Councils Fear Community Scrutiny in Local Environment Plan Deliberations

Councils Ordinary Meeting 26 October 2011

Motion no 70.

1. During further future considerations of the Local Environment Plan 2009 (SLEP 2009), Council conduct all meetings, breifings etc as 'open' to the community.

2. Council publish on its website the submissions recieved from the community in regards to the SLEP2009

3. Council give greater weighting to the submission contributed by the 'Shoalhaven LEP Review Committee.



The public exhibition period for Shoalhavens Local Environment Plan ended a fortnight ago. Public sessions have been well attended and there is some level of interest from the community. The next steps in the building of the local environment plan is to review the submissions and consider how council will or will not incorporate the requests made into the final document.

Council staff will summarise the issues and present a report most likely to a series of breifings to get Councils direction on how to respond. These breifings are held in confidential session and are not supposed to create binindg decisions the public are not allowed to attend either as witness or particpant.

Bringing this motion to Council was inviting a hiding to nowhere as the dinosaurs at Shoalhaven Council have not yet evolved enough to understand that informed decision making and infomed constituients makes for a much better relationship and better outcomes. Councillor Brumerskji accused me of being  'irresponsible' and that it was 'problemtic' to include community who could go away and use our discussions against us.

Councillor Guile accused me of being audacious in bringing such a motion forward as it revealed my true colors in wanting to support my Green's mates and stack the room with SAC . Well that was a complement really as I certainly do want to represent the people who voted for me- who also see that community involvment is a 21st Century attitude.

It was obvious from the arguments that number three was the most abhorent part of the motion as the accusations were layed on thick and fast about trying to 'skew' the process by giveing one  submission higher weighting- I think that their argument just shows a lack of understanding in how a network of like minded people crafted a seriously challengeing submission to the Local Environment Plan. However I was willing to show some flexability and removed number three and amended number two to request  the summary that will be prepared be available publicly.

Still no joy though- I was only able to gain support from Clrs Ward and Fergusson for the revised version of the motion.

Check out the business papers in particular the General Managers Comments on page 69 of the reports. Im astounded that he claimed that the Local Environment Plan Review Group was less than representative as it was just over half of the groups sponsored by Council (13/24) and that 3 other community groups were included making it 16 groups which actually makes the representation more inclusive than the average 7/6 Council decision.

Over to you -Should Council include community in its Local Environment Plan breifings - vote in the poll and leave your comments