Events and outcomes of the December 2022 Council Meeting
Councillor Bingham and Councillor Gratton put a motion to Council based upon Community input. Unfortunately, this was amended prior to the meeting to placate certain Councillors. Nevertheless, the discussion of the motion resulted in some interesting side-stepping antics in the Council meeting.
Lousie Kerr, Northern Beaches Council Director of Planning & Place did confirm that development in a riparian buffer zone is ‘not ordinarily’ allowed (at 2:32:45 Mins).
Further, Ray Brownlee, Northern Beaches CEO did confirm that this is the only time in Council history that an EOI process has been used to establish property value for land (at 2:55 mins).
The motion and discussion acknowledged that Councillors had been blindsided by the actions of Council’s Property Steering Committee. Councillor Regan who chairs this Committee acknowledged mistakes had been made. (at 2:50:50 mins).
Despite the abnormalities and acknowledgement of mistakes, a request by Councillor De Luca to appoint an independent probity officer to oversee Councils’ handling of this land was not endorsed.
The end result is that the sale process has been halted so that community consultation can occur. We need to ensure this is not just a box-ticking process when it happens.
See our Transparency page for a summary and catalogue of heavily redacted council documents to learn why.
Co-ordinated eMails to Councillors
Thank you! We had a fantastic response to the December call to action which asked that you email Councillors with your concerns over this proposed sale.
We understand that hundreds of emails were sent, and this was a key part of the message to Council that the community does not agree with the sell-off. So many voices of concern could not be ignored, and subsequently resulted in the motion to halt the sale.
Misinformation and conspiracies?
It would appear that some parts of Council do not enjoy being held to account, and some Councillors have gone down the path to suggest misinformation is being spread to breed conspiracy theories.
Councillor Glanville did a good job to highlight that the community is perhaps a lot better informed and more capable than some Councillors might think! (at 2:51:13 mins)
Our team has accessed internal Council documents using the GIPA process. These tell an interesting story! We have published these in the Transparency section, and have further GIPA requests in motion requesting more …
You can also find a response to Councillor Walton’s email to (some) of the residents that emailed him on this proposed sell-off there.