The Noosa Council General Committee Meeting of Monday 13 May
A long lesson in how not to develop a local law on signs
Noosa’s founding fathers would have retreated to the bar in shame. A debate on signage lasting well over two hours provided a chaotic introduction to this Council meeting. Apart from conceptual confusion, what the discussion highlighted was that Noosa’s present local government has a lot of major hates. It’s a bizarre list that includes traffic lights, multi-storey car parks (the Council preferring acres of bitumen), small business, anyone with another opinion, the Sunshine Coast Council, dodgy surveys, the hinterland, day trippers .… and, yes, signs. (I note here the exception to sign-hate that is evident in the weeks before shire elections when citizens are subjected to an onslaught of corflutes from local politicians.)
But in non-election times, Noosa Council regards these “advertising devices” as blots on the landscape, so it has developed a ‘one size fits all’ law that will replace open assessment, public consultation and any appraisal of what might constitute appropriate signage in particular locations. Mayor Tony Wellington told councillors that there were too many signs on public land, including real estate directional signs and sandwich boards, and there were safety problems on footpaths. A staff member chipped in that he had observed no less than 17 real estate directional signs on Lesley Drive the previous weekend whereupon the Cr Wellington claimed that there were “six real estate agents” who wanted to ban directional signs altogether.
Cr Ingrid Jackson argued for differential sign sizes depending on location and purpose and sought a number of amendments, all of which were defeated with a selection of the usual arguments of ‘Noosa is different … special … has standards … visual clutter … unintended consequences … precedents … look and feel’. It seems There will be a ‘public consultation’ before the law is imposed which means the community will submit a range of views and the Council will cherry pick the ones it agrees with.
The zombie sustainability institute sort of returns to life
Eighteen months ago the Council agreed to pay the once great Australian research organisation CSIRO $38,900 to investigate a vague concept called a Noosa Sustainability Institute, which had a certain ‘bricks and mortar’ feel about it. This initial fee was to be followed with further contracts of $44,000 for scoping and $45,000 to develop a business case. But at this meeting the Council was ready only for Part 1 which meant considering three options. It soon emerged that the preferred option had reduced the grand idea to a mere website.
The discussion of what this meant and where it was going was incoherent (you can watch it on video-stream if you don’t believe me). The Mayor said it had taken a long time, thanked staff and stated that more work and cooperation were needed before, before …. what exactly? Cr Jackson asked for a definitive explanation of what this Institute would actually look like. The Mayor did not answer. “We have more work to do,” he said, obfuscating or because he had an idea but didn’t want to divulge it.
Cr Jackson then asked what happened to the final two stages of the original CSIRO consultancy. The staff director said they are no more (dead parrots). Cr Jackson also asked if the new proposal for a website was budgeted for. No, said the director, it would be absorbed into the normal work routine. Cr Jackson then asked which community members CSIRO had interviewed for its report. The answer was Damien Massingham of Tourism Noosa (who left his post last year), Dick Barnes and Karen Hussey of the Biosphere Foundation and Michael Tarrant of CCIQ Noosa.
Cr Pardon said he supported the motion for an online portal – it’s a journey, it’s an improvement, Council needs to be collaborative, it’s a good start, he said. Cr Stockwell took centre stage and said we need relationships, participation and research. Then there was a Festival of Eyes: I was there at the start of the Biosphere, I was coordinator of a permaculture project, I used to coordinate Mary River Research, I would like the new organisation called the Sustainability Research Hub. The Mayor made a joke about Cr Stockwell’s accomplishments, adding that there was considerable staff achievement and this project may end with a budget. Whatever it was passed unanimously.
A brief lesson in moving $10 million from one box to another
Cr Jackson asked why revenue from rates and the tourism levy were running below budget. It was a timing issue, said a staffer There was the same reply to Cr Jackson’s question on below budget waste contracts. Cr Frank Wilkie asked his usual question about interest received and, in a surprising admission, staff fessed up that capital works had been delayed and therefore the Council had more money in the bank than intended. (See the problem? The Council does not have the resources to complete budgeted works which then fall well behind schedule).
The Queensland Treasury Corporation had reviewed council liquidity and, according to the Mayor, the news is good, excellent in fact. So the Council will pay down some de-amalgamation debt (which had totalled about $40 million) and this, Cr Wellington pronounced, showed the greatness of our financial management. The people who were our detractors would now be moribund, we’ve improved services and kept down rates (less than Sunshine Coast), we are a more responsible council, we have financial security. Much hubris from a simple and probably belated act of moving $10 million from one box to another.
Cr Jackson asked, in consideration of the Council still having a debt of $27 million at a nosebleed 6.7% interest and $20 million in reserve earning considerably less than that, why wouldn’t it pay down more debt? (After all, I thought, it’s been costing the Council $1.8 million a year to carry all that debt while it’s been earning peanuts on its reserves.) The answer was that the Council needed this money to prepare for the unexpected. (But, I mulled, the Council could always borrow more if it needed it.)
This view of mine was later reinforced on social media by many people who had the same logical idea. Bettina Walter asked why is the debt not being paid off? Reid Dryden said it’s so much easier to not give money away in interest. Rab Surgent suggested paying off some of the loan and re-borrowing at a lower rate. Kylie Jane had the same idea. So did Trevor Thompson. And Janet Gibson. And others. Not most councillors though.
Anyway, Cr Stockwell had a final message to the world. “This is good financial management and to the naysayers I have only one thing to say – ha!”
Thus, in its dying throes, the meeting descended at warp speed into immaturity. And that, I thought, was an appropriate note on which to end what I thought had been a pretty ordinary Ordinary Meeting.
