Recently I have seen inaccurate comments on my Facebook page claiming that Council?s move to put Transport Oriented Development scenarios out for public exhibition was sudden, secretive and without explanation. These comments are highly disrespectful, defamatory, and far from the truth and I will address these claims below.
There has been no secret whatsoever that as an election candidate, I intended to arrange for the TOD scenarios to go out to public exhibition in early November. These plans featured prominently in our election campaign.
In our election brochure distributed to all Roseville Ward households, it said that “This year, the NSW Government’s non-consultative approach to housing policy has been contrary to everything that is taught about good planning and development… To reduce the impacts, council staff are currently preparing alternate scenarios for meeting the State’s housing objectives. You will be consulted about these options in early November.“
On our election day How-to-vote Flyer handed out to all voters who wanted one, it said that we will “Engage the community on alternate Transport Oriented Development options once they become available in early November 2024“.
In response to an election survey conducted by Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment, I said at the bottom of page 3 that “Council staff are looking into alternate scenarios to provide for housing while reducing the impacts on heritage and the environment. Members of the public will be consulted on this in early November with the view of having Council make changes to the LEP next year.“
I was also very open about these plans whenever asked during the election campaign.
Prior to the election campaign we have also been fully transparent that this process is underway, starting from our council resolution on 08 May 2024 and followed by various followup on council?s e-News, website, conversations with print and broadcast media, and at the parliamentary inquiry.
Admittedly, plans have shifted since the first half of the year because I was initially saying that the public consultation would commence in October 2024? It was only more recently that the message shifted to ?early November? because staff updated us and said that it would not be possible to complete the supporting work for informed scenarios by October. But other than this delay of one month, I have consistently stayed on point both with the path forward on legal action as well as the commitment to delivering TOD Scenarios for public consultation.
As far as I am concerned, the public has had sufficient notice that a public exhibition was going to take place in early November and the council remains on track to delivering this objective. All councillors both old and new were also briefed on these scenarios beforehand and told that we will be voting on this in the form of an extraordinary meeting so that we can save two months and protect our HCA?s.
My normal response to inaccurate comments is to click on reply and correct the individual’s claims. However this time I was spammed by eight comments and it was inefficient to reply to each one individually, only to end up in a never-ending war with a keyboard warrior. Hence I’ve chosen to hide the eight comments and address the core issue in this one post.
