July 2024

Council agenda overrun

Standby for Part Two of last week’s council meeting, which was adjourned after nearly five hours debate, with plans to reconvene at a special session next Tuesday night, August 6, at 6pm. 

Last week’s meeting ran from 6pm to 10.53pm, during which we heard speeches from the community, debated only seven items from the agenda and passed another six by exception (that is, in a block without debate). Remaining on the agenda were 22 items, some of them leftover from the June 25 meeting. An extra meeting was also held last month to consider the 2024-2025 budget. 

Northern Beaches Council meetings are notorious for lasting until 11.30pm - and going even later on occasion last term. However, a simple tally of motions on the agenda will reveal where the problem lies. Apart from the procedural items, of the 33 on last week’s agenda, only 22 related to Pittwater - and some of those were of a general nature.

What we covered

An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group was approved for council in a vote at Tuesday’s meeting. To proceed, council would have to reallocate funding of up to $200,000 to support it. However, a rescission motion submitted the following day by Pittwater Liberal Councillors Karina Page and Michael Gencher as well as Curl Curl Liberal David Walton, could scupper this pathway for consulting with our First Nations community. The rescission motion will be debated at the final council meeting for this term on August 13.

Councillors did manage to discuss a controversial new draft of the Council's Code of Meeting Practice. After significant pushback from the community, we dropped the proposal to cut speaking time at meetings for community members and councillors from three to two minutes. The document will now go on public exhibition.

I was also delighted that another staff proposal to scrap our Sister Cities arrangements has been sent back for a review to be provided to the new council next year - after Pittwater's leader of the Friends of Soibada Tamara Sloper-Harding addressed the meeting outlining the benefits our existing link with that community could provide to them and us.

Finally, councillors voted to support continuation of the Cubby House Toy Library service at Mona Vale and Manly Libraries from 10.30am to 11am on Thursdays. 

What to look out for next week

Things to look out for at the resumed meeting on Tuesday will include my motion for a review of tree stewardship and a new tree management policy for the Northern Beaches (given we currently have three separate ones operating). We don’t want a repeat of the Ruskin Rowe fiasco and I believe this motion would achieve that. 

At Ruskin Rowe, council decided in June to remove four Flooded Gums (Eucalyptus Grandis) which had shed branches, one causing severe damage to a car, and which council arborist reports said were of high risk. 

However, the Avalon community has opposed this removal, including two Avalon arborists, one of them a Level 8 with an Environmental Law degree and the other, Paul Shearer, with many years experience carrying out risk assessments on trees in school ground. These experts told me the trees presented a low risk to the community. Whilst two of the trees were likely to be more difficult to manage into the future and were removed, neighbours and others including members of Canopy Keepers, Pittwater Natural Heritage Association, the Greens and Labor’s Environment Action Network, set up a blockade guarding the remaining two.

Mr Shearer carried out his own risk assessment of the trees and provided a report to the blockaders. We also commissioned an assessment by another extremely experienced arborist, Mark Hartley, who used a different methodology but came to the same conclusion as Mr Shearer. This was in contrast to the advice to council.

Local ecologist Elaway Dalby-Ball has now spoken at the last two council meetings condemning what she says is council’s failure to follow standard processes when assessing trees and checking for wildlife within them. Mr Shearer, in a speech to council on June 25, also noted discrepancies in council reports, and that their “recommendations contradict industry standards”. He cited “erroneous identification of dwellings as potential targets” (ie no dwellings are near the subject trees), the recommendation for the removal of the two Flooded Gums “despite the threshold for risk mitigation not being met, and the suggestion to remove the trees when the risk could be mitigated by removing potential targets”. 

Similarly, Mr Hartley’s report concluded: “There is nothing that suggests that the risk associated with either of these trees is outside of the broadly acceptable range. While these trees do shed live branches at a higher rate than some other species of trees, even when this is taken into consideration, the level of risk does not merit any action being taken.

“Even if the health benefits from trees are reduced to an almost negligible amount, greater harm would still be done by removing the trees rather than dealing with an occasional branch failure.”

With our new Tree Canopy Plan approved last September, I believe it is now timely to develop a single tree management policy based on the plan, as well as to take stock of our management practices and budget needed to keep our mature trees in place for as long as possible. 

Another motion I raised for the June 25 meeting, electrifying new developments with a ban on gas connections, also remains on the agenda. Given the climate crisis, you might have thought the state government would encourage this pathway. However, councils are not permitted to ban gas on climate grounds. Ironically, we could do it in our Development Control Plan for any other reason.

At the June 25 meeting a local health industry professional Sarah Baker and climate lobby 350.org spokesman James Conlan both addressed the meeting about how purely electrifying new developments would save residents money - in the midst of a cost of living crisis - and improve the health of residents. Former Warringah Councillor Conny Harris, a GP, then spoke at Tuesday’s meeting about the council’s responsibility to safeguard community health - and how a gas ban would lead to significant health benefits.

Also carried over will be a motion from retiring Frenchs Forest Councillor Stuart Sprott, calling for smart tree management, in the form of a review of the impacts and costs associated with replacement planting of exotic trees releasing lots of seed with local natives. 

Pittwater Liberal Councillor Karina Page will call for a review of ways to prevent boat and trailer parking in residential and industrial streets across the LGA, and has another motion up for a review of sportsground allocations. 

And Narrabeen Independent Councillor Vince De Luca has proposed calling on the NSW government and opposition to return funding for youth mental health beds at Northern Beaches Hospital and to introduce incentives, in the form of reductions to HECS debts, for students studying psychiatry and other mental health disciplines. 

Finally, a call by Curl Curl Greens Councillor Kristyn Glanville and Manly Liberal Georgia Ryburn to modernise signage at surfing heritage sites across the Northern Beaches as well as to find ways of recognising our local female surfing pioneers and their stories, will also be carried over from the June 25 and last week’s meeting.

Join the fun!

If you feel strongly about any of the issues on the agenda for Tuesday’s resumption of the July 30 meeting, please join the meeting in the gallery to send a message to councillors about what’s important to the community!