City of Sydney Councillor Shayne Mallard has spoken out in support of the proposal to create up to 700 new dwellings as part of the City's affordable housing commitment but has questioned the secrecy in the planning and raised concerns about the high concentrations of affordable housing in the inner west.
" Today's announcement will help provide much needed housing for lower wage earners in the inner city and help keep Sydney competitive with the diverse labour force needed to be globally competitive", Shayne said.
"The addition of another large development of affordable housing in Glebe adds to the high concentrations of existing affordable housing and large estates of public housing in the area where police and other government agencies struggle to maintain order and deliver effective services."
"Concentrating more affordable and social housing in the inner west will only increase community concerns about creating ghettos of social and economic disadvantage."
"Council is currently asking the Department of Housing to provide private security guards to patrol the housing estates in Glebe. How does that sit with this announcement?"
"Why not consider breaking up the concentrations with opportunities in the Greensquare, Broadway brewery site and newer developing areas? This could involve innovative development solutions such as land swaps and rezoning bonuses for affordable housing provision in new developments?"
Shayne is also opposed to Council being the affordable housing landlord.
"Council must not take on the huge responsibility of becoming the affordable housing landlord. Most councils have failed to deliver equity and transparency in this area in the past with issues of nepotism and favours for mates under previous cheap rent deals."
Councillor Mallard also questioned the financial secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding today's announcement.
"Increasingly the City of Sydney has reverted to the dark management arts of Frank Sartor's day."
"Councillors were in a full day of briefings yesterday including a budget session and yet nothing was mentioned about this announcement and Councillors were not consulted."
"Keeping secret from elected Councillors a $260 M project including the provision of $30 M worth of ratepayer's land is not a good demonstration of open and accountable government,"
"Informing elected Councillors by media release smacks of election spin ahead of meaningful engagement with an elected representative body." Shayne concluded.
Council's announcement today here: http://www.sydneymedia.com.au/html/3596-new-partnership-to-boost-affordable-housing.asp
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Friday, April 04, 2008
Dog-gone debate at Council
Clover Moore's proposal to make 44 parks in the City of Sydney including Hyde Park, Cook and Phillip, Rushcutters Bay, Bear and Macleay Park in the most densely populated areas of the City's east 24 hours off leash have been met with howls of protest from residents and particularly young mothers. In quite emotional scenes at last Monday's mid afternoon committee community members spoke strongly of their concerns about protecting their children from a dog attack or even unwarranted attention by an off leash canine. As I said at the Committee this issue is not about dog lovers versus dog haters as some have tried to simplistically portray it. I'm a dog lover having owned many dogs in my life including a rather robust single minded Great Dane called Bowen (sadly gone to that great off leash park in the sky now). But having a well trained but determined dog or two reinforces my concerns for parents with young children. After supporting a deferral for more information on this proposal and reflection I now do not think that Council can introduce such a startling and radical change in a 'big bang'. But rather we need to much more carefully asses each park and open space. There should be some space for dogs off leash 24/7. But they must be either larger regional parks (like Sydney Park) where say 50% can off leash 24/7 or specially constructed large off leash enclosures such as in New York and Copenhagen. These are ideal especially for smaller inner city dogs. The balance should remain on leash from 8am (to allow humans exercising not to be assailed by canines) to just before sunset (say 5pm).
The Daily Telegraph covered this issue today (see below and links).
Clover puts your children on a leash
CHILDREN'S playgrounds will be fenced off inside parks to give unleashed dogs free rein over the city's green open spaces.
Up to 10 popular city playgrounds will be penned in under a City of Sydney Council plan to hand over 44 parks to unrestrained canines. Instead of creating fenced off-leash areas as in other cities worldwide, families will be the ones corralled - for their own safety.
The move has sparked calls from Australia's peak veterinary body for all NSW councils to follow Sydney's lead and provide more places where dogs can be exercised.
"These days dogs are treated something akin to a member of the family by their owners, yet there seem to be greater restrictions than ever on where families can take their pet," Australian Veterinary Association president Diane Sheehan said.
A public debate between dog owners, parents and councillors this week erupted over Sydney City Council officers' rejection of calls to create fenced areas for dogs in favour of fencing off children.
Justifying its decision, the council report said its approach to off-leash areas was "to integrate recreational activities rather than segregate activities into separate areas".
But in the same breath it proposed to segregate children from dogs by fencing off playgrounds in Beare, Foley, Jubilee, Perry, Prince Alfred, Rushcutters Bay, Waterloo and Wentworth parks and Bannerman Crescent and Kimberley Grove reserves.
"This would have to be the most biased report I've ever seen in my four years as a councillor," Councillor Chris Harris said.
"I have no confidence in supporting the assumptions in this report."
The City of Sydney has proposed to turn 44 parks into off-leash areas 24 hours a day, incorporating 18 parks that are currently off-leash from 6pm to 8pm.
It would take the number of off-leash parks to 13 per cent of the city's 350 parks, up from 6 per cent.
But the land would be 55 per cent of the total land area, with the lion's share of the biggest and most popular parks going to the dogs.
Council staff dropped Paradise Park in Ultimo from the off-leash list after receiving a petition signed by 130 angry residents.
Seventy-three per cent of the 1527 public submissions backed the proposal.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore, both a dog owner and a parent, gave the plan support before the public debate, saying "exercising dogs is important to reduce animal boredom, which can reduce behavioural problems such as nuisance barking".
After fierce opposition at the public meeting her stance was more cautious and she said they had a challenge to balance everyone's concerns before the plan went to council next Monday for consideration.
"The pendulum in the past has swung against dog owners and we are trying to restore that balance. The fences are not to keep the child in, but to create a safe environment for parents and their children," she said.
There are currently only three city parks that are off-leash at all times: Edmund Resch Reserve at Redfern, Joynton Park at Zetland and Embarkation Park at Potts Point.
Mark Callan, walking his dog Molly on-leash past Waratah Playground, said council priorities were wrong.
"I think off-leash areas are great for the dogs but I understand parents' concerns that they would be the ones caged in, rather than the animals," he said.
"Which is more important, the dogs or the children? I would have thought the kids would be the priority."
The Daily Telegraph covered this issue today (see below and links).
Clover puts your children on a leash
By Justin Vallejo, Urban Affiars Reporter
April 04, 2008 12:00am
April 04, 2008 12:00am
CHILDREN'S playgrounds will be fenced off inside parks to give unleashed dogs free rein over the city's green open spaces.
Up to 10 popular city playgrounds will be penned in under a City of Sydney Council plan to hand over 44 parks to unrestrained canines. Instead of creating fenced off-leash areas as in other cities worldwide, families will be the ones corralled - for their own safety.
The move has sparked calls from Australia's peak veterinary body for all NSW councils to follow Sydney's lead and provide more places where dogs can be exercised.
"These days dogs are treated something akin to a member of the family by their owners, yet there seem to be greater restrictions than ever on where families can take their pet," Australian Veterinary Association president Diane Sheehan said.
A public debate between dog owners, parents and councillors this week erupted over Sydney City Council officers' rejection of calls to create fenced areas for dogs in favour of fencing off children.
Justifying its decision, the council report said its approach to off-leash areas was "to integrate recreational activities rather than segregate activities into separate areas".
But in the same breath it proposed to segregate children from dogs by fencing off playgrounds in Beare, Foley, Jubilee, Perry, Prince Alfred, Rushcutters Bay, Waterloo and Wentworth parks and Bannerman Crescent and Kimberley Grove reserves.
"This would have to be the most biased report I've ever seen in my four years as a councillor," Councillor Chris Harris said.
"I have no confidence in supporting the assumptions in this report."
The City of Sydney has proposed to turn 44 parks into off-leash areas 24 hours a day, incorporating 18 parks that are currently off-leash from 6pm to 8pm.
It would take the number of off-leash parks to 13 per cent of the city's 350 parks, up from 6 per cent.
But the land would be 55 per cent of the total land area, with the lion's share of the biggest and most popular parks going to the dogs.
Council staff dropped Paradise Park in Ultimo from the off-leash list after receiving a petition signed by 130 angry residents.
Seventy-three per cent of the 1527 public submissions backed the proposal.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore, both a dog owner and a parent, gave the plan support before the public debate, saying "exercising dogs is important to reduce animal boredom, which can reduce behavioural problems such as nuisance barking".
After fierce opposition at the public meeting her stance was more cautious and she said they had a challenge to balance everyone's concerns before the plan went to council next Monday for consideration.
"The pendulum in the past has swung against dog owners and we are trying to restore that balance. The fences are not to keep the child in, but to create a safe environment for parents and their children," she said.
There are currently only three city parks that are off-leash at all times: Edmund Resch Reserve at Redfern, Joynton Park at Zetland and Embarkation Park at Potts Point.
Mark Callan, walking his dog Molly on-leash past Waratah Playground, said council priorities were wrong.
"I think off-leash areas are great for the dogs but I understand parents' concerns that they would be the ones caged in, rather than the animals," he said.
"Which is more important, the dogs or the children? I would have thought the kids would be the priority."
More info on dogs off leash here at City of Sydney web site.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Spin Sustainable Sydney 2030 for Council elections?
Giving the latest fairy floss just one more spin
Elizabeth Farrelly
Elizabeth Farrelly
April 2, 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
In fourth class they're writing a speech: "The Power of Words. Discuss." My heart leaps. Words are what I love. Not only is the pen mightier than the sword. Not only do words mend and break hearts, bend and fracture history, shape and steal souls. Not only are they the utensils of choice for popes and tyrants, poets and presidents, lovers and assorted glorious madmen; for Caesar and Shakespeare, Luther and Luther King, Lincoln, Churchill and Obama. Words delight, transport and transcend. Words quicken our noble core. They are the angel part of us, our rope ladder to god. Pictures? Sure, pictures are dandy, but a word - I propose while peeling spuds - is worth a thousand of them. It's a bold claim, possibly over-bold, but you get the point. For me, words are kind of it.
Which is why word abuse fills me with a wild, helpless fury. I don't mean bad grammar. It'd hardly pay to spill milk over grammar these days. I can overlook misrelated participles and split infinitives, even in people paid to know better. I can tolerate "however" used for "but" or "which" for "that". Or sentences that start with conjunctions or end with prepositions. All that I'm fine with. In fact, I like it; breaking the grammar rules still has the tang of naughtiness for me.
So what does qualify as word abuse? What is it that sucks the life from language, dulling its glossy coat and tossing its corpse onto the stinking heap of despair? Bullshit, in a word. The deliberate use of language not to approach reality but to hide it.
This, be it corporate bullshit or art-world bullshit or political bullshit, is all the same. It's small talk in the airless front room of our lives, polite morning teas with the vicar, breakfast meetings with power couples, motivational speakers flanked by pomp and flowers at polished wood daises, euphemism of all kinds. It's also false promises.
Like Clover's "new" 2030 vision for Sydney. And yes, I venture into this territory in full, trembling knowledge that Australia does not like a naysayer. That "visions" are as much the flavour of the moment as they were in St Catherine's time, that as much time and considerably more money has gone into this particular rainbow fantasy as into Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, and that popping or even grounding the pretty bubble may make baby cry.
So be it. There are things baby should know. It's not that the ideas are bad; many of them are fine. To have St Mark's Square at Circular Quay would be brilliant. (Although the proposal looked more like a piece of communist East-Berlin-on-Sea and, in any case, I have my doubts about removing "Joe's Road", which offers one of the finest driving experiences in the country and perhaps the best railway station in the world.)
Healing the wound behind Central Station, building over the tracks to reconnect the street-grid and giving Prince Alfred Park its rightful generosity of spirit is a good and obvious move. To redirect the Western Distributor underground, ensure no house is more than three minutes' walk from serious parkland, ban cars, focus on bikes and add great luxurious dollops of fast, clean, efficient public transport. All good.
It's not even that they're not new. Just because the same ideas, tree for tree and tunnel for tunnel, bulked up former lord mayor Frank Sartor's Living City Vision in 2000, his Living City Vision in 1992, former lord mayor Jeremy Bingham's 2020 Vision in 1990, former lord mayor Leo Port's Civic Reform vision in 1971 (and a few others in between) doesn't make them bad ideas. On the contrary, it shows these ideas have stood the test of time.
It may make you spit that hundreds of thousands of your rates are lavished on each regurgitation, paying consultants who almost certainly know more than their political masters about how long a gap is needed between iterations of an idea, in order not to be caught. Then again, spent or otherwise, it's not like your rates are coming back to you, right?
No, the real reason you should get mad about this many-splendoured fairy floss is that, unlike the stuff at the Easter Show, it doesn't just melt on your tongue and disappear in a fleeting feelgood moment. The 2030 vision will melt and disappear, yes. Mainly because - except for the dozen or so cycle paths already built - the entire exercise sits well outside Sydney council control, in some cases even outside state control, and with the bill in the billions (half a billion for the Cahill alone), who's going cough up for squares rather than hospitals?
Yes, the fairy floss is designed to disappear, all right. Just not immediately. Not, in fact, until after September 13, which is - oh my fur and whiskers, so soon? - election day. Meanwhile, for all those believers in the pretty stories of cultural ribbons and car bans, planet earth and I have a one-word answer. Spin!
In fourth class they're writing a speech: "The Power of Words. Discuss." My heart leaps. Words are what I love. Not only is the pen mightier than the sword. Not only do words mend and break hearts, bend and fracture history, shape and steal souls. Not only are they the utensils of choice for popes and tyrants, poets and presidents, lovers and assorted glorious madmen; for Caesar and Shakespeare, Luther and Luther King, Lincoln, Churchill and Obama. Words delight, transport and transcend. Words quicken our noble core. They are the angel part of us, our rope ladder to god. Pictures? Sure, pictures are dandy, but a word - I propose while peeling spuds - is worth a thousand of them. It's a bold claim, possibly over-bold, but you get the point. For me, words are kind of it.
Which is why word abuse fills me with a wild, helpless fury. I don't mean bad grammar. It'd hardly pay to spill milk over grammar these days. I can overlook misrelated participles and split infinitives, even in people paid to know better. I can tolerate "however" used for "but" or "which" for "that". Or sentences that start with conjunctions or end with prepositions. All that I'm fine with. In fact, I like it; breaking the grammar rules still has the tang of naughtiness for me.
So what does qualify as word abuse? What is it that sucks the life from language, dulling its glossy coat and tossing its corpse onto the stinking heap of despair? Bullshit, in a word. The deliberate use of language not to approach reality but to hide it.
This, be it corporate bullshit or art-world bullshit or political bullshit, is all the same. It's small talk in the airless front room of our lives, polite morning teas with the vicar, breakfast meetings with power couples, motivational speakers flanked by pomp and flowers at polished wood daises, euphemism of all kinds. It's also false promises.
Like Clover's "new" 2030 vision for Sydney. And yes, I venture into this territory in full, trembling knowledge that Australia does not like a naysayer. That "visions" are as much the flavour of the moment as they were in St Catherine's time, that as much time and considerably more money has gone into this particular rainbow fantasy as into Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, and that popping or even grounding the pretty bubble may make baby cry.
So be it. There are things baby should know. It's not that the ideas are bad; many of them are fine. To have St Mark's Square at Circular Quay would be brilliant. (Although the proposal looked more like a piece of communist East-Berlin-on-Sea and, in any case, I have my doubts about removing "Joe's Road", which offers one of the finest driving experiences in the country and perhaps the best railway station in the world.)
Healing the wound behind Central Station, building over the tracks to reconnect the street-grid and giving Prince Alfred Park its rightful generosity of spirit is a good and obvious move. To redirect the Western Distributor underground, ensure no house is more than three minutes' walk from serious parkland, ban cars, focus on bikes and add great luxurious dollops of fast, clean, efficient public transport. All good.
It's not even that they're not new. Just because the same ideas, tree for tree and tunnel for tunnel, bulked up former lord mayor Frank Sartor's Living City Vision in 2000, his Living City Vision in 1992, former lord mayor Jeremy Bingham's 2020 Vision in 1990, former lord mayor Leo Port's Civic Reform vision in 1971 (and a few others in between) doesn't make them bad ideas. On the contrary, it shows these ideas have stood the test of time.
It may make you spit that hundreds of thousands of your rates are lavished on each regurgitation, paying consultants who almost certainly know more than their political masters about how long a gap is needed between iterations of an idea, in order not to be caught. Then again, spent or otherwise, it's not like your rates are coming back to you, right?
No, the real reason you should get mad about this many-splendoured fairy floss is that, unlike the stuff at the Easter Show, it doesn't just melt on your tongue and disappear in a fleeting feelgood moment. The 2030 vision will melt and disappear, yes. Mainly because - except for the dozen or so cycle paths already built - the entire exercise sits well outside Sydney council control, in some cases even outside state control, and with the bill in the billions (half a billion for the Cahill alone), who's going cough up for squares rather than hospitals?
Yes, the fairy floss is designed to disappear, all right. Just not immediately. Not, in fact, until after September 13, which is - oh my fur and whiskers, so soon? - election day. Meanwhile, for all those believers in the pretty stories of cultural ribbons and car bans, planet earth and I have a one-word answer. Spin!
Read more on Sustainable Sydney 2030 - SMH multi media report here
And Council's glossy web site on 2030 here: http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/2030/
The Draft Summary document for 2030 will be debated at Council on Monday night - eCouncillor will have a few more objective things to say in the coming days.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
