31 January 2012

Full Council-Report on decisions 30th January 2012

The following items were debated, the first one for 90 minutes.



  • Kelvin Avenue landscaping; The Council voted 6 to 5 for this to proceed to budget deliberation's. Money budgeted for 2011/12 to complete the project have now been spent on other parks. After 4 consultations, including the initial street meeting, the result from the people who have chosen to participate has been about 60% to 40% in favour on the landscaping each time. A petition in September (signed by over 100 Unley rate payers) called for 2 way access to be retained and the landscaping plan achieves this. Much of the debate last night was about the cost of the project and some Councillors thought it did not meet the concept of a pocket park. Fortunately, when we genuinely consult with people and input their ideas into a project the outcome is not always what we envisaged at the start. This, in my opinion, does not make the project lack worth but delivers more closely what people want. While it probably is no longer a pocket park it ticks all the boxes for a new initiative Council is keen to trial and that is reducing the hard services and reducing traffic flow to enable safer pedestrian and bicycle access in the area. The current concept plan has the approval of DPTI, it will also be larger than all but one pocket park already constructed in Unley. Both Don and I had told residents that we would vote for the project if the majority were in favour and against it if they were not. This is what we did.



  • Regulated Trees-Councillors voted to support the submission that staff had prepared regarding the interim legislation. It has made comment in particular about their impact on solar collection panels and that an urban tree fund needs to be established to collect the monies paid when trees are removed.



  • Inclusion of Local Government in the constitution. The reports called for a fund to be collected to be used to raise awareness of the need for a referendum to this effect. Under current legislative provisions all grants to Council have to be administered by the state government rather than being paid directly to Council. This was supported.



  • Ipads for Councillor Use-some Councillors and staff have been trialling the use of these devices in an effort to reduce the amount of paper used to print agendas for meetings. While I personally am not sure about this, I would like to be able to reduce my reliance on the current printed agendas. This was supported.

1 comment:

  1. Just so you know and for what it is worth I have returned the form and opposed the refuge as I think it is a total waste of money and effort. In 33 years of living at # we have never seen or heard of a pedestrian incident. I regularly cross to use the post box opposite and as long as people are patient, they can cross very easily. It is not like there is a nursing home anywhere close where older people may need that sort of refuge in crossing the road, and even then it is not a wide enough road to warrant that expenditure.



    Had Council proceeded with their plans years ago for round-a-bouts at Forrest and Laught Aves on East Ave, there would be less/no need for this proposal now and traffic flow on East Ave in both directions would be better regulated.

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