.
Can we call on Councillor Stitfold, please.
Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
I believe we&apos;ve got one request to be heard and that&apos;s
from Mr Derek Screen.
Mr Derek Screen, can you please come forward.
MR SCREEN: Thank you, councillors, officers and staff.
The Urban Forest Strategy is a long-time coming and one that we wholeheartedly
support.
For some of this it&apos;s an important strategy but
for some of those who live in the Pennydale
neighbourhood of Cheltenham or the eastern end
of Highett, this strategy is likely the most important one
that Bayside has put forward and it can mean the difference
between our areas being liveable or unlivable into the future.
There&apos;s a storm coming in the form of the suburban rail loop,
and it&apos;s coming directly at Pennydale and Highett,
and when it does, we need a strategy in place that is bold, aggressive,
proactive and, above all, in full swing.
Unfortunately the draft strategy and precinct documents
before Council tonight do not go far enough, not by a long way.
Pennydale and Highett are also the highest density,
lowest tree canopy and hottest areas of all of Bayside, even before the SRL
is built, and we need help right now in fighting these issues.
When the SRL comes, this will get markedly worse
and decline even further, but because of the SRL, we will also quickly become
the centre of population and growth for jobs for all of Bayside and we need
to be on the front foot when this happens, not playing catch-up.
This is a great strategy but it needs to be greatly strengthened
and Pennydale and Highett need to be protected, looked at individually
and with priority, and we need our Urban Forest
Strategy to be up-to-date and with all the relevant information and we need
to be on the ground running to head off these issues before it&apos;s too late.
So please to the councillors and staff, make this strategy great, not just good.
Make it work well, not just work.
And look after those of us who are in need of help now and into the future,
and strengthen this strategy and get it actioned as quickly
as possible.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Screen.
You must have done this a few times.
You&apos;re on time.
Any questions?
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Yes, I had a question.
Mr Screen, you have mentioned to me a number of times that Council,
Council officers, councillors, speak about Cheltenham
as an inclusive (inaudible) of Pennydale.
Could you give me an answer as to how you would like
to differentiate Pennydale from Cheltenham, realising that part
of the bigger Cheltenham is Golf Courses, which has a huge tree canopy.
You might give me a short
- MR SCREEN: OK.
If you look at any of the other residential
neighbourhoods of Bayside, the majority of those neighbourhoods is made up
of the residential areas.
If you look at Cheltenham, the majority of Cheltenham is made up of Golf Courses,
Cheltenham Park, cemeteries.
There&apos;s only a small component of Cheltenham is actually residential.
For us, for example, the majority of the residential self of Park Road
is already covered by VPOs and NRZ zoned and those that are north, which
is basically just us, is in GRZ and we&apos;re not covered.
CR EVANS: Just to be quite clear, the areas that have Sandy Golf Course,
Cheltenham Golf Course, Royal Melbourne, Victoria, it&apos;s different from Pennydale?
MR SCREEN: Correct, absolutely.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, any further questions to Mr Screen?
No further questions, you may take a seat.
Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: I would like to move to defer for further consideration.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Do we have a
- CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;ll second that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
We have some words.
Do you mind just reading them, Councillor Samuel-King, please?
CR SAMUEL-KING : That the matter be deferred
to enable further consideration by councillors
at the July 2023 strategic issues discussion and further considered
by Council at the August 2023 Council meeting.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King and,
Councillor del Porto, you&apos;re OK with that?
CR DEL PORTO: I second it, yes.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Would you like to debate or we&apos;ll just move on
and take a vote?
CR SAMUEL-KING: A short debate.
CR EL MOUALLEM: OK.
Go ahead.
CR SAMUEL-KING: This is an incredibly important strategy.
It sets the future of the landscape of Bayside.
As Derek Screen said, this matters.
It&apos;s the difference between Bayside being a liveable city and not a liveable city.
We want to get this right.
We as seven councillors need to come to a common mind, and I think
if we attempted to make a decision tonight,
we would be hasty.
I think of the Ents in &apos;Lord of the Rings&apos;: do not be too hasty.
This is one that needs to be properly thought through and I think consideration
at the strategic issues discussion is a good way of doing that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Yes, Mr Mayor.
Tonight we have five pages of amendments which if you add them all
up, it&apos;s 11 separate amendments
proposed by councillors, including myself and other councillors as well, as well
as what&apos;s been recommended by the officers.
So that makes it 12 really.
So I just think that
- I agree with Councillor Samuel-King.
I think it&apos;s probably better just to give us a bit more time to
- we&apos;re not far.
I think they&apos;re very close, some of them, but I think it&apos;s better
to give us a bit more time to think about it and we asked the CEO before and
without verbalising it, you did actually say that there was no
hurry to actually finish this tonight, decide this tonight.
So I just think we might as well just give us a few more weeks.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Yes, Mr Mayor, just as an addition to this, let me say that as far
as I&apos;m concerned as a councillor representing let&apos;s say
the southern part, the suggested
- I&apos;ll put it on record, the suggested recommendation
by both Councillor del Porto, Cr El Mouallem,
Councillor Castelli that are written into the options, options 1 and 2,
I support Beaumaris, Black Rock, Sandringham, Hampton and Cheltenham.
The suggested exotic natives being 20 natives and suggested indigenous 80.
So they have my support on those five particular things.
Let them sort out the other ways.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, pretty much ditto with Councillor Evans.
Down south we&apos;re quite comfortable with indigenous planting and especially
down in the VPO area of Beaumaris and Black Rock.
And, look, if up north needs more time to sort this out, I&apos;m more than happy
to give it.
And I think it was Paolo Nutini who sung the song &apos;Jenny, don&apos;t be hasty&apos;.
It&apos;s a fantastic song and I agree with it, and we shouldn&apos;t be hasty
in anything that we do, we shouldn&apos;t be rushing
into things that have profound implications.
So happy to defer this tonight.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Councillor Castelli?
CR CASTELLI: Yes, thank you, and as Mr Screen has mentioned, there
is a storm brewing.
Yes.
We have something happening there into the future and that&apos;s the rails.
Of course, the station and everything else.
So we need to get it clear and get it happening
and let&apos;s talk further into this and make sure that we&apos;re doing it
in the right direction.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
Any further debate from the floor?
Lucky we&apos;re only deferring it and we&apos;re not debating it tonight.
So councillors, it is in my opinion a wise move
to defer this item.
To be honest, I&apos;m not fussed what&apos;s happening
and the percentages down in the south, but I&apos;m very gravely concerned
about the changing the feel and the look of the northern part of the municipality,
specifically in Brighton and Brighton East.
That&apos;s a good move that we defer it, we discuss it, in an open forum.
And also going back to the satisfaction survey, I would like
to make you aware that the provision and maintenance of street trees made
the top list of concerns in Bayside.
So I hope we also get an opportunity to discuss this
and see how we can integrate this into that strategy.
Mr Screen mentioned let&apos;s make it great, so let&apos;s make it great, take the time,
there is no rush.
Councillor Samuel-King, would you like to close?
CR SAMUEL-KING: No.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I put it to the vote.
All those in favour of deferment?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
We&apos;re moving to 10.6, amendment C199bays of Yalukit-Willam
Nature Reserve, and Councillor Samuel-King , you have a conflict of interest.
Have you filled out the red form, Councillor Samuel-King?
Thank you.
CR DEL PORTO: Moved, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto moved
and Councillor Evans.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, the purpose of the report is to seek approval
for the proposed Planning Scheme amendment to facilitate the rezoning
of two parcels of land, Yalukit Willam, formerly Elsternwick Park Nature Reserve,
and the Highett Grassy Woodland to public conservation and resource zone.
Mr Mayor, I won&apos;t go into it.
We read the report.
I just wanted to highlight the fact that exemptions do appear in the zone
which exempt buildings and works permit requirements
if the works are carried out or on behalf of a public land manager, so in the case
of the Yalukit Willam, we would be allowed to
- if we want ahead with a gateway building
- to actually build it without a permit.
I don&apos;t think there&apos;s anything we propose for the Highett Grassy Woodland,
but there might be something at some stage.
A hut or something.
Whatever.
But it would be allowed anyway.
So happy to support it.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: No, thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any debate from the floor?
I just have a couple of questions, just to put it on the record,
that the rezoning won&apos;t impact any future works on the Yalukit-Willam
Nature Reserve, considering we considered a grant to do certain works,
including a gateway building.
Just can I get confirmation it&apos;s not.
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, the proposed rezoning
of the land would not prevent the proposed gateway building.
It could actually be undertaken as of right under the land use
and development requirements of the zone.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
And on a more technical note, a question in regard to clause 11, settlement
on page 299, and we&apos;ve got clause 11.01 to protect the green wedges
of metropolitan Melbourne from an inappropriate development
and 11.01R, which seeks to maintain permanent urban gross boundary
around Melbourne to create more consolidated,
sustainable city.
Can you just explain to me how this works with this rezoning?
Are they applicable?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, the clauses you&apos;ve referred to on page 299
of the agenda under clause 11 are both state
and regional policy provisions.
That sets out the high level policy framework
around encouraging and supporting green space
and maintaining opportunities to protect our important land
from other developments, so there is a balance between allowing
and supporting development as well as protecting other parts.
There is a close relationship between some of the policies around settlement
with the proposed rezoning, though it&apos;s not a direct relationship
between what Council is proposing, but there are synergies with the state
and regional policy.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Cripps.
No debate from me on this point.
I&apos;m glad that whatever we&apos;re doing is not going to restrict our plans
to the reserves, both of them.
Councillor del Porto, would you like to close?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Just as I said before, just before the meeting,
this was something that was raised by the committee the other day with you
and I present and so it&apos;s important that the committee is aware that that was
a concern to them, so if we can let them know that
we are allowed to build without a permit if it is the land manager that&apos;s doing it.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Put to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem and it is carried.
Can we call Councillor Samuel-King in, please.
Welcome.
We move to item 10.7, concept design for the Hampton Hub,
and we have one written statement from Mr Tony Shepherd on behalf
of Hampton Neighbourhood Association in support,
and we&apos;ve got three requests to speak from
- and we start with Mr Tony Batt.
Please come forward.
MR BATT: I fully support the development of design options for the Hampton Hub
for feasibility analysis, apart from option 2 and any options reducing
the facility&apos;s space.
I point out that this is not progress, as we were past this stage
with the masterplan in 2021, and that you councillors have just kicked
the can down the road during the past two years.
The concept plans presented now are simplistic and back
of the cigarette packet type sketches with no detail or even accuracy.
The Woolworths 10-storey option 2 is out of the blue
and has not had community consultation, nor any community support.
This type of concept would not be presented or be
acceptable in other Bayside MACs.
Why is it considered for Hampton?
I believe this Council&apos;s lack of interest in the Hampton Hub
and preference for other projects leapfrogging this
project is related to the new ward arrangement.
Councillors seem to be only supporting or fast-tracking
projects in their own wards or where they live, rather than supporting projects
with need and equitably allocating capital funds.
For example
- CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, point of order.
I actually am offended at what was just stated.
I don&apos;t believe that councillors just look after their own wards and not look
after other people&apos;s wards at all.
I would like the speaker to retract that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr Batt, do you mind retracting?
MR BATT: I retract that statement.
An example, we can afford a $17.5 million Brighton
Warm Water Pool, not essential and a nice-to-have project,
while Hampton suffers with essential but not fit-for-purpose
facilities, first identified in 2011.
As I&apos;m sure you&apos;re aware, Hampton is the third largest suburb in Bayside.
It&apos;s the second or third largest MAC.
It&apos;s represented by two councillors, with Hampton only one-third of the vote
in each; hence, no councillor to be a voice
for Hampton or a champion for the Hub
- CR SAMUEL-KING: Point of order.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Samuel-King, what&apos;s the point of order?
Just your microphone, please.
CR SAMUEL-KING: I find that offensive.
There is a councillor that is a voice for Hampton.
I&apos;m standing up.
CR EL MOUALLEM: And I believe I can second this too, Mr Batts.
She&apos;s working extremely hard.
So do you mind just retracting this too?
MR BATT: If I must.
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, with respect, if the speaker is going to continue
to offend councillors, I suggest that he cease his submission.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
CR SAMUEL-KING: I second that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Mr Batt, you have 26 seconds.
Do you mind just doing this in the best way possible for your point of view.
MR BATT: My plea to you all is to be fully supportive of the Hampton Hub.
Delete option 2.
Fully fund and hasten the Hub and ensure Hampton
is treated fairly and equitably.
I believe you are currently failing Hampton in your Council Goals 2, 3 and 4
- our people, our place and our promise.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Batt.
Do we have any questions?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thanks very much for coming down, Mr Batt.
I can understand why you and the association, the committee
and anyone else, would be upset.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Is that a question, Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I think so.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Do you mind, just ask the question?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: OK.
Will do.
Where did you come across a proposal of 10-storey apartment block?
MR BATT: Well, it&apos;s been told or it&apos;s been passed to me
by people who have spoken to the Council about the project.
I can&apos;t say who.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: OK.
And can I ask that from the paperwork, from option 2,
you can deduce that that street frontage from Woolworths to Willis Street
in option 2
- if I take you to I think it&apos;s page 311
- it appears to me that that
- from what the Council is saying, this is a potential option
to provide open space into Hampton Street.
Is that how you read this?
MR BATT: It&apos;s very limited in its information.
It appears that a number of buildings are knocked down
to provide that open space, yes, it does.
But it does appear that we&apos;ve got a multistorey apartment block overlooking
some of the residences there.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: And just the last question, are you kind
of philosophically opposed to a structure plan or an urban framework
that brings open space into Hampton Street or is this
- the frustration that we have heard
- because I haven&apos;t seen the Association
- because you have no idea what option 2 is about?
MR BATT: Only the rumours and the one-page piece of information, correct.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: The rumours and the one page of information.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor Evans, you have a question?
CR EVANS: Yes, thank you, Mr Batt.
I understand your frustration.
Just one of the things that does concern me
- there&apos;s been community consultation on three and not the second.
Is that your main concern, that you don&apos;t know enough
about option 2 so you say let&apos;s take out option 2?
Would that be a fair assessment?
MR BATT: We don&apos;t like the concept and we&apos;ve seen that
and there have been articles in the paper about how Woolworths have been doing
a similar option in other suburbs, in the western suburbs,
and it hasn&apos;t been a successful outcome.
It&apos;s been focused on the developer getting
- putting multiple apartments in an area where we already have
an overdevelopment of apartments.
So we&apos;re not wanting another 300 or 400 apartments in that locale.
CR EVANS: But there&apos;s still an anxiety
- the community has not been consulted on option 2.
MR BATT: Not at all.
Neither on option 3 or 4.
CR EL MOUALLEM: We have a question from Councillor Castelli.
CR CASTELLI: Yes.
Yes.
I&apos;ve known you for a while.
I have never seen you this upset.
CR EL MOUALLEM: To your question please.
CR CASTELLI: Yes, sorry.
I have beg your pardon.
Is there anything in there you like about it?
What do you want us to take out of there?
Because we have a motion coming up very soon which is
- we have four options
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Sorry, just
- CR CASTELLI: Sorry, there&apos;s a motion in here.
CR EL MOUALLEM: But the question is?
CR CASTELLI: So have you not seen the motion that we have
- CR EL MOUALLEM: No, that&apos;s
- CR CASTELLI: OK.
CR EL MOUALLEM: There&apos;s no motion as yet.
We&apos;re just asking questions now to the speaker.
If there&apos;s no question, we will get
- CR CASTELLI: I&apos;m confused.
What is it that you don&apos;t like about any of those?
You sound like
- MR BATT: No, I&apos;m not saying I don&apos;t like any of them.
We got to the point, option 1, back in 2021 and we&apos;ve been told we have
to wait, wait, wait, wait since then and it&apos;s just treading water
and then suddenly these back of the cigarette packet ideas come along,
as if someone&apos;s had a smart idea, let&apos;s put it down.
It doesn&apos;t seem to come from any professional organisation.
It seems to have come from general
- CR EL MOUALLEM: We get your point, Mr Batt.
We get your point.
Any further questions?
CR CASTELLI: Not a question, though.
I won&apos;t go on.
There&apos;s no question.
I wanted to make a statement.
CR EL MOUALLEM: We will call on the next speaker, Mr Evan Packer,
please.
Is Mr Evan in the chamber?
If not, we&apos;ll call on Mr Tony Shepherd on behalf
of Hampton Neighbourhood Association.
MR SHEPHERD: Mr Mayor, may I just clarify the previous
representative.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr Shepherd?
MR SHEPHERD: I&apos;m currently the President of the Hampton Neighbourhood Association.
Tony Batt, who just spoke, is a former President
of the Hampton Neighbourhood Association.
He&apos;s no longer on our committee.
He is still a member of our Association.
But the presentation that he just made, we had no prior information about what
he was going to say.
He&apos;s making that as an individual.
The submission I&apos;m making is on behalf of our committee, which is here,
which is the Hampton
Neighbourhood Association position.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you for clarifying.
MR SHEPHERD: Tony Batt, as you can tell, has been very passionate
about this project as a HNA President.
He&apos;s very frustrated, still frustrated, and he&apos;s very keen to get the program
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you for clarifying that, Mr Shepherd.
You may proceed.
MR SHEPHERD: OK.
Mayor and councillors, HNA strongly supports the Hampton Hub
and the accompanying green space.
We support a study in pursuit of its development.
H&amp;A&apos;s support, however, is premised upon a number of amendments
to the proposed study.
Without these, they are deeply flawed.
They are, number one, the study assesses options 1,
3 and 4 only.
The study makes no change to traffic ways and bus movements.
3, the Scout Hall site is included in the open space solution.
The assessment
- number 4, the assessment criteria applied equally to
all the options.
5, all options comply with the Bayside Planning Scheme,
including preferred building heights.
The rationale for the last two of these amendments is self-evident.
The rationale for the first three is as follows: the Hub masterplan was adopted
by Council in 2021 after extensive community consultation
on option 1, yielding broad community support.
Options 3 and 4, being a lower cost reduced footprint
variant of option 1, arguably benefit from this support.
Option 2 does not.
It contemplates a wholly new footprint, inclusion of commercial partner,
and to satisfy the partner&apos;s profit needs, a potential 10-storey
office apartment block at precinct centre.
There&apos;s absolutely no community mandate for this and it will be strongly opposed.
It has no place in the study proposed.
Turning to the traffic ways and bus movements,
a 2016 decision was made on these after detailed work
by Council in the community.
They were key aspects to the 2018 VCAT ruling
on the Hampton quarter.
This study should leave them unchanged.
Finally, today&apos;s report notes a lack of open space in the Hampton MAC.
The Scout Hall site can and should be made part of the solution
to this deficiency.
To finish, HNA supports a high-quality study and asks councillors
to adopt our proposed amendments to ensure such a study is undertaken.
Thank you very much.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Shepherd.
Any questions?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes.
Thank you for clarifying the HNA&apos;s position.
I think we all agree we do want a high
- a proper study.
Now, we heard the previous speaker talked about this development, that Hampton
is getting overdevelopment.
Does the Hampton Association agree that it is getting overdeveloped,
there&apos;s too many apartments getting built in a very small area?
MR SHEPHERD: No, as long as it meets the terms
of the Bayside Planning Scheme, which our association, as you know,
fights very strongly to ensure is followed.
No, as long as they&apos;re following the Planning Scheme,
I don&apos;t think it&apos;s overdeveloped.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: So when you say follows the Planning Scheme,
do you mean the preferred heights in the major activity precincts?
MR SHEPHERD: Yes.
That&apos;s only one of the aspects but yes.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Do you think currently that the development applications
that have gone in in the core of the precinct where we&apos;re talking
about right now, particularly in Hampton Street
from the station backwards, so I&apos;m talking about the cruise ship, comply
with the preferred heights?
MR SHEPHERD: Yes, as you know, the preferred height in that area
for the proposed Willis Street precinct is A1, which is preferred six storey.
That area is the same zoning level as the cruise ship, or two towers
of the cruise ship.
When they went to VCAT they got two storeys about that.
So they&apos;re two eight-storey towers.
So as you know, the preferred part of the Planning Scheme,
you can justify that in many ways and obviously VCAT supported
that justification.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Another question?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Another question, sorry, Mr Chair.
So all of those properties along Hampton Street that are in option 3
- sorry, option 2 are owned by
- they&apos;re not Council owned?
MR SHEPHERD: That&apos;s right.
They&apos;re privately owned.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: And they could at the moment go to six storeys?
MR SHEPHERD: I think it&apos;s four.
I&apos;ve got the Planning Scheme here.
It&apos;s four storeys.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Maybe Mr Cripps can answer this.
Commercial 1 zone, Mr Cripps, on Hampton Street.
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, I&apos;m just trying to find the specifics
but I understand there is a preferred height of four storeys
along the Hampton Street road frontage.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Cripps.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I just have one more question.
So given the applicants are going ambit claim, 6, 8 storeys, and VCAT
is often giving them two extra, that wouldn&apos;t be something great
for Hampton if they did build along Hampton Street up to six storeys?
MR SHEPHERD: As long as it&apos;s part of the Planning Scheme.
There&apos;s a difference when you&apos;re talking about privately owned land
and Council land.
So if you are talking about multiple storeys on Council land,
which is option 2, that concerns the association.
We feel that should be less dense and more green.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Absolutely, thank you.
I just have one for the officers.
CR EL MOUALLEM: OK.
Go ahead, Councillor Martin.
Just a question?
Councillor Evans?
Please.
MR SHEPHERD: I thought I&apos;d almost escaped!
CR EVANS: Can you tell me where you&apos;re getting this 10 storeys from?
I know we talked about it before but just for the public domain?
MR SHEPHERD: We were advised that 10 storeys was a possibility.
If you consider what Councillor Martin is just saying, it&apos;s already zone 6
and then the Hampton cruise ship, as we like to call it, got an extra 2,
so it&apos;s 8, and the recent sea pickle decision
in Hampton Street, which basically was open slather in terms
of you can go well above what is preferred height,
10 storeys doesn&apos;t seem that unreasonable to us.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further questions?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Not for the speaker.
CR EVANS: I have another one.
Sorry about that, Mr Mayor.
It&apos;s very important, Mr Mayor.
Mr Batt answered questions about option 2, that he had concerns not only
about community consultation but about the actual planning of option 2.
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Can you talk into the microphone please?
CR EVANS: Sorry, it&apos;s a bit hard to talk and
- anyway, he explained to the councillors about, A, he didn&apos;t like option 2
for a number of reasons.
Why wouldn&apos;t you explore option 2?
What would be, as far as the Hampton Neighbourhood
Association is concerned, what would be the non-benefits
of exploring it?
I know you mightn&apos;t like it but what would be the non-benefits
of not exploring it?
Give me some sort of
- MR SHEPHERD: Absolutely.
I think when you bottle all this up with options that already have been
consulted by the community and a lot of Council work
and money has been spent analysing them, and then you throw in
- Mr Batt was right, a very rudimentary drawing of a proposal
and a few words, I think that&apos;s just not right.
We&apos;re not against option 2.
We just want to make sure that the community have
an opportunity to be consulted on it and that it&apos;s analysed
to the same level that option 1 and, by extension, option 3 and 4 have.
CR EVANS: Thank you.
Just a subsequent question.
CR EL MOUALLEM: To the speaker?
CR EVANS: Yes.
So would you be opposed if there was a motion that was put
to consult widely on option 2, as has been done, and include it
within a feasibility study?
MR SHEPHERD: No, I don&apos;t think we can support that.
However, if Council in the future considered that
they would like to put forward a separate motion where
we can put a process in place to fully analyse the option 2 idea,
then that&apos;s something that we&apos;re happy to look at.
But please don&apos;t bottle that all together.
CR EVANS: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions of the speaker?
I just want to say thank you for presenting and question
to the officers, Councillor Martin.
You may take your seat.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, look, under the current Planning Scheme,
the preferred heights, is there anything preventing owners
of property around the Council property
- so mainly on Hampton Street
- to start making applications
- like, so if someone has actually
- and I don&apos;t know, but if someone has actually accumulated all
of the property from Willis Street downwards,
is there anything stopping them making
- CR EL MOUALLEM: You may proceed.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Look, Councillor del Porto, I know
- I&apos;m asking the Director a question.
You keep wandering around.
I&apos;ve lost my train of thought, Mr Mayor.
CR EL MOUALLEM: You were asking if anything
is stopping the owner on Hampton Street
- he&apos;s just stretching his legs.
It&apos;s been a long meeting.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Right you are.
So if that does happen, is there anything in a Planning Scheme
to stop them making a pretty big application along that street?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, under the current planning provisions,
we have preferable height controls.
The Hampton Street frontage, as indicated, has a four storey or 13.5 preferred height
limit, but an applicant, a property owner, could make an application
which consolidates land.
It could make an application to exceed those height controls,
which would then need to be assessed against the design principles
and preferred outcomes that sit within the Bayside Planning Scheme.
It is noted that there have been a large number of applications
within the Hampton Street area which have exceeded height controls,
preferred height controls, and have been supported by VCAT
above the preferred height controls.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, I have a question of Mr Cripps.
Could he explain to us what option 2 would involve
because there&apos;s all kinds of questions and obviously there may be some things
that he can&apos;t talk about but could I just find out
from him what option 2 would involve and what parties would be involved,
if anything?
I don&apos;t know what we&apos;re allowed to say
- I&apos;m asking the question so that we can all talk freely.
CR EL MOUALLEM: If we are talking about it, I think we need to put it
out there to the community.
CR DEL PORTO: I would like to know what option 2 means here
in the report.
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, option 2 that&apos;s been presented
in the report is looking at the opportunity for Council
to pursue land acquisition.
That might be going beyond our existing land holdings
and considering the opportunity to either go
down a public acquisition arrangement or some other kind
of arrangement which would allow us to acquire land to look
at an alternate outcome for the Willis Street
and Hampton Hub proposal.
It would potentially or could offer opportunity for commercial construction,
which may compensate for the loss of commercial properties
on the Hampton Street frontage, as well as allowing us to provide open space
which has a direct connection to Hampton Street
and have a Council facility which could be positioned on the Hampton Street frontage.
In terms of property arrangements, that could be anything from acquisition
through public acquisition overlays, it could be conversations with landowners
and looking at opportunities to undertake purchase or land swap
arrangements.
It&apos;s something that could be looked at as part of a wider feasibility option.
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you very much.
By the way, I think you have the ability to listen on the chew gum and talk
at the same time.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further questions?
I have one because I&apos;m really confused now.
We&apos;ve spoken about acquisition and acquisition and acquisition.
Are we spending money to buy the land that&apos;s facing Hampton
Street?
Is Council spending money to buy land or is it going to be the other way around?
Someone else buying us or swapping with us?
When I hear about acquisition, the way I heard it, land acquisition,
I understand that we&apos;ll be buying land.
So is that what&apos;s happening in option 2?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, there is no proposition
about how land my be or may be acquired or what commercial agreements could be
entered into.
We&apos;re wanting to investigate the feasibility
through option 2 of what could be delivered
as a complete alternate model to just containing an outcome
on Council-owned land but to explore a possible alternate outcome
which may be a better outcome for the community more wholistically.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I was concerned about the budget.
If we are purchasing land, I didn&apos;t see the line item there so I just
wanted to clarify this.
OK, councillors, if there&apos;s no further questions,
Councillor Samuel-King would you like to move?
CR SAMUEL-KING : I have an alternate motion,
if we could have that on the screen.
That Council undertakes a feasibility analysis of only options 1 and 4
for the proposed Hampton Hub, includes the following assessment
of open space as part of the feasibility analysis that there be
quality meeting and recreation space, that the space
is not unreasonably overshadowed from neighbouring development,
be of an appropriate size and shape, safe from vehicle traffic, quiet
and relatively free from noise pollution, the provision
of a children&apos;s playground not bordered by back of house facilities, and allows
for the retention of existing trees and provides for deep-rooted planting.
Also includes in the feasibility analysis the ability
to incorporate commercial space to provide an active edge
to the public open space, avoidance of overdevelopment in particular
all buildings to adhere fully to the preferred height guidelines
of the DDO12, and avoidance of visual bulk, utilisation
of the current Scout Hall site as additional outdoor space,
potentially incorporating a children&apos;s play area.
Undertakes community consultation on option 1
and option 4 following Council&apos;s consideration of the analysis of options.
Considers a report before 30 December 2023 on the findings
of the feasibility analysis and community feedback
on the development scenarios and considers the next steps.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
We have a seconder.
Fantastic.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Firstly, I want to outline my commitment
to the Hampton Hub.
This is a space changing and once in a lifetime opportunity
to create a wonderful inner urban open space.
It would deliver a new integrated community hub to connect
all current community services and programs in Hampton into one facility.
The delivery of a centralised, intergenerational facility would provide
a location in Hampton where the community can gather,
enjoy a new public open space and access to improve transport outcomes.
This Hampton Hub masterplan never, to my mind, conceived of option 2
and option 3 I see similarly as fatally flawed.
And I cannot support a multimillion-dollar project that is not supported
by a local member.
From what I have heard from the Hampton Neighbourhood Association
, not supported by the Hampton Neighbourhood Association,
the local residents association, and I believe would be strongly
and vehemently opposed by the community.
Overdevelopment is a key issue for Hampton residents,
particularly those who live in and around the Hampton major Activity Centre,
and I want Bayside City Council to be part of the solution to this overdevelopment.
I do not want any part of something where Council would
be spending many, many millions of dollars that would be part
of the problem.
And since that is my strong view, and I believe the strong view
of my fellow councillors, I don&apos;t want to waste officer time
and Council money investigating a proposal that I believe will never be supported
by us or by the community.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
CR DEL PORTO: Reserve.
CR EL MOUALLEM: For the debate?
CR CASTELLI: Just a question.
Can I get one of the speakers back up for a question?
CR EL MOUALLEM: We have two speakers.
Mr Tony Batt and Mr Tony Shepherd.
CR CASTELLI: Mr Shepherd.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Mr Shepherd, do you mind coming forward?
CR CASTELLI: Either one.
CR EL MOUALLEM: The last one you get, Councillor Castelli.
CR CASTELLI: What do you think of this motion brought by your councillor?
Is this motion clear to you, appropriate?
I just need to know your
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Very briefly.
MR SHEPHERD: I fully support the motion.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
You may take your seat.
Let&apos;s debate.
So any further debate?
Any debate from the floor?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I can understand why the HNA do not support going forward
with things that they describe as on the back of a cigarette packet.
But I also heard them say that they would be open minded to hearing more
about something that could be even more beneficial to the community.
And I think that that&apos;s something that is very, very important here.
They don&apos;t even know what the potential is.
It is being shut down and killed tonight, ceased to exist,
an option that could be far more beneficial to the existing community
and the future community.
It just gets killed.
As for millions of dollars, we&apos;re not talking about millions
of dollars.
We&apos;re talking about a study.
There is nothing on the table tonight to be spending millions of dollars.
We&apos;re actually here just to explore the options.
If we start pulling out options, pull two out, option 2 here and 4,
the Hampton Neighbourhood Association are on top of their game, we get that,
but the vast majority of the community don&apos;t know
that there&apos;s options here.
We&apos;ve literally got two submissions.
This is not the time to be doing this type of on the night changing of amendments.
You just heard the HNA.
This is the first time they&apos;ve actually even heard about the proposal.
Quite a detailed proposal too.
Stuff about moving quite and relatively free from noise pollution,
making sure there is no back of house facilities.
I mean, this sort of stuff can really affect the way
the feasibility study works.
We&apos;re far better off proceeding with the feasibility study tonight,
just with the four options.
There&apos;s no harm done in that at all.
We&apos;re not committing the Council to anything.
We&apos;re actually doing what we should be doing, being transparent
to the community that there are other options, there are other options
for this space, and after
- I think we&apos;ve been dealing with this for 18 months to two years
and the community still
- even the association don&apos;t know.
You heard what they had to say tonight.
They said there&apos;s been rumours of 10 storeys.
Rumours of partnering and land grabs and making millions of dollars.
We heard
- I think even in the emotion, it&apos;s talking about staying
within preferred heights in the DDO12.
Well, they&apos;re not doing that at King Street.
By going down this road, councillors, by pulling these out tonight,
you could be setting yourself for a buildathon along Hampton Street.
So don&apos;t do it tonight, councillors.
Tonight&apos;s the night you listen to your Director of Planning,
who&apos;s put this together.
Really smart guy.
He actually can chew gum and talk at the same time.
We heard that, and it&apos;s happening again.
He&apos;s really smart.
So let&apos;s listen to our officers and let them go out
and explore these options, councillors.
Do not do this.
This is the quickest way to shut this down.
There won&apos;t be anything built in Hampton for years.
There&apos;s just not enough money to do that.
So please don&apos;t shut it down tonight.
Let the options roll.
We will come back in December with a lot more information
and the community will be consulted and I think I&apos;m going
to flag that there might be an alternative motion we can debate
in this one doesn&apos;t proceed tonight.
CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;d like to get some facts now from Mr Cripps.
CR EL MOUALLEM: You have some questions?
CR DEL PORTO: Questions for Mr Cripps.
Mr Cripps, we were told let&apos;s go with the four options, costing.
How much would it cost to have a scoping costing
for four options?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, I understand that the potential costings
- and we will need to go through a procurement process,
but we&apos;re anticipating between upwards of $50,000 to $100,000
to undertake the feasibility work in the initial phase,
as per the original officer recommendation
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Mr Cripps.
CR DEL PORTO: Another question.
The other statement was about the height.
There&apos;s been a bit of to and fro from different people about the height.
Could you explain to us and to me and residents about what height
is prevalent there and what could actually be built?
There are height restrictions or not?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, as I indicated earlier, there is a design
and development overlay which refers to a preferred height of six storeys
on the rear section or the majority of the triangular piece of land
on the site.
I believe
- I would have to go back and double check but there&apos;s a three or four storey height
limit on the Willis Lane frontage part of the overall piece of land.
These are preferred heights.
What you are seeing within Hampton and particularly within this section
of Hampton is heights of up to eight storeys being supported.
And that&apos;s with regards to the Vic Track land at the rear
of this site.
So it is possible to see developments approved
with greater heights above and beyond the preferred height being
supported.
Some of the key drivers in our assessment would be
around the building height, the impact it has on adjoining properties,
things like overshadowing, overlooking and those types of elements would come
into context when considering the appropriate height and the impacts
on the surrounding area.
CR DEL PORTO: Another question.
Mr Cripps, you mentioned six plus two is eight.
Is it possible to actually have a higher than eight
storey high proposal, given the restrictions that are not
there for height?
MR CRIPPS: So through you, Mr Mayor, a proposition could be put forward
to go beyond eight, 10, even higher.
It does not necessarily mean it would be supported
but it does mean that an applicant could propose something,
Council could propose something, of greater than the six storey limit.
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you.
And finally you mentioned $50,000 cost
- through you, Mr Mayor.
Is that the cost for all four options?
I wasn&apos;t sure about that.
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, at the moment, as indicated,
we&apos;re anticipating that upward of $50,000 to $100,000 would be required
to undertake the initial feasibility work for the four options.
CR DEL PORTO: I would like to speak quickly.
CR EL MOUALLEM: We have a question.
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: A lot of information just passed through there
and I just want to confirm all of that.
So you&apos;re saying that that type of response, an applicant on the frontage
of Hampton Street, nothing to do with what we&apos;re talking about tonight,
they&apos;re just landowners could start putting in applications for setback up
to six storeys, if they&apos;re on the back of that frontage, even further.
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, to clarify, properties
on Hampton Street have a preferred height limit of four storeys and they could seek
to go above and beyond those four storey height limits.
They could make an application which would then need to be assessed on its merits.
On Council&apos;s land, the triangular site, the rear section of that, so back
from Willis Street, the property along the Willis Street frontage I believe
have a preferred height of three storeys and behind that we have a preferred height
of six storeys.
In both those situations, an application above that could be considered
if a development was lodged but it would need to be assessed based
on the relevant requirements set out in the overlay.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I heard this could cost us millions of dollars, this assessment.
So what we&apos;re actually talking about tonight is going to cost us
between $50,000 and $100,000 to do this analysis.
So we come back in December with more information.
Is that right?
MR CRIPPS: Through you again, Mr Mayor, the intent
of the officer&apos;s original motion was to undertake the assessment on
all four options, undertake feasibility analysis,
understand the costings and opportunities that those four options
would allow for, and to bring it back to Council for further consideration
and direction on what we would progress.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Anyone for debate, please?
Please, we need to wrap up questions.
CR CASTELLI: One question.
One very important question.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Go ahead.
CR CASTELLI: To one of the
- CR EL MOUALLEM: No, that&apos;s enough, councillor.
We&apos;ve already asked too many questions.
Question, Councillor del Porto?
CR EVANS: Are you debating?
CR DEL PORTO: You go ahead.
CR EVANS: Thank you very much.
Mr Mayor, look, I know this motion has probably got
the numbers but I would like to put up an alternative motion,
if I could have it on the
- should this fail, a foreshadowed motion, that should this fail, and I would like it
up on the Board so people can read it because it has slightly changed
from the original one that I had.
So my proposed foreshadowed motion would be that Council, 1,
undertakes a feasibility analysis of 1, 3 and 4 development options
for the proposed Hampton Hub in the immediate future
- propose an analysis of options 1, 3 and 4 in the immediate future
and defers option 2 until these options are explored,
and the second is what I originally had prior to that,
but there&apos;s a spelling mistake somewhere there.
Consideration of
- no, it&apos;s been corrected.
And then considers that
- so should this
- Mr Mayor, I&apos;m putting this up because first of
all I would have supported looking at the four options because in my view,
as an architect, you have a look at every option you can possibly do and
instead of cherry picking, you look at them all, you detail them
and then you put them out for community consultation.
I&apos;ve had argy bargy with members of the Hampton Neighbourhood Association
about which is first.
What do you do?
Do you put it out to the community or do you do something
- so I may be right; I may be wrong.
But anyway, the way in which I think is the best way of doing it
is masterplanning
- as an architect, you masterplan; you put it out to the community
for consultation.
Option 2 doesn&apos;t look as though it&apos;s getting a lot of legs
at the moment.
However, it&apos;s one of those ones that I think
is a visionary sort of thing and I think it should be explored,
in my view.
People may disagree with that.
However, the Hampton Neighbourhood Association,
who I absolutely respect and I think everybody
around the table respects them as I do, want to chuck it out.
I would like to see 1, 3 and 4, which they said they would support looking at,
and deferring option 2, to send a message back to the developer,
put them on hold, and then we will explore it later on,
once we have had these other three.
Not to chuck it out with everything but just to put it on hold
until the other three are explored.
So I am foreshadowing if Councillor Samuel-King&apos;s
motion does not get up, then I&apos;ll move that alternative motion.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Any further debate?
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, just one more question of Mr Cripps.
Mr Cripps, the original four options you had here, apart from option 2,
are there any other options that involve the possible building of a 6, 7,
8 or 9 or 10 multistorey proposal?
In other words, are options 1, 3 or 4 involving any major development
of that sort of height?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, at this point in time, none
of the options included any heights.
We were to explore those opportunities and that was what the intent
of the feasibility study would enable us to understand.
The floor space, that could be delivered.
The height&apos;s required to actually deliver that.
So whilst six storeys in some parts are preferred heights,
and we have height controls of 4 and three storeys of preferred heights,
a built form envelope hasn&apos;t been determined and would be part
of the work that this feasibility study would allow us to undertake.
CR DEL PORTO: So I&apos;d like to quickly say a few words.
First of all it sounds like it would cost a bit of money
if we had all four options explored against looking at two options.
It could be 50 or 100, we&apos;re not sure.
But it&apos;s certainly not 50 bucks.
Mr Mayor, the other issue is that we&apos;ve now established that there
is no mandatory height control in that area.
So 6 is preferred.
Mr Cripps said, quite rightly, it could go up to 8, 9 and even said 10.
So to my way of thinking, I don&apos;t know where the information came
from from the residents, but it&apos;s not as if it&apos;s way off beam.
There&apos;s a possibility that one of the options could deliver that
as an option.
Now, Mr Mayor, I am not convinced option 1 would deliver
that.
That was the original option that the residents
and their Association saw years ago.
So I don&apos;t think that would involve that.
I certainly don&apos;t think option 3 would involve that
because that&apos;s a scaled down version, rebuild on the existing site,
and option 4 talks about open space
- open space or sell Council facility.
So it would seem to me that I would deduce that option 2
is the one that might involve anything from 6 to 10 storey high building.
Mr Mayor, I am not convinced, I have not been convinced, and I spoke
to Councillor Evans, I have not been convinced that option 2
will deliver the benefits to the Hampton community that outweigh
some of the obvious costs in amenity, in visual bulk, in amenity reduction,
visual bulk and increased density.
So forgetting about anything else, because I don&apos;t even know how much detail
we can go into, but certainly these are things that would
be involved if you have a 10 storey high, 9 storey high,
an 8 storey high building somewhere at the back of between Willis Street
and Hampton Street.
So I&apos;m not convinced that we need to do that.
I can&apos;t go any further into what we have heard
but I am not convinced that there is enough benefit for us to go that way.
There may be enough benefit with the other options,
certainly even option 3 I would have considered, and we&apos;ve heard
from the residents.
They don&apos;t want option 2.
These people are smarter than me, which doesn&apos;t mean that much,
so they know what&apos;s going on.
It seems to me they don&apos;t like it and I don&apos;t like it.
We&apos;re here to represent residents just like we were about Melrose Street.
If you recall Melrose Street, we represented residents
and councillors said yes, I know but I have the vision.
But in this case I would like to represent residents as well.
To my way of thinking it&apos;s an easy one to support the proposition that
the Council
- the ward councillor has proposed.
It&apos;s a very easy one.
I understand what Councillor Evans is saying.
That could come later.
We don&apos;t have to have it now.
Why not even think about it after three or four or five months once
we get the report back.
But at this stage, there is no need to have this option 2 included right now.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Councillor Stitfold?
CR STITFOLD: Thank you.
I understand that there has been consultation in the past
and that there is frustration.
But I still think that the option
- the motion that has been put forward is too prescriptive at this point.
At the moment we&apos;re debating based on assumption.
We&apos;re pre-empting what the feasibility study might hold.
I think it&apos;s really important that we explore broadly and that it does go out
to consultation and broad consultation, that HNA of course,
but also other residents need to be involved.
So I&apos;m in favour actually of looking at all the different options,
and so I would pre-empt and looking at Councillor Evans&apos;s original proposed
motion, including four options because I think it&apos;s really important that
we don&apos;t discount anything at this point.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
Councillor Castelli, would you like to debate?
CR CASTELLI: I really don&apos;t know where to go with this one.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Please stand up.
CR CASTELLI: I don&apos;t really know where to go with this one at all.
I love to listen to the community and I haven&apos;t been able
to ask that question, but I&apos;m looking
- I understand what Councillor Martin is stating.
I understand that, but I&apos;ve also listened to Mr Shepherd and Mr Batt.
They don&apos;t like number 2.
I haven&apos;t heard them say
- well, in my view, in what I have listened to what they had said, it&apos;s that 2
is out completely.
So I don&apos;t
- I actually quite like the 1, 3 and 4 option
as well so that it gives them a bit more of an option and maybe
they could take something out of that, but I also liked the motion 1 and 4.
It&apos;s just so hard because 2 is out for me and definitely because it doesn&apos;t give me
- it would probably take us to about 6, 7, 8 storeys, I&apos;m not really sure.
As mentioned it could be pre-empting it though but that opens up a can of worms
in my view.
But I think
- well, I will just have to think about it for a minute.
CR EL MOUALLEM: OK.
Sorry, Councillor del Porto
- CR CASTELLI: Yes, can I just ask that.
I will ask the ward councillor.
Would you like to include option 3 in there?
That&apos;s a great idea.
CR SAMUEL-KING: I am happy to include option 3.
CR DEL PORTO: I second that.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Can I just ask a question too?
Would the ward councillor be interested in including Councillor Evans&apos;s suggestion
to defer option, after you have done the other three?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Absolutely not.
I&apos;ll debate why.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Thank you.
I believe everyone from the floor had their say.
- you did, Councillor Evans.
CEO: Sorry, Chair, can I just confirm what happened
in that last exchange.
So was the intention to include option 3 in this
- so to change the motion to include 3?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
CR EL MOUALLEM: It is on the screen.
Do you mind just reading the first point please?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes, undertakes feasibility analysis
of only options 1, 3 and 4.
CR EL MOUALLEM: And the seconder is happy with that.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: I I&apos;m finished.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I heard you talking as an architect earlier.
Now, I don&apos;t like to flag this
- I&apos;ll make it simple but someone with not only design qualifications
and interest in floor plans and utilisation, someone
with actually a post-graduate degree, which is myself, in property
and valuation, and post-graduate also in construction management, I&apos;m going
to put that hat on and I&apos;ll tell you, what I&apos;m seeing here is actually scary
as option 2.
Now, I understand where Mr Batt
- why he&apos;s upset because I remember before my days on Council,
we&apos;ve had something similar creeping up into the car park of Black Street
and Carpenter street in Brighton, and all of sudden we&apos;re up for a number of storeys
and then apparently in disguise that we increase the car
parking, but when we looked into the commercial floor space provided,
there was no net increase in carparking.
So I see why Mr Batt there was concerned.
Also, we have had years
- we have been talking about this before my days on Council.
Why haven&apos;t we discussed option 2 then?
I thought it&apos;s done and dusted on option 1.
There was a debate that we need to improve the orientation
of the open space.
But all of a sudden, we became talking about land acquisition.
Now, looking into the budget, there&apos;s no money for us to acquire land,
so to me it means someone else acquiring our
land.
Now, to make it more interesting, the long-term financial budget is actually
- there is money by Council allocated to build that Hampton Hub.
So that tells me someone else is actually taking our land
but we are still putting money towards building something,
it&apos;s just not adding up.
So I do see the concerns.
Now, also I&apos;ve had a chance to talk to the Hampton community centre
and I believe the ward councillor has been working extremely hard.
They are actually not in favour of having any community facilities facing
the commercial strip.
They told us this.
My other concern is the planting, deep root planting.
From what I see on option 2, I&apos;m of the opinion that we&apos;ll have a
full basement car parking there and it would be close
to probably zero deep soil planting in there, which means
all the existing trees would be removed.
So no matter how you look at option 2, I actually have concerns.
We&apos;ve had an opportunity for years to talk to the residents
and the Hampton Neighbourhood Association, everyone about it.
Also I heard that the Hampton neighbourhood might be across it
but not the rest of the community.
I actually did go on the website and saw the Facebook page
and a few people in the community are actually engaging
with the Hampton neighbourhood Facebook post and I am pretty sure
they are keeping the community abreast of what&apos;s happening.
The community trusts them and they trust them because they&apos;ve proven
over the years that they know what they are talking about.
Now, I heard Mr Shepherd talking about to satisfy the profits,
10 storey might be possible.
And there is nothing stopping anyone to actually rezone that land and get
as many storeys as they want, if the rezoning goes ahead.
Now, we seem to be
- we all want to be leaders and visionaries and all this, but the reality
is this parcel of land there we&apos;re talking about is owned by the ratepayers.
They own it.
They have the title.
It&apos;s not a parcel of land on Hampton Street owned
by a private family or group.
They can do whatever they want but we also should be listening
to the owners of the land, which is the ratepayers, about what they want us
to do on their own land and what I&apos;m hearing loud and clear is
they don&apos;t want us to sell us.
They don&apos;t want high buildings in there.
And they want open space.
Now, I was a bit annoyed, to be honest, that there was
mention that Councillor Samuel-King is not working hard.
I can assure you all, she is.
She&apos;s working extremely hard and for this reason I&apos;ll be trusting her 100%
and I&apos;ll be supporting her recommended motion here.
Councillor Samuel-King, would you like to close?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
When I listen to the Hampton residents and the Hampton community centre,
three things come up time and time and time again.
A lack of open space, a need for an integrated community
centre and overdevelopment.
Option 1, 3 and 4 may address these but option 2 does not.
It is deeply troubling to me and it is scary.
We have heard from Mr Cripps that eight storeys
is entirely possible and 10 also possible, and I agree with the Mayor, with you,
Mr Mayor, that I have a question mark.
Us acquiring land?
There&apos;s no money in the budget.
Is this not about actually the sale of public land?
It is not something I can support and the idea that we would kick
consideration of it down the road is even more troubling, if we&apos;re going
to consider it, we consider it now or not at all.
So let&apos;s get on with what the masterplan was all about.
It was about creating open space in the Hampton
MAC and creating an integrated community centre.
It&apos;s not about the sale of public land and it&apos;s not about overdevelopment.
Let&apos;s bring it forward if we can.
We will have the money to do something awesome,
something awe-inspiring, something that&apos;s deeply supported
by our community, and that&apos;s what I&apos;m interested
in being part of.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
We&apos;ll put Councillor Samuel-King&apos;s alternate motion to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Samuel-King, Cr El Mouallem.
Against?
Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin, Councillor Stitfold and it is carried.
We will move to item 10.8, and that is the Wishart Reserve dog off-leash
design update.
We have received three requests to speak and we start with Mr Alf Marrocco.
Mr Alf, please come forward.
I understand Mr Alf is speaking through proxy.
And welcome, Joy.
JOY: Thank you.
Hello.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight on behalf
of the residents and community groups around Wishart Reserve.
Please bear with me.
I&apos;m very nervous speaking tonight, mainly due to my very close proximity
to the park and what I may say tonight.
I am fundamentally opposed to the further development of Wishart Park
without further consultation of the residents
and other community groups and ensuring that the development is done
with a goal of inclusivity for all, not just the dog-owning community.
For context, I am a dog owner and lover, and have been a resident sharing
a boundary with Wishart Reserve for 13 years.
Over the last six years, since the introduction of the dog off-lead
area, I have seen this park go from a much-loved family-friendly
community space to a space dominated by one community group.
Word has spread about the great enclosed dog off-lead
area available and this has dramatically increased
the amount of foot traffic and dog walkers, and many I have spoken
to have also come here from outside Bayside.
Dog walkers often congregate in groups of two to four people,
meaning the total number of dogs off-lead at any given time in their care, behaving
as a pack, is from 8 to 16 dogs, creating a very intimidating
environment for local single-dog owners and unsuitable
for other community groups such as families and people with disabilities
during these times.
I work from home and witness daily the verbal altercations
amongst dog owners due to daily attacks and fights between these dogs.
I have been in the children&apos;s playground when the dogs off-lead have charged at
and harassed children on their way through to the dog park, and
despite their owners&apos; reassurances, this is terrifying for the young children.
There is a significant lack of effective control
and it&apos;s not managed and being enabled
- and this is being enabled by that park being a fully enclosed space.
I fear that adding of the agility facilities
will further increase the tension, arguments and relies significantly
on these people using the facilities there to maintain effective control
over a large number of dogs.
(Buzzer).
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Do we have any questions?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: You just mentioned there that it
will increase the current altercations and anti-social
behaviour.
What&apos;s the kind of clip on that per month?
Is it like one a month or is it
- JOY: Altercations?
Three a day.
I hear them all.
It is right outside my bedroom window, the park.
We share a boundary with the park.
And at bare minimum, it&apos;s one a day and it&apos;s highly distressing.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thanks for sharing that.
You&apos;ve been there for 13 years.
Have there been any dog attacks or people injured or dogs injured that you have seen
JOY: Yes, I have.
I&apos;ve seen at least three severe dog attacks,
and when we have tried to follow up on those, the advice we&apos;ve been given
is that we need to follow those people to their homes or to their cars
and get their licence plate numbers in order to report them.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions, Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you for that.
Look, a couple of questions relating to what Councillor Martin just raised.
Have you seen by-laws officers there on a regular basis?
Are they visible?
Do they actually find people in your presence?
JOY: Very rarely, and when they are, there are usually warnings that go out
on local community pages that they are there patrolling the area and
to ensure that they are complying so that they do not get fined.
CR DEL PORTO: And the other question: do you think there&apos;s enough signage
in the playground area to tell dog owners to keep away from that area?
JOY: The signage in the playground area is a dog on-lead signage area and it
is very clear that they cannot be off lead until they are in the fully enclosed space
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions, Councillor Castelli?
CR CASTELLI: So where do you live?
CR EL MOUALLEM: You don&apos;t need to display your address.
Is it Short Street or Roydon Street?
JOY: Short.
I share a boundary fence with Wishart Reserve.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further questions?
You may take your seat and we&apos;ll call on Mr Rory Osman please to come forward.
MR OSMAN: I&apos;m a bit nervous too but thanks for your time.
In 2015 our shared space was split down the middle with two gated fences
in what evidently appeared to be an equitable division of space
- 50% for dogs off their leashes and 50% for everyone else.
After eight years, it is time to recognise the shortcomings
of that planning mishap by revising the proportionate allocation
of space for everyone&apos;s benefit.
This isn&apos;t about removing an allocation
for dogs off-leash.
In fact, importantly and maybe even uniquely, there
is some support for an off-leash area at Wishart Reserve
but minimising the needs of everyone else&apos;s needs is unfair
and ultimately divisive amongst community members,
and it doesn&apos;t have to be that way.
Bayside&apos;s current blinkered, if I&apos;m honest proposal,
to upgrade just the off-leashed area is another significant mistake
on top of 2015, as evidenced by just two options: option 1
ignores largely community non-dog-related feedback and option 2, which dares
to acknowledge just one key need the community raised,
and has an absolute bare minimum approach of re-establishing
Wishart&apos;s thoroughfare.
The development phase for Wishart Reserve should not be
spearheaded by a choice on which dog agility equipment
is preferred when there is significant disagreement
about the apportionment of the space for all members of the community.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you very much, Mr Osman.
Any questions?
CR CASTELLI: No.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any questions to the speaker?
You may take your seat.
MR OSMAN: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: A question to the officers?
CR CASTELLI: To the officers, question.
So now
- CR EL MOUALLEM: You need to stand up, please.
CR CASTELLI: Sorry.
OK.
So we have a fence line.
So can you describe this fence line and where it is?
CR EL MOUALLEM: It is regarding the fence line.
CR CASTELLI: Just describe the fence line and where it is.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, the existing fence line goes north
to south through the middle of the park.
CR CASTELLI: OK.
So there is a pathway as well.
People can walk through.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Just a question, councillor.
CR CASTELLI: Yes.
So there is a pathway as well?
MR OSMAN: Through you, Chair, yes, option B includes a pathway providing
thoroughfare from the passive open space to the Bluff Road entry and exit points.
CR CASTELLI: Thank you.
And I also heard that you&apos;ve shortened the area
- the dog off-leash area
- OFFICER: Through you, Chair, Option B reduces the dog off-leash area.
So the current size of the park is 0.85 of a hectare.
Option B reduces the size of the park to 0.65 of a hectare.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Ms Colson.
Any further questions, Councillor Castelli?
We have one more speaker and we call on Ms Amanda Levi on behalf
of Bayside Dog Alliance to come forward, please.
MISS LEVI: Thank you very much, Mayor, CEO and councillors.
We&apos;re here tonight to discuss the proposal,
which was specifically around the upgrade of Wishart Reserve park.
Bayside Dog Alliance is fully supportive of the upgrade of Wishart, which is part
of the Council plan for &apos;21 to &apos;25, and it&apos;s a specific action
from the Council plan to update the park.
We have heard about issues within Wishart Reserve,
and that&apos;s no different from any other off-leash area.
Unfortunately, Wishart being the only fully fenced
off-leash park currently is a little bit overused.
And we&apos;re working with Council to facilitate other areas within Bayside
to alleviate that issue fully fenced.
We see option B as a compromise to incorporate residents&apos; feedback
for a thoroughfare between Bluff Road and Wishart Street and offered that option
as part of the feedback process.
Many of the locals are also members of the Bayside Dog Alliance
and the feedback provided by them was for the thoroughfare and also reduction
of 23.5% of the park, which has been forfeited
to incorporate this pathway.
As I said, this is the only secure dog off-leash
area in Bayside and it is desperately in need of attention,
additional amenities and plantings.
There are two other local parks not used by dogs, Sillitoe and Simpson reserve,
not 300m from Wishart, which local residents are use as well.
I would like to commend the updated design and incorporation of feedback in relation
to location of amenities, type of amenities and the features of the park.
The upgrade of Wishart is not something for the dogs or dogs over people.
It&apos;s about giving Bayside residents and ratepayers a secure
and appropriate location to exercise, train and engage with their dogs.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you very much, Miss Levi.
Any questions, Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thanks very much for coming down, Miss Levi.
Reminds me of the old days.
Can you expand on your assessment of where we&apos;re at with the dogs or
as you say, it does occur over all of the parks.
How are we going?
I think we&apos;re three or four years into DAMPs and trying to re-educate
and inform the community of their obligation with dogs.
In your view, and I think you&apos;ve got the best view, how are we going with that?
MISS LEVI: We have just seen a launch of the new Bayside plan.
We&apos;ve still got a long way to go, can I say that.
We&apos;ve only got this one secure off-leash park.
Having that area does create movement of people.
I know I take my dog to Elwood now.
We need more.
We need more areas where people can take their dogs in a secure environment
to spread the load.
We can&apos;t expect Wishart, Elwood and a couple of parks in Kingston
to bear the brunt of all the fully enclosed off-leash areas.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
We have a question from Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: How are you?
Look, the question to you is: there are other
- I live in Hurlingham Park, and there are parks that have a number
of different uses that co-exist quite well.
It&apos;s off-leash inside the footy oval.
MISS LEVI: I understand that.
CR DEL PORTO: That oval is not near the highway.
There&apos;s another oval in between and there&apos;s a playground
on the other side.
Do you think that owners of dogs could actually be encouraged
to use these
- I think Sillitoe is actually like that as well
- other parks that have people that play football in it sometimes but,
to be honest with you, there&apos;s more times where the park has dog
walkers than football or cricket because if you look at the number of hours
- have you considered that?
MISS LEVI: Unfortunately, the most popular parks are also
the sports fields, so we have training on most nights of the week and also those
- Hurlingham has the ovals used on Saturdays and on Sundays.
So during the most popular times, which is after school and on weekends,
the parks are unfortunately being used by footballers,
so that creates pressure on places like Wishart, Elsternwick Park,
the Elwood off-leash area, Kingston park.
So it really is just the lack of fully enclosed areas,
and I know I have a pup of seven months and I wouldn&apos;t take him to a non-fully
enclosed off-leash area
- CR DEL PORTO: I don&apos;t think I&apos;ve ever seen a dog run out from the footy oval,
even though there are two little gates there.
MISS LEVI: We have had a lot of reports in Hurlingham and particularly
on the Bayside Dog Alliance page, and I think reported through to Council
as well, where dogs have run out onto Nepean Highway
and unfortunately have been hit by cars.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions, Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: A couple.
Speaking of dogs running out on to the road,
I know my dogs have nearly run out to the road on St Kilda Street,
Elsternwick Park south.
Have you heard any more of those kind of incidents on the semi-enclosed
off-leash areas?
MISS LEVI: Not recently.
Mainly during summer we hear
- so it&apos;s usually during the summer break and school holidays that we hear more
of dogs running off-leash.
I know of three dogs that were killed down in Beaumaris just outside
of Donald Macdonald reserve, at Hurlingham Park.
They&apos;re the two main parts that I&apos;ve heard of.
Near misses at Elsternwick Park.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Speaking
- CR EL MOUALLEM: One more.
CR SAMUEL-KING: One more and then one to officers.
Speaking of summer, one of the things that struck me
in Wishart Reserve with the poor oak saplings that were
struggling to survive in the harsh Australian
environment with no irrigation, some of them have not.
What&apos;s your
- what&apos;s Bayside Dog Alliance&apos;s stand on what kind of trees you&apos;d be looking for
in Wishart Reserve?
MISS LEVI: Fast-growing natives that are dog friendly.
To have a canopy of shade would be brilliant.
CR SAMUEL-KING: So native, providing shade and then dog friendly.
MISS LEVI: Yes.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Question for the officers?
Any further questions of the speaker before we do that?
No.
I&apos;ve got a question.
You mentioned Elwood dog park.
Do you have the size?
Do you know what the size of that dog park is?
If not, I can ask the officers.
MISS LEVI: I don&apos;t know but it stretches from Beach Road, so it&apos;s next door
to the BP.
So Beach Road back to the path.
So it&apos;s actually quite big.
It&apos;s not very well designed.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I might ask the officers this, so you may take your seat
and I&apos;ll ask this question to the officers, if they know the size
of the Elwood dog park.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, we would need to take that on notice.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Another question I have is I heard that there was a reduction
of 23.5% by option B.
Is that what we have calculated?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, it&apos;s reduction from 0.85 of a hectare
to 0.65 of a hectare.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor Samuel-King, do you have a question of the officers?
CR SAMUEL-KING: I do have a question of the officers.
I recall there was I think, if I&apos;m correct, a decision to move
to start to at least partially fence Elsternwick Park
south.
There have been a number of near misses around Elsternwick Park south recently
with dogs running out on to the road.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I am not sure if that relates to the meeting,
Councillor Samuel-King.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Well, it relates to dog safety and off-leash areas
and secure, and the absence of secure off-leash areas.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, there is some fencing there.
I understand it&apos;s to protect some of the planting.
It wasn&apos;t specifically for dog off-leash.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further questions, councillors?
Do I have a mover?
Councillor Castelli.
You&apos;re moving.
CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;ll second that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Are you moving the recommendation of the officers?
CR CASTELLI: No.
No, I&apos;m not.
CR EL MOUALLEM: You need to let us know what you&apos;re moving, please.
CR CASTELLI: Actually, there is a motion here I can move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Can we have it on the screens please.
CR CASTELLI: Have you got it on the screen?
CR EL MOUALLEM: Do you mind just reading it to us?
CR CASTELLI: OK.
So this is that Council notes the findings of the Wishart Reserve engagement summary.
A dog&apos;s option B as a preferred design solution
to upgrade the off-leash space within the Wishart Reserve.
Is there a budget for the option B?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, yes, it&apos;s budgeted.
CR CASTELLI: So it&apos;s budgeted with the fence line, with the footpath?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, yes, that&apos;s all fully included.
CR CASTELLI: Fully included?
OK.
That&apos;s great.
Begins the tendering process to deliver the works associated
with option B.
So informs all who participated in the community
engagement exercise of the outcomes and next steps, of course.
And writes to the lead petitioner informing them
of the outcomes and next steps.
And then we go clause 7, by the Mayor, consider limiting the number
of dogs per professional Walker as part of the next Local Law review.
Have you got that?
CR EL MOUALLEM: No, there is an addition here.
So do you mind just reading it from the screen and just letting us know
if that&apos;s what you&apos;re after?
CR CASTELLI: I&apos;ll do it again.
So notes the finding of the Wishart Reserve engagement summary,
adopts B as a preferred design solution to upgrade the off-leash space
within Wishart Reserve, begins in the tendering process
to deliver the works associated with the option B, informs
all who participates in the community engagement exercise of the outcomes
and next steps, writes to the lead petitioner informing them
of the outcomes and next steps, considers limiting the number
of dogs per professional walker as part of next Local Law review.
CR DEL PORTO: And I&apos;ll second that.
CR SAMUEL-KING: I&apos;m happy to second.
Just double checking, councillor, that you didn&apos;t want that
- CR CASTELLI: Number 3, no.
CR EL MOUALLEM: So you&apos;re still happy to second?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Castelli?
CR CASTELLI: Can I just read you something that&apos;s quite pleasant and happy and all
of this.
So I would just like to read something that&apos;s quite pleasant
and happy about open space.
So we&apos;ve got dog parks, a social catalyst, which is a really lovely thing.
Lovely green open spaces bring people out and about
by promoting walkable neighbourhoods and enhanced sense of community
in addition.
Communities have seen a positive effect on the visible presence
of individuals walking with their dogs.
Wonderful.
So then we&apos;ve got the other side of Wishart, parks are beneficial
to communities because they create a space for community members
to congregate safely, enjoy nature, kids can play
under the parents&apos; watchful eye, and community members can improve their
health within a relaxing environment.
Mr Mayor, sounds wonderful, doesn&apos;t it?
But there&apos;s a lot of tension happening down there at the moment.
A lot of tension.
And I have spoken to the residents there.
They&apos;re not happy.
They&apos;re not happy the way things are going
And I can see that because I spent quite a few hours there
with Councillor del Porto observing what was happening and I found a lot
of wrong happening there, and that&apos;s one thing the dog walkers
- and I&apos;m glad about that because that point will stop,
because I counted one walker, eight dogs.
And they were walking right across that area where the community,
the kids, play, and I saw that happening and I thought oh, OK, got one.
And then I saw somebody let their dog off-leash from the road and allowed them
to run into the dog off-leash area from the road,
if people can understand what I&apos;m saying.
This is pretty much right across.
Now, I can understand the residents being very unhappy because there was also one
- there&apos;s a person there, and I won&apos;t say who it is,
that has a Rottweiler, which allows it to just roam around and play with kids
and the kids were scared and they were screaming and running away.
So I&apos;ve got parents who won&apos;t even take their kids to that playground
because dogs run to them, jumps on them and I thought to myself, oh, gee,
this is not happening.
I do like the idea where we are upgrading the system there.
The Wishart is going to look at
- I am hoping that with a fenceline and a path, and in particular lots
of shrubs, it will stop some of the noise barking
- some of the dogs barking and hopefully creates a nice path
for the residents to actually walk around, which is a really great thing and I
like that concept.
On the other hand, we cannot stop dog off-leash.
It&apos;s been there for a while.
It is a safe haven for them but it&apos;s also I want
to create a safe haven for the community, not their children to play on.
I want a nice place.
I want trees.
I would love
- I also observed pot holes where dogs were allowed to dig near the actual play area
and I don&apos;t know who did it, I think one of the residents dug it up and tried
to cover it because it was a muddy atmosphere,
and also I found pretty muddy in the dogs area, in the dog off-leash areas,
and I think to myself if we can just get to make and balance this issue,
this tension, this stress that these people
- and aggression, people are aggressive against the residents,
dog owners aggressive against the residents.
They screamed at them, &quot;Take your kids off, we don&apos;t want your kids in here&quot;.
So I&apos;m hoping that I can get support.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
And Councillor Samuel-King?
You seconded?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
Dogs are a wonderful part of our lives and a part of around 40% and growing
of Bayside residents&apos; lives.
It is absolutely essential that our dogs have space to run and run free
and run safely.
I can speak to this.
I lost a dog to a car accident and it was heart wrenching.
I don&apos;t want to have to see it happen again or have anyone
suffer the way that my dog did or we did.
So when I ran for Council, I naively promised that I would fight
- well, I have fought for an off-leash dog area in every ward.
But, Mr Mayor, like you sometimes I have found myself
lonely in that regard.
I haven&apos;t quite managed a dog off-leash area in every ward as yet,
but one thing I can do is at least support the upgrading
of the facilities that we have.
I remember when I first went to Wishart Reserve and Mr Callant,
I don&apos;t know if we have that photograph of that poor sapling.
Councillor Castelli, I remember you saying earlier today
you love trees, any trees.
I do too and the poor oak tree here.
This is such a poor excuse for an oak tree, desperately trying
to survive in the Australian environment.
It&apos;s an absolute heat box and that oak tree should never have
to attempt to survive like it is.
So the one thing I was hoping to do was make sure that the trees that
we&apos;re planting there were robust and suitable
to the Australian environment.
I don&apos;t think I&apos;ve got the numbers for that, but
at least I can help secure a decent off-leash area and I look forward
to taking my dogs there and being part of it.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: Thank you for that.
Look, I support the upgrading of the facility.
Dogs are a wonderful part of our lives.
The owners
- some of them could do a bit better.
My view is that I live in Hurlingham Park and I&apos;m sorry
to hear that some dogs have died on a highway but, Mr Mayor,
Hurlingham Park is fully fenced except for two little gates that we opened
up years ago.
The little park next door, which is a small oval, is off-leash,
so you&apos;re meant to actually have your dog under control there.
So to my way of thinking, it&apos;s really not easy for somebody who
is looking after the dog in Hurlingham Park, in the fenced-off
area, except for the little gates, to actually end up
on the highway unless they&apos;re allowed to go off-leash
- off the area, and they are, because I walk there every day,
and they are.
If you do take it up with some of the owners, they have a go at me
because I&apos;m old, I think, and they think, &quot;Well, you know ...&quot;,
especially the female owners, they seem to think that they can say
and do whatever they like.
They are not controlling their dogs
- COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Mr Mayor, we can&apos;t be having that.
CR DEL PORTO: Well, in my experience a couple
of them were female.
I haven&apos;t had a guy tell me where to go.
But that&apos;s fine.
I am sure it will happen to us as well.
I am so sorry you are worried so much about the female residents.
Thank you so much, Councillor Martin.
But my issue is this: I support this proposition
tonight.
What I do support as well is making sure that Wishart Street
is not a get your dogs out of the van and let them run across
to the reserve area like we do have.
We&apos;ve heard from people that live there and we&apos;ve heard that it happens regularly.
People get to Wishart Street, they open the door to the van,
they let their dogs, more than four sometimes, I have been told
they have up to eight dogs, across
- which is illegal.
They let them run.
There&apos;s a playground there.
You&apos;ve all been there.
Quite a large a playground, and I&apos;m worried about that as well.
All you need is one or two dogs diverging away
and you could have an issue.
So to my way of thinking, I support it.
I want that path because I think people are entitled
to be able to walk from the playground area across
to Bluff Road with their kids without actually having dogs come up
to them and start playing with the little kids
because I know that owners think that that&apos;s a lovely thing
but I am not sure that some of the kids like it as much.
So my view is that I support it.
I&apos;d like to see by-laws regularly turn up there.
I don&apos;t think we have to put a thing in there but I would like to see by-laws
regularly take up.
And I will ask the dog lobby that quiz some of the people that come up and say
&quot;my dog got into trouble and ended up on the road&quot;.
I just want to know whether the owner was doing the
right thing and actually had the dog on leash when they&apos;re
in that open reserve, the second footy oval that is off-leash,
because I haven&apos;t seen them.
I haven&apos;t seen very many examples of people that actually do the right thing
there.
So just to let you know.
I support it but I think we have to also understand the behaviour of some
of the owners could be improved and I&apos;m sorry that I mentioned the fact
that people abused me.
I&apos;ll take a number of people and find out what gender they are in the future.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor del Porto.
Any further debate?
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you for acknowledging that.
The point wasn&apos;t that.
It was that
- well, I don&apos;t like to, you know, place females in a different category
to males.
So that&apos;s sorted.
Now, I really do feel that Miss Levi needs a lot more consideration.
She&apos;s the leader of the Bayside Dog Alliance.
She established it.
She manages an incredible Facebook page, which is moderated.
It&apos;s one of the safer places online that you can go to.
But she said tonight, &quot;We&apos;ve got a long way to go&quot;,
and I agree with her.
And when you see the increase in dog ownership in Bayside
and our response to that, I think we&apos;ve got a gap
and it needs to be filled.
We can quickly sort out
- so just before I continue, if you can put the clock on for a second,
can I just ask a question: what is the by-law
on how many dogs you can have as a professional dog walker?
MR CRIPPS: Through the Chair, our current Local Law sets
out that any person may only have four dogs with them
at a time when undertaking walking.
So any number above four would actually be in breach of our current Local Law.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Could I ask another question please, Mr Mayor.
Do we licence professional dog walkers in Bayside?
MR CRIPPS: So through you, Mr Mayor, no.
That&apos;s not currently something we licence.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Could I have a third question?
Could we licence professional dog walkers in Bayside?
Part B, do other Councils licence
professional dog walkers?
MR CRIPPS: Through you, Mr Mayor, the difficulty we have
is how dog walkers are operating within the municipality.
Similar to group training
- like physical training
personal fitness scenarios, they&apos;re occupying the site
and we effectively lease out or have a permit arrangement
with those operators.
A dog walker could be anyone walking any street and public asset.
So it&apos;s not a simple ability to undertake a licensing arrangement
and it will require further investigation and I would like
to take the second point on notice.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you.
I think from the answer to that there is more work to do in that space.
It is clearly going to become a bigger thing,
that you get someone to walk your dog, and therefore we need to regulate it
and we need to take charge of it.
The other part of all of this is exactly what Councillor del Porto
and Councillor Castelli have said already and what I&apos;ve witnessed recently,
that not everyone
- it&apos;s a small minority in my opinion, and it is a minority, who are not behaving
the way they should in relation to the control and ownership
of their dogs.
It really is disappointing and I think it has improved a little bit
but if you&apos;re making a decision to own a dog, you are taking on a lot
of duties and a lot of responsibilities and they just don&apos;t seem
to understand what all of that means.
It should not be the case that someone approaches you in the park
to let you know that there&apos;s something going wrong with the dog,
that you react with anger.
Basically abuse.
It&apos;s almost like &quot;how dare you approach me&quot;.
&quot;I&apos;m just out here walking my dog.
Can&apos;t I just do one thing in this life and not get hassled?&quot;.
Well, unfortunately that is the case and we&apos;ve got to change that around
and we&apos;ve got to lean into that.
I just don&apos;t think we&apos;re doing it.
I have been talking about this for too long.
And just lastly, it is true, we do need more spaces but this
is a great outcome.
This is
- like, the report says this is designed by the leading consultants,
the leading experts, in how dogs could be contained
in it in a relatively smaller space so they don&apos;t start getting in packs,
they can&apos;t charge, they&apos;ve got things to do.
So I really want to make this work.
I do hear the residents.
And so I think this does respond to the consultation I saw, and obviously
they can&apos;t get everything but I think we are doing a good job
with option B but we&apos;ve got so far to go as a community, not just in Bayside but
in Melbourne regarding the ownership of dogs.
Honestly, we have got so far to go to make it work because wherever we go,
it just doesn&apos;t seem to be working.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any further debate?
I&apos;ll just say a couple of words and I know it&apos;s a bit too late, especially
for someone who was up at 5am.
So I just heard that we have reduced already the size of the park by 23.5%
and we provided a fence to ensure that the dogs in that off-leash
area aren&apos;t going to basically jump into the walkway that&apos;s between the back
of the houses on the Short Street side and the reserve itself.
So I see a small improvement there.
I understand the concerns of the residents and I&apos;ll be just like them,
if something&apos;s happening next to me, I want to know what&apos;s in it for me,
how it&apos;s going to improve my lifestyle.
So I actually see this separation as an improvement already.
Now, I&apos;ve had a quick look through Google Maps.
Yes, there is probably another park or two in close proximity.
I don&apos;t believe they are off-leash dog areas.
So I know it&apos;s not as convenient as having a park just in the back
of your house, but there is also more than half of this area
is also allocated for playgrounds and a basketball and a hit ball
- basketball.
So we have seen an increase in the dog registration.
You just look into the budget and you see how much money we&apos;re making
out of the dog owners.
So I find that it&apos;s only reasonable for this Council to spend some money
to invest back into the infrastructure.
The dog park has been there before our days
on this Council so I&apos;m not going to get into the argument of what was there before
and why it changed.
What I&apos;m seeing here in front of me is an improvement on the existing park.
Also I&apos;m seeing an improvement in the quality of the off-leash area,
which I assume is a win for the dog owners and also a win for the residents.
Now, the big question mark here is how are our by-laws
and our officers going to enforce making sure that people letting
the dogs out of the cars on Wishart Street are on lead until
they get into that area?
So I just can say that I&apos;ll be advocating on behalf of the residents.
I&apos;ll be happy for them to tell me and if we need
to do any changes in the future, I&apos;ll be taking this one on behalf
and discussing it with our Director.
I see most of the issue is actually the people letting the dogs
from their car off-leash into that area.
If we can manage this, and I&apos;m pretty sure there is ways
to manage it, then I&apos;ll be satisfied that this is actually a good outcome
for all involved.
Councillor Castelli, you moved.
Would you like to close?
CR CASTELLI: Yes.
You&apos;re right on the mark of what you just mentioned.
Yes.
So we want to create a good balance for both.
So we actually are spending
- I think the budget to this $407,000, but it includes everything,
and I am pretty sure we will get a beautiful place out of $407,000
As mentioned we&apos;ve got some lovely residents.
They&apos;ve all got dogs and understand they love dogs, but there&apos;s got
to be some control for both sides to be happy.
So I&apos;m happy to support this.
I am hoping it works and I&apos;m hoping that budget we&apos;re putting
into it, 407,000, will create something of a nice park.
But, yes, so
- and as you mentioned, we do need some by-laws down there
because I saw it, Councillor del Porto saw it,
and it happened on that Saturday morning.
So how many more times does this happen?
So absolutely I&apos;m happy to go away with this and hopefully things change
and there won&apos;t be many agro tension and that everyone will be happy there,
living happily.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Castelli.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
10.9, a response to Notice of Motion 319 powerful owl protection,
second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides,
and there were no requests to be heard received.
Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: I have an alternative.
It could be brought up on the screen please.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Do you want to read it?
Do you mind reading it?
Can you confirm if that&apos;s including point 3 and 4?
Or just point 4?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Sorry.
Some reading.
That Council notes that findings of the extension
of the alternate rodent control trial, point 2 continues to use SGARs to control
- hang on, that&apos;s not the alternative.
CR EL MOUALLEM: It is.
It&apos;s in the material in front of you.
So point 3 was discussed in the briefing earlier.
It&apos;s already included in the report.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes, that&apos;s not the alternate.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Is that it, Councillor Samuel-King?
Do you mind reading it?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes, thank you.
That Council notes the finding of the extension
of the alternate rodent control trial; 2, confirms Council&apos;s previous decision
to phase out the use of SGARs to control rodents
in public open spaces in Bayside, continues to explore and implement ways
of phasing out SGARs, including talking to Birdlife Australia and other Councils
around Australia that have successfully phased out the use of SGARs.
Birdlife Australia can put us in touch with them.
Advocates to households to use wildlife-friendly
rodent control measures.
And point 5 and 6 as written.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Samuel-King.
Do we have a seconder?
CR CASTELLI: I&apos;ll second.
CR EL MOUALLEM: You want to second?
OK.
We&apos;ve got a seconder.
Councillor Samuel-King, you can debate.
CR SAMUEL-KING: It&apos;s late, Mr Mayor.
This was meant to be something very, very simple.
We may find the Federal Government simply makes the decision for us and I don&apos;t want
to be left with without being prepared.
I was going to say with our pants down.
There are ways of doing this and ways of doing it successfully,
and I think we&apos;ve already made a decision that this is what we will do and it&apos;s
all a matter of time and working out how and talking to our neighbours
and other Councils about how to successfully do it.
In the meantime, let&apos;s advocate to households.
There are many ways households can control rodents without using second-generation
anticoagulant rodenticides.
Thank you.
CR CASTELLI: I&apos;m willing to try other alternatives, of course.
I don&apos;t like using poisons, such as second
- such as, whatever that poison was, the name of it, what was it called?
CR EL MOUALLEM: SGARs.
Let&apos;s call it SGARs.
CR CASTELLI: Yes, SGARs, that&apos;s right.
I know what that&apos;s like.
We&apos;ve had a problem with our dog.
We had to take it to the vet because it had some of that.
So I&apos;m willing to help
- I&apos;m willing to take on the alternative and see whether we can be successful
in something without poisoning other animals
in the meantime.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further debate?
No further debate.
I might say a few words, considering that I did not support
the budget, and seeing here that we&apos;ve got an increase from $8,000 per annum
- that&apos;s per station
- to $47,580, which is nearly six times more,
you really don&apos;t expect me to support this.
I&apos;m so sorry about that.
But if we&apos;s got a product that&apos;s inefficient,
largely inefficient, impractical, and is going to cost us six times more,
plus there is no way we can limit what the residents are going to use
in their homes because it is a Federal matter, not Bayside,
so I&apos;m scared that I won&apos;t be able to support this, councillor.
Back to you, Councillor Samuel-King, to close.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Mr Mayor, the budget&apos;s already passed.
CR EL MOUALLEM: I know but it&apos;s good to remind you that there is no money.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Well, actually, we&apos;re in a surplus.
And this is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of a tiny part of what we do
in this Council.
And the less we can use
- CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, with respect, is the councillor closing?
CR EL MOUALLEM: Yes.
CR SAMUEL-KING: It&apos;s a very simple measure and all I&apos;m asking is that we stick
to the decision that we made and start to advocate for the use
of wildlife friendly rodent control measures.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Put to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor Martin, Councillor Samuel-King
and Councillor Stitfold.
All those against?
Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Cr El Mouallem.
And it is carried.
10.10, we have Local Law policy review, management of tree protection
on private property.
No requests to be heard.
I&apos;m in your hands, councillors.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Happy to move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Stitfold, would you like to debate,
Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: This has been a long time coming.
It&apos;s a significant report.
I appreciate all the work that&apos;s gone into it.
There&apos;s only so much you can do on private property.
I think we&apos;ve seen all of that.
I consider them minor to moderate changes, that you can only get it so far.
So I support the report and the recommendations.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Councillor Stitfold?
CR STITFOLD: The management of tree protection
on private property recognises the need to support the Urban Forest Strategy
and maintaining the currently at risk canopy cover
with more nuanced Local Laws.
Trees have inherent value, whether it is removing pollutants
from the air we breathe, providing shade, reducing flooding,
countering the urban heat island effect to protect those more vulnerable
in our communities, increasing the value of our properties, acting
as wind breaks among many other services.
Understanding the value of trees, we can use our creativity and skill
to design around vegetation to maximise retention.
This must include protecting newly planted trees in nature strips
from impact or removal by crossovers.
The element of the review is the referral mechanism
to Councils community care unit to assist those who require particular
assistance with the management of the trees.
I think this is a great step.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further debate?
Councillor Martin, would you like to close?
I put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin, Councillor Samuel-King,
Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem, and it&apos;s carried.
10.11, Road Management Plan review and we have one written statement
from Mr Derek Jones, friends of Bayside roads.
Councillors, do I have a mover on the Road Management Plan review?
10.11.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Happy to move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
And as recommendation as written?
Thank you.
Any seconder?
Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
I&apos;m in your hands, Councillor Martin.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Look, I think it&apos;s clear
from the review that I think we&apos;ve still got more work to do in this space.
I think it&apos;s going to take a long time for the community to catch up on what
is actually happening to our community with population growth and the changes
to the way we operate and this report addresses that
and it&apos;s a good start but I think we&apos;ve got a long way
to go personally.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Councillor Stitfold?
Any debate from the floor on this?
Councillor Samuel-King, please.
CR SAMUEL-KING: I would like to foreshadow an alternate motion.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Yes.
CR SAMUEL-KING: First put forward by Councillor Castelli.
It considers the full impacts of lowering the intervention levels
as part of the next full review of the Road Management Plan 2025.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
CEO: If the mover and seconder were comfortable
to include that, you could knock it off in one hit.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Happy to include it.
CR EL MOUALLEM: And Councillor Stitfold?
Fantastic.
Would you like to debate it?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I&apos;ll read it.
So considers the full impact of lowering the intervention levels
as part of the next full review of the Road Management Plan 2025.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Simply put, this seems to be something that residents really care
about and I think pedestrian access is really important, as is disability,
so I would like to look at it, thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further debate?
CR CASTELLI: Yes, of course, I received the submission.
We had some really good submissions from Derek Jones and of course I think
all the councillors would have seen the photos of his injuries,
which were terrible and horrible, and I am sure there are plenty others
with the same sort of injuries because of these terrible paths.
I was going to bring
- what I wanted to do is actually reduce it to about 15mm, but it&apos;s not a good idea
and I&apos;ll get one of the Council officers to explain, if
- CR EL MOUALLEM: Do you mind explaining, Ms Colson?
OFFICER: Yes, through the Chair, there are some implications that just need
to be considered more fully.
One relates to the costing.
If we were to reduce that intervention level,
back of the envelope figure suggests at least 600
- an additional 600,000 per annum but we obviously need
to explore that further.
It&apos;s a nuanced methodology, and secondly, our insurer has advised us previously that
we would be substantially increasing the risk profile for Council in terms
of the insurance should we do that in terms of our ability to deliver.
Having said that, giving us a little more time
to adopt the grinding process and the like just allows us to work that through
and we can consider it as part of the full review.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Ms Colson.
Any further debate?
CR CASTELLI: I think that&apos;s it.
I think that says it all, what we can do.
CR DEL PORTO: Just a small point on the proposed motion.
Councillor Castelli also had point 1, notes the review
of the Road Management Plan 2023.
You didn&apos;t need that anymore?
CR EL MOUALLEM: I am not sure.
CR DEL PORTO: Page 22.
You&apos;ve got the impact.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Notes the review?
It is probably not necessary at this stage.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, the officer recommendation didn&apos;t have
notes to review.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any debate?
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: That&apos;s fine, no.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Any further debate from the floor?
I just find it, to be honest, I&apos;ll say a few words on this one
because I&apos;m very passionate about making sure our community is safe,
especially the elderly.
The oldest demographics and the highest increase in numbers.
Now, I&apos;ve seen that we have had absolutely no concerns that per station increasing
the costs from a few thousand dollars to
- from $8,000 to actually $47,000, we&apos;ve had no issues just
to protect the wildlife but when it comes to our residents, I&apos;m hearing that there
is cost implications.
I&apos;ve looked into the budget earlier and there is hundreds of thousands
of dollars in linkage plan for wildlife but here we are, linkage plan
for human beings, making sure the footpath is safe.
We&apos;ve got issues with the risk profile.
I seriously have concerns.
What I&apos;m seeing here is an improvement on what we have already.
I&apos;ll probably support this because it&apos;s an improvement
on what we have but I&apos;ll make it clear I&apos;m still not
happy with it.
I&apos;ll support it as a first step.
But looking into the city of Bayside, the top issues, roads and maintenance
and repairs is actually in the top five.
If we&apos;re got going to listen to our community and do something
before 25, then we are not listening to our community.
If we&apos;re doing nothing about it, we&apos;re not listening to them.
I&apos;ll wait for the satisfaction survey results
next year and I&apos;ll decide if I&apos;ll move a Notice of Motion then
about it.
So for that reason now I&apos;m just supporting it because it&apos;s an improvement but I&apos;d
like to put on record I&apos;m really dissatisfied
with the fact that when it comes to increased costs
on second generation rodent killers and issues with habitat, no problem,
but when it comes to footpaths, we have a problem, so I&apos;ll just put it
on record.
Councillor Martin, would you like to
- sorry, it was
- yes, Councillor Martin.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, look, you&apos;re quite right, Mr Mayor.
You have been advocating for this and it&apos;s really good
to see that it&apos;s getting up tonight.
And it was disappointing to see Mr Jones come down as he did.
But getting the steps right, getting the footpaths down,
is just one part of this puzzle.
There&apos;s a lot more parts to the puzzle than that.
I do get concerned when we&apos;re advocating really strongly just for one little thing.
There&apos;s a lot to do in our community to make our elderly safe and people
with disability safer.
This is one little thing, one little thing.
There is a lot of other things we need to do.
I can assure you of that.
But I strongly support this because we&apos;re making progress.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it&apos;s carried.
10.12, we have a review of the Reconciliation Action Plan Advisory
Group, Terms of Reference.
No requests to be heard.
I&apos;m in your hands, councillors?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: I&apos;m happy to move.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Do I have a seconder?
CR EVANS: Seconded.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor Martin, would you like to debate?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Look, this couldn&apos;t come at a better time.
Obviously we&apos;ve got the Voice debate coming up for our Indigenous people
who have lived in Australia for 60,000 years, they&apos;ve never ceded the country,
and having a reconciliation plan that&apos;s got an elected councillor as the Chair
to give that committee a voice into Council is a really good step.
I think it&apos;s a thing that aligns very well and I think Councillor Stitfold is going
to do such a fantastic job in this space.
And with our local Federal Member leading this, I think there is a connection there
of leadership and I&apos;m really looking forward
to the next three or four months with you leading in a real leadership role
and I just received something from our local Federal Member, a postcard,
with the Voice from the Heart in it and it&apos;s absolutely beautiful reading.
If you haven&apos;t read the actual words, the 450 words, please read them.
I have it on my fridge and one of my kids came up to me and said
&quot;I haven&apos;t read it.
I can&apos;t believe it, how did they come up with that
&quot;and I said it&apos;s beautiful, isn&apos;t it.
And it&apos;s about time.
With Councillor Stitfold in the Chair, I think our Indigenous people
- Indigenous people, they&apos;re Indigenous to the land.
The other thing I would like to add is that Nakia Cadd
and her artwork in the report and what it says about Bayside,
it&apos;s absolutely beautiful.
This is the kind of thing that
- that just says it all to me.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Councillor Evans?
CR EVANS: Just a quick one.
Two exemplary people.
One, the Chair, Josh Toscano.
Wonderful young man.
Very committed.
And I&apos;m happy to support Councillor Stitfold
as the councillor on there.
So two terrific people on a very, very important Terms of Reference group.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Evans.
Any further debate?
Councillor Stitfold?
CR STITFOLD: Thank you very much.
I&apos;m honoured to be appointed and I will seriously take this role
- and I will take this role very, very seriously and make a commitment
to this and listen very careful.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
Any further debate?
Would you like to close, Councillor Martin?
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it&apos;s carried.
10.13, Bayside Parking Strategy, parking sustainability 23-33.
We have one written statement from Sister Michelle Kennan
and can I have a mover, councillors?
Councillor del Porto.
And seconded by Councillor Martin.
Councillor del Porto, would you like to debate?
CR DEL PORTO: Mr Mayor, I think we want this to work.
I think you have mentioned yourself that parking is an issue for a lot
of residents, not just in Sandringham.
The first thing to do is to find
- look for any options that involves a better
- a more efficient use of the car parks, so whether it&apos;s pods in place
in other shopping centres, whether it&apos;s a faster rotation
of car parks, so reduce some of them to one hours, to be able
to get more people to use them.
We may at some stage in the future maybe need some car parks, additional car parks,
in some shopping centres but that&apos;s in the distance.
What we have to do now is do the best we can with what we have.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor Martin?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: This is strategic planning in front of us here.
There is a hell of lot of work into it.
I have never a report that right on page 1 starts talking
about competing interests, trade-offs between the use of open space, accessible
and exclusive parking availability for those with a disabled permit,
the provision of parking in new developments, most effective use
of road space, the need for significant behavioural change.
These are serious words the officers are telling us.
And it goes on to say the as the population grows,
so does the number of vehicles using Council roads
and streets which are limited and finite resource.
Providing more parking can be an option but it can drive even more parking demand
and traffic congestion by encouraging car use.
So we&apos;re getting ourselves in a bit of a pickle here.
We&apos;ve got to start changing behaviour.
We&apos;ve got to start getting more people into cars or vehicles: we&apos;ve got
to get more people out of cars.
And when I say more people in cars and vehicles, literally mean more,
like instead of one person in the car, there should be two or three.
And I don&apos;t know how we&apos;re going to get there.
I was on the Metropolitan Transport Forum for a number of years,
an external delegate, and this is what we were hearing, and that
is why the City of Melbourne is changing right now, because
they can see it coming.
It is coming like a slow motion insidious horrible
thing, and when it gets to you, our lives, our residents&apos; amenity,
will be deeply impacted and if we continue to keep doing what we&apos;re doing, which
is building our density right up in the MACs but including more and more
and more and more cars, it&apos;s going to be a hell on earth to live
in these places.
So at the moment our strategic documentation,
the Parking Strategy is a part of it, but also our housing strategy
and our transport strategy as well needs to be taken into account
and we need to do so much more about the behaviour change
and the idea that everyone is just going to be able to drive down
to the shops and get out of their car and do the shopping and come back,
it&apos;s just not going to exist in 10 years and these sorts of documents are trying
to drive the strategic thinking for us, for those generations in 10 years time,
so it takes leadership.
Sometimes it takes courage.
But I really don&apos;t think that just trying to find more car parks is going to work.
It&apos;s all this other stuff that the officers are saying and I&apos;d love
to have much more debates, I would love to see more and more
of the community really thrashing these issues out.
I think it is going to be thrashed out just with the cost of living.
Insurance prices are going to go up by 20%.
Getting your car on the road, you&apos;re really going to start looking
at it.
One of my kids has already looked at it and said &quot;I&apos;m out&quot;.
It&apos;s too expensive, rego, insurance, repairs, servicing, storing that car
in car parks, it costs a lot of money.
So I think the answer will be in all of that stuff plus more.
This document has got a really great deal of strategic thinking, a lot of data,
a lot of really good ideas and hopefully we can really implement
a lot of it over the journey.
So well done on getting it this far.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any further debate from the floor?
Councillor Stitfold?
CR STITFOLD: I would just like to really congratulate the officers
in raising those very difficult topics.
It is very complex subject and I think it&apos;s really,
really important that we are starting to think in another way
and I think this document helps us to do that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Stitfold.
Any further debate?
We&apos;ll make it quick.
Say a couple of words?
CR DEL PORTO: Sorry, you were asking me to close?
CR EL MOUALLEM: Councillor del Porto, I would just like to make you aware
of page 490 on a good news story.
It says paid parking will be maintained along section of Beach Road and
within foreshore carparks, paid parking will not be considered for implementation
within Activity Centres at this time, which is some good news.
I thought you would like it.
On this note, you can close.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
We&apos;re going through it.
10.14, Wangara Road Rehabilitation Plan
and Masterplan.
No requests to be heard.
I&apos;m in your hands, councillors.
CR EVANS: Thank you.
I would like to move an alternate motion.
It&apos;s 1 and 2.
And 3, seeks expert advice and guidance from the Executive Director
of the National Arboretum Canberra to explore potential landscape
opportunities having regard to the site constraints,
to develop various options for consideration
for community consultation, 4, extends an invitation
to the Executive Director of the National Arboretum Canberra
to tour Wangara Road in August/September 2023,
subject to availability.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Seconded by Councillor del Porto.
Thank you.
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
You can fight over who seconded it, I don&apos;t mind, as long as it gets seconded.
Mr Mayor, when we were up in Canberra, we were really hosted extremely well
by Mr Scott Sadler, the Executive Director of the Arboretum there.
It was a fantastic journey.
He had a lot of really good ideas.
I am not saying that we want to replicate the arboretum
in Wangara Road, but the whole point of this is to get him down to have a look
at it and start giving us some ideas in this particular thing.
I think at the moment, the environmental report,
the Landfill Rehabilitation Plan, which I managed to get a copy of,
it&apos;s very comprehensive, Mr Mayor.
I read through it thoroughly and there&apos;s a lot of stuff that has
to be done as far as repair work on it and areas.
So it needs to also
- he needs to have a look at that.
But I think just
- when we were touring with him and his explanation of how
he created things and the sort of little tricky bits and pieces of how
he got people to donate things, I thought it was really inventive.
So I&apos;m not saying that we need to reproduce the arboretum.
Perhaps we do, I am not sure.
But again I think it&apos;s really worthwhile.
And we said we would get him down to have a look at it.
We would also like him to explore other areas,
which I&apos;m not allowed to say in this because it excludes a councillor,
but an area in the northern
- we would like him to have a look at that as well.
So with that I hope I get some support.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Councillor del Porto?
CR DEL PORTO: We had a really impressive meeting.
We actually went to the arboretum and this fellow came up and said
&quot;who are you?&quot;.
And in the end he put us in his van and we went for a long drive
around the property.
In actual fact, the van got bogged and had to get out and start pushing it.
But he&apos;s a very impressive fellow.
I think he is a real go-getter.
You can see that he can raise funds through contacts.
He&apos;s got lots of ideas about what to do with an amount of space that&apos;s restricted.
It would be great to have him just
- he&apos;s really keen, really happy to share his views and so I&apos;m hoping
that he&apos;s interested in coming down.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further debate?
Councillor Samuel-King?
CR SAMUEL-KING: Yes.
I think Wangara Road is such an awesome opportunity.
I am very interested in seeing cutting-edge landscape design
and, for that purpose, even though I don&apos;t agree
with many fundamentals of the arboretum, I think it would be good
to have some expert advice.
My issue with the arboretum are the mono cultures: I went back there
and there was a section off to the side which was
actually Indigenous landscape, a proper wild indigenous landscape.
That&apos;s where the wildlife was, not in the monocultures that are in most
of the Arboretum.
So there&apos;s a caution there.
Let&apos;s not fall into that pitfall.
But still ideas are good.
And that&apos;s one of the fantastic things about being part of something
like the ALGA, that we get to share and seed ideas, but that&apos;s debate
for another time.
What I was hoping to do is put something in writing,
but I&apos;ll ask the person who&apos;s putting forward the motion
- the mover
- it&apos;s very late, very late
- the mover, whether they&apos;d consider, if not now, in future, meetings
on this subject, whether they would be interested in looking
at having an interest in topography by sourcing a local soil perhaps
from our own projects or even from the rail loop,
whether that&apos;s something you could consider now or in the future.
That&apos;s a question.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Would you consider that?
CR EVANS: Mr Mayor, I did consider this and I just thought it was a little bit too
early and that we&apos;re sort of like micro-managing things
before we actually ask for advice.
So I actually support it.
I actually support the idea of topography but I just think it&apos;s a little bit too
early and we really want advice before we do that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Beautiful.
So I look forward to seeing this project develop.
It&apos;s an exciting one.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any further debate?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Just a couple of questions first.
When the report says the current cap, which is I think it&apos;s 20 feet of dirt
on top of the landfill has deteriorated, and the landfill gas is escaping, how big
is that problem?
It&apos;s escaping, there&apos;s a crack.
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, yes, that does sound rather alarming but it
is being managed to the satisfaction of the EPA.
So it&apos;s not a big problem.
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Thank you, and then it goes on
to say that deep-rooted plants and trees
- well, deep-rooted plants and trees, infrastructure that required foundations
or (inaudible) are unlikely to be supported.
I know we&apos;re talking about bringing a guy down to plant trees.
Is it clear that we&apos;re not going to be able to plant trees on the cap?
OFFICER: Through you, Chair, yes, there&apos;s an area in the middle which
will require the cap and then there&apos;s the other areas around,
which should Council wish to, we would be planting trees.
But there is an element which won&apos;t support
deep-rooted plants.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Would you like to debate?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Yes, like everyone I&apos;m really keen
to get this Rehabilitation Plan straightened out.
I don&apos;t know what the cost of this Rehabilitation Plan is.
It&apos;s at the EPA now.
And will be there for three months
- or, like, you know, I&apos;ve seen things at the EPA that have taken 12 months,
if not longer.
So I&apos;m not going to ask all those questions tonight
but there are a lot of questions that are starting to
- I went down there on the weekend and I saw brand new
- I think there might be gas detectors or something there,
the yellow things right around the site and I&apos;m thinking I better read this report
clearly and then I started seeing the report saying that the cap has
deteriorated, gas is escaping, water is flowing down the cap,
and I&apos;m going whoa, there&apos;s a lot going on here.
So I think before we start bringing blokes down from Canberra,
we should get our house in order to make sure we know what we have
down here.
I am looking forward to what the EPA have say.
I know we have a really good consultant.
But this one, a lot of Councils have run into trouble with landfills.
Thank you.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any further debate?
No.
OK.
I do see the point, Councillor Martin, that you made.
We need to get our house in order, yes, but I&apos;ve got a question.
This extended invitation to the Executive Director, is that going
to cost our ratepayers any money?
CR EVANS: Yes.
CEO: Through you, Chair, I assume if you&apos;re going to invite someone
down from Canberra, you would pay for their airfares and probably
at least one night&apos;s accommodation, I would imagine.
CR EL MOUALLEM: OK.
CR DEL PORTO: Maybe two.
CR EL MOUALLEM: We have debated the budget earlier tonight
and I&apos;m going to be honest with you, someone who did not support the budget,
I really cannot support expenditure on someone, no matter how experienced
they are, to come down when I know there is some issues on our side
with gas escaping and a number of other issues with the capping.
It&apos;s a landfill site.
But also we want to the sports night with Mr David there
and there was some comments from the room about having the sports strategy
and waiting for the sports strategy when there might be some other things
we need to consider if we cannot plant
- if we cannot do certain things on the site.
We really need to keep an open mind.
So at this stage I believe we are just rushing into things
and I&apos;m just not comfortable supporting this.
Councillor Evans, would you like to close?
CR EVANS: Thank you, Mr Mayor.
Thank you for that.
Yes, part of the moving is that the national
- the executive having regards to the site constraints.
So happily provide him
- if you have a look at the area, we&apos;ve got a large area
of the extreme things which is deep-rooted planting already, Mr Mayor,
so there&apos;s deep-rooted planting all on the exterior.
There&apos;s the three or
- I think the whole site is about four hectares, but again my view
is there will be certain things that we can&apos;t do, which we will have
- and the report
- if you read the report, and I have read the report,
it tells you the sort of things that you&apos;re not allowed to do
and gives you a great insight as to what you can do.
That&apos;s why I&apos;ve asked the motion to
- with the site constraints, so he gets a copy of the report,
he know what is the site constraints are and we&apos;re on our front foot.
So again
- and the cost of the thing
- I hope that we can find some little bit of the budget somewhere just
to accommodate a trip down and the hotel fare for a couple of nights.
I hope I get a bit of support for that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
I put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin, Councillor Samuel-King,
Councillor Stitfold.
All those against?
Councillor Castelli, Cr El Mouallem.
And it is carried.
Moving to 10.15, Highett Grassy Woodland
- CR CASTELLI: Can we have a block on this, until about 10.18?
They&apos;re all sleeping.
Come on.
CR EL MOUALLEM: So 10.15, 10.16 and 10.18?
CR CASTELLI: I think there&apos;s something on 10.18.
CR EL MOUALLEM: And then 17?
I&apos;ll ask the governance.
Can we block those?
CEO: Through the Chair, you don&apos;t need to nominate specific councillors for that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: So, yes.
Do we have a seconder?
CR EVANS: Seconded.
CR EL MOUALLEM: All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Stitfold and Cr El Mouallem.
Against?
Councillor Samuel-King.
And it&apos;s carried.
We&apos;ve got a block.
CR SAMUEL-KING: Do we get to debate it at all or no?
CR EL MOUALLEM: No.
10.18, we have the contract CON-22/82 upgrade to Boss James Reserve pavilion.
Do we have a mover?
CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;ll move that.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Would you mind moving the amendment?
CR DEL PORTO: I&apos;ll read it if you like.
CR EL MOUALLEM: One second, Councillor del Porto.
CR DEL PORTO: Awards contract 22/82 upgrade to Boss James Reserve pavilion
to SJ Higgins Pty Limited for the lump sum price of $3,075,320
excluding GST, including a fee for 10% bank guarantee,
which brings it up to $3,382,852, and subject to the work not commencing
until the practical completion of the Brighton Rec Centre.
And the other two are the same.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
And the seconder is happy?
Thank you, Councillor Martin.
Any debate on this?
CR DEL PORTO: No, I think that gives us the guarantee.
I don&apos;t have anything to say.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
We will put it to the vote if there is no further debate.
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Martin, Councillor Evans,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold and Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
Councillors, it is nearly 10.56.
Do you mind if I move a motion
- I need a motion to extend the meeting for a further
- CR DEL PORTO: Yes.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Seconded.
All those in favour Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans,
Councillor Martin, Councillor Stitfold and Cr El Mouallem?
Against?
Councillor Samuel-King.
And it is carried.
So we keep pushing.
10.19.
10.19, Council action waiting report.
No requests to be heard.
Do I have a mover?
COUNCILLOR MARTIN: Happy to move.
CR DEL PORTO: Seconded.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
Any debate?
No debate on the issue.
I&apos;ll put it to a vote.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
We&apos;re moving to item 11, reports by delegates.
Do we have any reports?
Association of Bayside Municipalities?
Councillor Stitfold, none.
Metropolitan Transport Forum, anything to report?
OFFICER: Yes, through you, Chair, the Forum met on 7 June 2023.
There was a discussion relating to the state and federal Budgets, as well
as a discussion around the Melbourne City
Transport Strategy 2030.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Thank you.
And Municipal Association of Victoria?
No?
Nothing to report.
Inner South Metropolitan Mayors&apos; Forum?
Nothing to report there.
South East Councils Climate Change Alliance?
Councillor Martin?
Nothing.
South Eastern Councils Biodiversity Network?
Councillor Stitfold, anything to report?
None.
CR DEL PORTO: So moved.
CR EL MOUALLEM: Moved by Councillor del Porto.
Seconded by Councillor Samuel-King.
And all those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem.
Against?
Councillor Samuel-King, you need to vote yes or no.
We will repeat it.
All those in favour?
Councillor Castelli, Councillor del Porto, Councillor Evans, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Samuel-King, Councillor Stitfold, Cr El Mouallem,
and it is carried.
Urgent business
- there is no urgent business.
And moving to 13, notices of motion.
There were no notices of motion submitted.
And also item 14, confidential business.
There was no confidential business.
Good evening.