Month: January 2022

Checking out The Canopy

As councillors we can learn a lot from what other councils do well. This evening we visited The Canopy at Lane Cove Council and it seems to have it all.

✅ 500 parking spaces
✅ Green space with performance area / screen (currently playing Nadal vs Medvedev)
✅ Children’s playground, sandpit, and shade
✅ Street Dining
✅ Two major supermarkets
✅ Electric vehicle charging
✅ Pedestrian Bridge

With the Lindfield Village Green completing next month, we will get a mini version of this although I know residents would like to explore making it even better (with shade and play equipment). We’ll explore the possibility late in the year.

The Lindfield Village Hub will provide us a greater opportunity to do this and as a start, Ku-ring-gai has poached the person responsible for delivering The Canopy in Lane Cove to also deliver the Hub in Lindfield.

How Reliable are your RATs?

With the increased availability of RATs and the return to school, I found this ABC article helpful in explaining false negatives (sensitivity) and false positives (specificity).

The TGA also recently published a list that suggests that some RATs are not as good at picking up Delta and/or Omicron than others. It leads to confusing situations such as two weeks ago when I was consistently getting a positive result from one brand but getting negative results from another brand and from the PCR. As a precaution I isolated from the rest of my family and the world for a week, and things got pretty lonely in my room though it was nice to have family meals over Zoom.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-27/how-accurate-rapid-antigen-test-more-looking-for-lines/100782662

https://www.tga.gov.au/post-market-review-antigen-and-rapid-antigen-tests

Citizenship Ceremony and Awards

It was great to see 135 residents from 27 countries become Australian Citizens today. This is a great nation to be part of.

Council also presented Citizen of the year awards to five of our residents / groups.

Easy Care Gardening was recognised for their outstanding contribution to the community bay assisting housebound, elderly and vulnerable residents.

Yoel Hyman was recognised for his contributions to the community through RFS, Killara Brigade, and other community forums.

Jen Stokes was recognised for her contribution to the environment through @kuringgaiboomerangbags and the West Pymble Community Garden.

Oliver Conolly was recognised as young environmental citizen of the year for raising awareness of Ku-ring-gai’s vulnerable bird populations.

And our dear friend Helen Jarvis was awarded citizen of the year for her contribution to KYDS Youth Development Service during this difficult time of the pandemic when our young people and their families are in need of support more than ever. I have personally witnessed how she selflessly gives her time and money to the welfare of our people.

Holiday Photos & EV Infrastructure

Sharing some photos from our recent break in Country NSW (and ACT). It was good to have some time off with family; as a councillor it’s very rare to be able to focus 100% on them.

Also went to check out some of the regional EV chargers. As a general trend the Tesla ones are paid, fast and very reliable whereas the NRMA ones were decent speed but slower, with some of the EV drivers that I spoke to (including myself) experiencing reliability issues with them from time to time. We counted 35 electric vehicles over 11 days and across six sites.

I’m keen to see what we can do to encourage uptake in Ku-ring-gai by introducing a charging network, however want to first do research into what our neighbouring councils are doing and how they are finding the experience so far (as each seems to have gone with a different networking provider).

Mayoral Election

Congratulations to Councillor Jeff Pettett and Councillor Barbara Ward for being elected as the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Ku-ring-gai respectively. I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with both over the last four years and I know that they will do their best to represent the interests of the residents of Ku-ring-gai.

Back from Holidays

I’m back in Sydney after a holiday through regional NSW. Was surprised to see some of our supermarket shelves so bare, and to see the fairy lights at the soon-to-open Lindfield Village Green.

The councillors will be sworn in tomorrow night, and that’s when we will officially commence our jobs. There’s a list of things to catch up on, so I’m looking forward to sorting through it.