COMMENTARY
We continue to marvel at Hawkesbury City Council decision making without the inconvenience of deciding anything. It’s called a deferral. You move it, second it, debate it and vote on it. Then you get to do it all again next month.
At the 3 November meeting, the first beneficiaries of this were the long suffering families at Richmond North Public School. Principal Brad Thirling told councillors the school had already lost enrolments because it couldn’t provide the before- and after-school care families needed. The proposal would move the existing service onto school grounds and add 15 places. The $1 million allocated in April wouldn’t now cover it, so staff sought more from the Redbank developer contribution fund.
The mayor, who never misses an opportunity for a deferral used her deciding vote to make sure the matter comes back to the November meeting with more information to stymie anything to do with Redbank wanted to know what other projects might miss out and whether a community provider could have a role. Fair questions that would have been appropriate to ask in April when Council approved the proposal. The vote was six-all and Mayor Mary Lyons-Buckett used her casting vote to send the matter to December. Parents and teachers now remind themselves that they only reliable thing about Council is that it is unreliable.
The Hawkesbury–Nepean River System Coastal Management Program is also waiting. Six councils helped put it together, but Hawkesbury wants to see the state’s disaster adaptation plan before endorsing it. There are questions about funding, runoff and siltation which provide an endless river of reasons for future deferral of any decision.
Then came Stone Edge Place, the proposed name for a road in an industrial subdivision beside South Creek. This was when the chamber got to talking about hard surfaces and development on the floodplain. The subdivision consent had already been modified in September. By November, the question before councillors was what to put on the street sign. But never let an opportunity for a for a possible deferral go by and Cr Wheeler was in giving it a red hot go.
As opportunities to influence development go, this is roughly equivalent to arriving at a wedding in time to object to color of the invitation.
You might expect a council this fond of deferring a decision to have spotted the gap between a $6.7 million WestInvest grant and a $21.5 million cost estimate for the Oasis upgrade while there was still time to do something about it. Turns out the deferring the decision caused the cost blowout and the failure of the project and so no need to make any more decision - problem solved!
