COUNCIL’S NOVEMBER 2016 MEETING AGENDA

Hello – I haven’t been up to date with these for a while, for various reasons, but back now. 

As in the past, I will trawl through the packed Council agenda and highlight matters that I believe impact Northfield Ward and comment on them in my usual, honest & sometimes too detailed way.

Feel free to comment below on any item or all, but remember, nothing offensive please – we are not Donald Trump here!

ITEM 4.1 DEPUTATIONS

The Mayor has given permission for a gentleman from an Enfield address to speak to Council on his rate increase. I understand his issue is that his rates are double due to having a vacant block.

I wonder if he is aware of the my Notice of Motion from July this year which is awaiting report back from the staff, viz:

ITEM 14.1 NOTICE OF MOTION – PARTIAL REBATE FOR VACANT LAND – CR. BASHAM
Cr. Basham moved that Council resolves that a report is brought to a subsequent meeting of Council on the implications of Council supplying a partial rebate on the rates for property owners of vacant blocks of land for the first twelve months of ownership.
Cr. Russell seconded CARRIED.

ITEM 6.1 ELECTOR REPRESENTATION REVIEW WORKSHOP

Council has held a number of workshops on our current Elector Representation Review, where SA Government legislation requires us to review our Council’s ward boundaries, makeup and other associated matters every 8 years.

By law we cannot make decisions at workshops, but it was very clear, apart from one elected member, that the overwhelming mood was that apart from some necessary minor alteration to boundaries in the Port area due to population movements, there was no need for any other changes.

We only had 5 submissions to our first lot of consultation, of which 3 were anonymous!

Despite considerable public consultation on this matter, I have had no constituents ask me to cut the number of elected members, change the voting method for the Mayor (to Councillors only), change the ward boundaries, delete all wards or bring back Area Councillors (formerly known as Aldermen). I guess we don’t need to fix what’s not broken.

ITEM 6.2 CITY SCORECARD AND CUSTOMER SERVICE

We quickly reviewed statistics, surveys and data on how our Council area is doing in a number of areas, as well as Council itself as an entity, and people’s opinions on our services. Makes some great reading, and even though it is fair to say our ratings weren’t as high as I would have liked, we are way above the ratings for the State and Federal Governments!

Still, it is nice to know what people think and know what we have to work on for the future.

ITEM 12.1.2 NEW COUNCIL POLICY – GRANTS AND SPONSORSHIPS

I have been the driving force behind changing this area of Council, my personal opinion being that many of our Council grant and sponsorships in the past were not well directed to valuable community outcomes and did not meet community expectations. I was also particularly keen to ensure we stopped supplying grants to projects that were also receiving, in some cases, significant State and Federal grants.

I am glad to say Council staff generally agreed with that sentiment and over a period of time we have worked to come to write a new policy designed for better management, accountability and outcomes for our grant and sponsorship dollar.

ITEM 12.1.3 GRANT FUNDING – FEMALE CHANGE ROOMS

The State Government has offered $10M of grant funding to help clubs build changerooms for women’s’ sports. That sounds great until you check into the demand and realise that with over 300,000 South Australian women involved in some sport, that money won’t stretch very far. At all.

Fortunately, Council staff have recommended that we give it a push for new women’s changerooms for the Greenacres FC grounds, without expending any of Council’s funds, seeing the current changerooms on the lower oval are completely unusable due to vandalism and size, and the other one is usually used by the blokes.

NOTE: I declare I coach the Gaza Women’s Football Team, and I am a member of the Greenacres FC, but do not believe I have a conflict of interest.

ITEM 12.1.4 BIO-COMPOSTABLE BAGS

Council staff are recommending that we now sell spare rolls of bags to residents at $10 per roll as the supplier will no longer charge us for them, as previously residents were paying $19.45 for a roll, which led to only an average of 80-100 rolls being sent out each year.

I supplied four rolls to residents at my own cost last year (I had some spares from people who didn’t use them) and organised replacements for a couple of others after I ran out of spares.

When we first introduced this service we supplied subsequent rolls of bags free of charge and we found a large amount of misuse of bags happening (I know that may happen now, but it is more cost effective to deliver one to everyone).

We will see how the $10 fee goes compared to $19.45, I think it is an improvement!

ITEM 12.2.2 PARKING CONTROL WAYS ROAD, HAMPSTEAD GARDENS

In August 2014, I asked Council staff to review the 2 hour parking limits outside the group of shops in Ways Road, Hampstead Gardens, viz:

ITEM 14.13 NOTICE OF MOTION – PARKING SIGNS – 19 WAYS ROAD, HAMPSTEAD GARDENS – CR. BASHAM
Cr. Basham moved that the administration bring back a report on removing the parking signs outside the shops at 19 Ways Road, Hampstead Gardens, which includes consultation with all affected businesses.
Cr. Barca seconded CARRIED.

In December 2014, Council staff brought a report back to Council with their consultation and as part of their investigations, found:

“During consultation, Council received three in support to retain the existing 2 hour parking control and one objection.”

I was a little stunned to read this at the time as I had spoken to 3 businesses in the area who had requested the time limits be removed, and only 1 wished for it to be retained. I left it at that, but voted against retaining the status quo:

ITEM 12.2.10 PARKING SIGNS – 19 WAYS ROAD, HAMPSTEAD GARDENS

Cr. Barca moved that the Council resolves as follows: 1. That the Acting Director Technical Services’ report titled “Parking Signs – 19 Ways Road, Hampstead Gardens” be received and noted. 2. The parking control adjacent to 19 Ways Road, Hampstead Gardens is retained.

Cr. Guscott seconded CARRIED.

To my shock, this month, I read a staff report on the same signs being asked to be removed again, and this time, staff agreeing to the request!

During consultation Council Administration sent six letters to adjacent properties and received six responses supporting the removal of the existing Time Limit.

I am happy to support this, but am fascinated to know what has managed to change people’s minds – apparently, again!

12.2.7 DRAFT ROAD MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR FOSTERS ROAD

After the best part of 20 years of campaigning to have the State Government do something to fix Fosters Road, at last, we have a Draft Road Management Plan out for public consultation.

I have an entire page devoted to this on this site –

http://markbasham.com.au/fixing-fosters-road/

which will updated with my full thoughts later this week, but in the short term, I must say that this draft plan is completely underwhelming and a bit of a brush off to residents, businesses and visitors to this area.

I will be distributing a special leaflet to suburbs either side of Fosters Road later this month asking for people to supply feedback to DPTI on their feeble and misguided effort on this one, and I hope for their next attempt at this, we get something that matches community expectations.

ITEM 12.2.13 GOLF COURSE REVIEW

Council is looking at reviewing options for management of Council’s golf assets portfolio. This of course (no pun intended) includes our Valley View Par 3 course and the adjacent golf driving range.

ITEM 14.1 NOTICE OF MOTION – ADDITIONAL DOG PARKS – CR BASHAM

I am moving that we add some more dog parks to our current 3 (which were my idea in the first place) across the Council.

We have one in our ward at LJ Lewis Reserve which is really successful, and is being upgraded as I write, and even has its own Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LJLewisReserveFriends/

ljl

Where do you think another one our side should be?

ITEM 14.2 NOTICE OF MOTION – PARKING STIRLING ST, NORTHFIELD – CR BASHAM

I am asking for Council staff to investigate fixing the parking problem in this street when football games and training is on at LJ Lewis Reserve.

That’s it for now – I will post a post-meeting rundown to let you know how it all panned out.

You can read the full agenda (minus the confidential bit of course) here:

http://www.portenf.sa.gov.au/page.aspx?u=2398&year=2016&month=11#e6897

And please, don’t be shy, feel free to post a comment!

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