Councillor Chris Harris

At a Council meeting on the 15th of March, the Lord Mayor moved a mayoral minute (delivered to councillors 25 minutes before the meeting), which was supported Clover Moore Party “independents” and the Liberal Councillor, to abandon plans to build a skate park at the Millers Point site underneath a busy freeway (for background information on the site, see this previous post).

This is a massive blow for the skateboarding community of the City and young people generally, but it shouldn’t have to be this way.  The Lord Mayor’s reasons for abandoning the plans are based on a number of incorrect and poorly evidenced assumptions and it seems as though she is running scared from the hype campaign created by a small group of very vocal residents with a serious case of “Not In My Backyard”.

This spineless backdown by the Lord Mayor is the second time a perfectly good proposed site has been junked for her perceived political benefit. Prior to this a very advanced design for a skate park in Prince Alfred Park was deleted from the plan at the last minute following ill informed and prejudiced opposition by a handful of her supporters many of whom you will see handing out ‘how to votes’ for her at the next election.

The first reason given for cancelling the plan is that it will be “affected by” the cycleway planned to be built next to the proposed skate park site.  This is a flimsy excuse at best and the Lord Mayor has made no attempt to explain what exactly “affected by” means in this context.  The cycleway has been on the drawing board since before the planning for the skate park was initiated and there had been no suggestion that these two plans were in conflict before now.  The skate park was planned for a small plaza area next to the cycleway and would interfere with it no more than an adjacent café or children’s playground would.

The importance of the site as a pedestrian access way between Wynyard and Barangaroo is also listed as a reason to reject the plans, however with solid plans for a cycleway adjacent to the skate park site it’s difficult to see what the connection is between the skate park and pedestrian access.  Skaters will likely use the cycleway to skate to the site as cycleways are designed to be more sympathetic to the needs of wheeled vehicles than pedestrian footpaths are, providing a smoother and more enjoyable ride.  Unless Clover Moore has secret plans to abandon the cycleway as well (which would entirely destroy her first argument against the skate park) there will be already in place a separated path for skaters to use so they don’t conflict with pedestrians. Further the pedestrian link between Kent St and York St through to Wynyard station passes past the proposed skate park not through it. The only real conflict in that area will be between pedestrians & cyclists.

The final argument against the plan is the many unfounded objections raised by local residents of noise, antisocial behaviour, graffiti and the like.  I am a local resident myself and have dealt with most of these arguments in my previous post on this matter.  However one argument that I haven’t tackled previously, which has been trotted out again, is one to the effect that because the site is small, skaters will quickly get bored of it. 

This is yet another baseless skater stereotype.  While a small site may not attract large numbers of regular visitors from outside the area (a situation that I imagine would please many of the objectors) one only need to briefly look through online skateboarding forums to realise how passionate skaters are about their local parks, even if they are small.  A site such as this will likely serve as a hub for local skaters from the younger end of the spectrum for whom it is not easy to travel to Waterloo or other outlying skate parks.  This could include primary school children and young teenagers skating with their friends as well as children as young as four skating under the supervision of their parents.  Older skaters respect the different needs of young skaters and the two can share the same space with very little conflict.  I think even those members of the community who adhere to the stereotypes of skaters as habitual perpetrators of antisocial and criminal behaviour will acknowledge that the presence of young children and parents at the site is likely to severely curtail any such activities.

This disgraceful decision by the increasingly autocratic Lord Mayor and her compliant Clover Moore Party “independents” reminds me of the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In the film a mythical society keeps its children underground because they are seen to be noisy, smelly and troublesome. The town even has a child catcher who scours the town for children using a rattling toy as a lure. Once captured they are bundled into a wooden cage that is mounted on a horse drawn cart and despatched to the underground cave where they won’t bother anyone.

Well at least the young people of Clover Moore’s City know where they belong now. Not in her backyard. And she doesn’t even need to explain herself anymore. She has the numbers and as we have seen from politicians of her kind in the NSW state government – that’s all that matters!

I can only interpret Clover Moore’s actions on this as nothing more than a political move attempting to pander to populist ill-informed hysteria.  I would recommend that all members of the community who want to see this skate park go ahead write to her and her team on Council and tell them how you feel about this decision, how misguided she is in falling for the same unfair stereotypes dragged out again and again and how it will affect your vote at the next state or local council election.  Maybe she will see that abandoning such a well loved plan is not the way to win popularity and we will once again see the park inner Sydney wants and deserves back on the agenda.  

I have serious concerns about the tender process that appears to have been designed to place the City’s tennis courts under the management of a single operator. Should the recommendation of council staff be adopted the operator at Ruchcutters Bay tennis courts will be tossed out after 25 years of service to the community. The Greens councillors consider such a proposal to be unreasonable & unfair.  At an extraordinary meeting on Monday 1st March (attended by around 200 people protesting the recommendation, shown below) the Clover Moore Party used their numbers to defer the tender process for a second time.  Councillor Doutney and myself, along with the Labor and Liberal Councillors, voted against the motion.

As Greens we have three key concerns with the tender process: shortcomings with information provided to councillors, inconsistent treatment of individual tenderers during the process and a failure of the tender criteria & process to capture the “community benefit” that councillors had requested.

The level of benefit that an applicant could provide to the community was meant to be the most heavily weighted criteria upon which a successful tender was assessed. However the hundreds of emails that Councillors received from the Rushcutters Bay community have provided information about the local operator that should have been presented to Councillors in the staff report on the tenders at the Finance Committee on 15th February 2010.

There has been no performance review of the current tennis court operators at Rushcutters Bay, despite this being required by local government tendering guidelines. As a result the free coaching, court hire & equipment hire to children from Darlinghurst & Plunkett St Public Schools over the past fifteen years was not reported to councillors and could not have been considered in the tender assessment.

Another piece of highly relevant information was a proposed Franks Family scholarship of $100,000 per annum to provide coaching & court time for 40 children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Again this was not reported to councillors and therefore could not have been considered in the tender assessment.

The Greens are also very concerned about the inconsistent treatment of the two tenderers who made direct contact with councillors in order to lobby for their bid. One tenderer was excluded and the other, who ended up as the recommended tenderer, was not.  I have read the “no lobbying” clause in the tender and the emails from tenderers (see attachment 1 below). I can’t see why one was ousted and the other was not. The decision seems biased and unfair.

I have since sought legal advice from a senior counsel Francis Douglas QC who advised that the email from the tenderer who was not excluded  had indeed breeched the tender guidelines (see attachment 2 below). Further the awarding of the tender to the offending tenderer could see such a decision invalidated by a court and damages sought from the City of Sydney.

Once the legal advice was tabled the Clover Moore Party scrambled to defer the process until a more thorough investigation could be carried out, but this is not a positive way forward.  To simply delay a process with so many flaws in it so that just one of those flaws can be investigated, while ignoring all the others, is not in the interest of the community. 

People have invested significant time and effort in writing to Council and turning up to meetings in order to try to make sure the process reflects their very reasonable desires for their community. They deserve better than to have to wait once more for a flawed process to turn out an unsatisfactory outcome.  The process needs to be restarted with criteria that will accurately reflect the benefits that each applicant will provide, and has provided previously, to the community.

Attachment 1- Tenderer not to Solicit Council Personel

Attachment 2 - Legal Advice from Francis Douglas QC

Hot on the heels of their destruction of the habitat area at Orphan School Creek with the freshly laid concrete zig zag path, the Clover Moore Party are at it again across the road in Johnstons Canal with more habitat destruction.  The proposal is a bike path that links the shared pathway emerging from Orphan School Creek as it crosses Wigram Rd at Forest Lodge.

Two pathways have been outlined by City staff. The one favoured by Clover Moore Party councillors  proceeds along the eastern side of the canal between Wigram Rd and a bridge across the canal about 150 metres away. This area contains about 5 metres of council land immediately adjacent to the canal and joins seamlessly with the backyards of 22 terrace homes that front Minogue Crescent. Currently there is a dirt ‘goat track’ that is used by the occasional recreational cyclist, mothers with little kids in prams and people walking their dogs. These uses have happily coexisted with the local residents for years but all that is about to change.

The Lord Mayor’s concrete and steel brigade have voted to build a 2.5 metre wide concrete path with regular 3.5 metre light poles. This new commuter cyclepath will be lit up like a carnival, it will attract a lot more cyclists and totally destroy this idyllic little haven. The impact on the residents will be considerable.

When I visited the site with Greens colleague, Cr Doutney, we saw corellas feeding their young, sulphur crested cockatoos munching the freshly mown grass seed and multiple varieties of birdlife – night time brings out possums & other native animals.

There is a perfectly good alternative route for this section of the cycleway just metres away on the other side of the canal. Booth lane is a very seldom used laneway that hosts a Housing NSW development on one side of the road and a private multi unit development on the other. Both of these have adequate on site parking for residents. The laneway contains 8 parking spaces that could easily be converted into a two way cycleway that terminates at Taylor St. Taylor St is a very wide & quiet dead end street that leads straight into the park where the shared path cycleway will continue down to the parklands around Roselle Bay.

Clover Moore councillors refused to consider the alternative ‘on road’ route but have decided instead on habitat destruction, increased conflict with cyclists and the loss of the peaceful glade enjoyed by the 22 homes along Minogue Cres. This choice is totally unnecessary.

Leichhardt Council will shortly be spending around $700,000 on Taylor St to convert it into a model sustainable street. What better addition to this project than the inclusion of sustainable transport. The traffic movements on Booth Lane and Taylor St are very low and it would be an ideal and easy path for both recreational & commuter cyclists with little potential conflict with cars or pedestrians

Residents of Minogue Cres, who have not been properly consulted, turned up at council on 22nd February to express their view and were refused an opportunity to address councillors when the Clover Moore Party voted as a block to deny them the right to speak. Once again Forrest Lodge residents are being ignored.

Thanks to local resident Alexandra Brunner for images of the site as it is now in it’s unconcreted state.

The Barangaroo Authority conducted a presentation of the design ideas of British architect Richard Rogers at the City Recital Hall on 23rd February. The presentation visuals showed attractive buildings and public spaces that interfaced with the water at the city’s western edge with a light rail service passing down Hickson Rd.

One key component of the design, repeatedly referred to as ”the public pier”, was in fact the platform for a 213 metre private hotel located on half a hectare of the harbour that will have to be reclaimed (image created by the Sydney Morning Herald as viewed from Pyrmont Bridge). The proposed hotel juts 150 metres into the harbour and effectively blocks half the waterway separating Barangaroo & Darling Island.

The presentation contained many worthwhile ideas but there was virtually no mention of the hotel from Mr Keating or the two architects who presented the design. It seemed as though they were trying to slip it through without anyone noticing.

Once a questioner raised the hotel issue Mr Keating responded by saying that the building was a response to ‘1960s’ industrial vandalism’, would be an “exclamation mark” for the western city and that the reclamation of part of the harbour would “break up the monotony of the shoreline”.

It seems to me that mother nature created a beautiful canvas when she shaped Sydney harbour and it appears pretty arrogant to suggest that we humans can improve that with a massive private ‘for profit’ enterprise in the shape of a hotel to “break up the monotony”.

The hotel is a savage intrusion on Sydney Harbour and creates a precedent that will enable future premiers, in cahoots with their political mates, to construct a pier with a giant building anywhere in the harbour that takes their fancy. Just imagine a future “public pier” with a 200 metre hotel at the end of White Bay or Pyrmont Point . There is no reason that this could not happen if the Barangaroo Authority gets away with this. For those who have invested a million or two dollars in a harbour waterfront apartment I’d have to say ‘be very afraid’ of a precedent like this.

Mr Keating also called the Sydney Morning Herald “intellectually corrupt” and acting with “shocking arrogance” when the newspaper published an impression of how this proposal would look from Pyrmont Bridge.

The proposed built form will completely overwhelm the northern view of the harbour from Pyrmont and will compromise the beauty of the stunning waterway for all except those who approach from the West in a helicopter. The Herald has exposed the government’s spin with the published image and I hope that the public loudly condemns what is clearly a massive over-development on this last iconic piece of post industrial harbour.   
 

At a council meeting of the City of Sydney on 22nd February Clover Moore Party
members and the Liberal councilor voted in tandem to donate public ratepayer funds to two private enterprises setting up in the City’s laneways.

The first donation to set up a new bar was approved outright.  The second grant, to the Moran Arts Foundation Ltd, was recommended by staff but has been deferred so that the structure of the business and its connection to the Moran Family can be investigated. The grant was made under the Laneways Business Development Program - a program initiated in August 2008 in a 5-4 vote at Council.

I opposed the policy when it was proposed in 2008 and the reasons for that opposition have not changed. The recommended grants were for $30,000 each with the funds being available for setting up the business and matching funds being provided by the entrepreneur. These cash handouts to individual  business people are nothing more than corporate welfare. The grant was opposed by myself, my Greens colleague Cr Doutney & the Labor councillor.

The proposal to approve $30,000 for The Moran Foundation shows just how poorly targetted this policy is. A wealthy family such as the Moran family should not be receiving funding from a public authority to set up a new small business enterprise.  It is clear that they are more than able to set up the new business from their own very substantial resources.

The use of $30 000 of public funds to set up a private ‘for profit’ bar also reflects poorly on the City’s priorities when you consider some of the grant applications that have been refused in recent community and environmental grant rounds. These include:

•  AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) was denied $4,980 to provide courses in health, well being and life skills to women with HIV.
•  Glebe/Leichardt Police and Community Youth Centre (PCYC) was denied $10,000 to provide 10 places for at risk young people to do their School Certificate by correspondence at PCYC.
• Adults Surviving Child Abuse (a group that provides information and support for child abuse survivors as well as those who provide services to support them) was denied $20,000 to provide psycho-educational workshops to health professionals and survivors of child abuse.
• Streetwork (a group that works with young people at risk of violence, homelessness, abuse and addiction) was denied $9,570 for youth advocacy at Glebe Children’s Court.
• Bell Shakespeare Company was denied $15,000 for the Shakespeare in the CBD short performances program.
• Biodynamics Sydney ( a permaculture organisation) were denied $8,160 to run workshops on using gardens as carbon sinks.
• Diabetes Australia was denied $20,144 to implement programs to educate the non-English speaking background community on magaing diabetes.

I would consider that all of these projects are more worthy than propping up another gin mill in a city already awash with establishments providing alcohol 24 hours per day.  If the City wants to enliven laneways it should do it by creating local events that will attract people to these laneways.

The Greens call on the Clover Moore Party to close down the the Laneways Business Development Program and to allocate the budgeted funds to community and environmental grant programs