Committee meetings round starts Monday

On Monday, 16 January the new round of committee meetings starts with the City Roads Infrastructure committee. The meeting starts at 10 am in the Logan Room on the third floor of the older part of the Administration building at 150 Wembley Road. There are carparks off both Wembley and Jacaranda Roads.

The Environment & Sustainability committee follows the first, either ten minutes after it finishes, or at the earliest at 11 am.

For the first meeting there are five Items. One is a starred report which means they are likely to pass it into oblivion in about 20 seconds. The next three, listed, Items are all closed to the public and we will only be invited back for the resolutions which must be voted on in public. Not necessarily displayed to the public for a reasonable amount of time, you understand, just voted in public.

Some readers might wonder what my bleat is about. The explanation is that while the public is excluded from the meeting room the councillors can construct complicated and lengthy resolutions in sections that, occasionally, have complex and obscure wording—anything up to 30 lines of text on a screen that only lists about 15 lines of the resolution. Some chairpersons think that when all of the members of the public are in the room, but have not yet reached their chairs, they can begin voting and that vote is sometimes completed before every person is yet seated—you can ask yourself how do I manage to record the resolution, or even the gist of it, and how do I see who voted and who didn't even bother to indicate a vote?

I'm telling you what happens, and it happens because those same councillors all represent you and I. It shows, because none say anything to their chairperson colleagues about having more civic-consciousness about their management of the committee—that they will let lip-service chairmanship continue.

A few chairpersons have improved their chairmanship over the, almost, four years they have been doing the job. Two chairpersons have made very great advances in their practise of chairmanship. But I'll be giving you a summary of those councillor attributes closer to the election.

Back to the meeting, the last Item IN5, Logan Bicycle Advisory Committee report is not starred but isn't likely to take long.

Item IN2, Road Signs in new Subdivisions, is closed because it will embarrass the council to have the discussion in public. Likely to be short. Item IN3, about Road Planning in Division 1, is closed because the Sustainability Planning Act (SPA) allows almost anything to be closed to the public for no other reason than it comes under the SPA. This sort of closure has only been challenged once, in a Planning & Development committee meeting, about Item PD8, in the last four years.

Item IN4, about the Park Ridge Connector delegation's report to council, will be a report from Main Roads people about the feedback from the public. I have a sneaky idea that there will be another delay in the delegation's report because of another Ministerial delay to the closing date for feedback. An open-and-shut Item you might say.

The following committee's six Items have four starred as kiss-and-run decisions. These sorts of Items are those where the recommendation from the officer making the report is that it is For Information or similar words. Not to be confused with For Consideration where some real resolution will have to be assembled and debated—even if it is to do nothing. However, for interest items sometimes cause questions to be asked, especially if the report is difficult or contentious. Cr Grant is one committee member that can see where there is more dust than bull in this sort of report. But, I have to say, the E&S officers are good report writers and have a tough senior manager to answer to.

I expect that the second meeting will finish about or before 12.30 pm.

Item ES5, 2012 Envirogrants Program—Call for Applicants, is self-explanatory and of interest to all environmental and associated groups. This is not the call, it is just the decision of councillors to endorse the conceived plan from the officers.