Tuesday morning's Lists

The Animals & City Standards committee meeting, on Tuesday, 17 January at 8.30 am, has eight Items on the List, six are asterisked as being kiss-and-run Items. Three of the items are about land use. Item AS4*, Magistrate's Penalty Decision of 19 December 2011—LCC vs Mark Blakeway, has been a long-running saga. For those inclined to not follow the council's directions when altering the shape of their land, it might be worth looking at this result.

Item AS7, is about vegetation clearing at Cornubia and may not cause much concern if Cr Power doesn't turn up. Item AS8, 54 Macaranga Street, Marsden—Illegal Land Use, is closed to the public, coded as a potential legal action for the closure, and that might take an amount of discussion before councillors are convinced that they have a case.

Whatever people say about councillors, as individuals, I think that in these sorts of cases the majority, depending on who is missing of course, are likely to take considerable time over these decisions. In open sessions, where this sort of thing has been discussed in the past, they usually demonstrate that they need convincing and that the officers have a tight case before authorising and action. You would also be able to see from the paperwork that has been presented to them, back then, that officers keep a very accurate record of the correspondence and conversations.

I can see that this closure is unusual. I can only believe that the new City Standards manager is feeling her way and I hope that a councillor or two will remember that it is unusual to exclude the public on such public-interest cases. I believe that the education value for us all is much more important than the secrecy that closing the discussion to the public might appear to help councillors cover-up what they said about the issues.

And some have a great need to improve their community standing and openness, real soon now!

The Planning & Development committee meeting, that will start at 9 am or ten minutes after the previous meeting, has a relatively long list of Items, 14 of them. One is slated to be closed and four are kiss-and-run items.

Item PD3, a Material Change of Use—Public Worship—Ahmadiyya Muslim Association of Australia, 1-21 Neville Road, Stockleigh, is likely to draw a small crowd. It is also likely to draw some amazingly insensitive comments from a couple of councillors who might otherwise be vocal supporters of minority religions in this country.

Item PD4, Intensive Agriculture MCU at Greenbank, might also see a lot of cross-table antagonism at the meeting. It will be interesting to see how many brave councillors are going to decide for the good of the city and how many will go with their electoral prospects.

Item PD5, Telecommunications Facilities (Tower) on Old Bluff Road, looks like it is the beginning of Vodafone's decision to install about five towers to the north and south of Beaudesert to improve their coverage, which was adversely commented about by the TIO last year. Too bad it won't help those of us in homes facing the north with the ridges to the south and east!

There's a really good reason why Australian State governments went completely wrong with telecomms regulation. We get the industry putting up, each, their own towers where other governments require them to share the tower-space with each other. It makes for less clutter in the environment and a lot better siting for coverage. However, it does mean that local governments need to ensure that the tower sites are further from densely peopled areas—even if it is only on top of the tallest buildings.

There are a couple of Items relating to Town Planning Instrument amendments. In fact the last item, PD14, that is closed, is also for a Ministerial check of new scheme's first State Interest Check.

There is an Item about paid parking at shopping centres and two Items about the Liveable Cities Program. And that is about it. A solid morning's work.