'Community Concepts' - DCSCA submission 3

This is the third submission by the Drysdale and Clifton Springs Community Association (DCSCA) to the City of Greater Geelong's 'Community Concepts' programme.

For background on the programme, and earlier DCSCA submissions see "'Community Concepts' - making the process transparent" on this blog (22 January).

Booklet to publicize Scenic Walking and CyclingTrails around the Bellarine.

Provision of a booklet to provide maps of existing scenic trails (for both walking and cycling) around the Bellarine. Booklet to be available at Tourist Information Centres. Such a booklet used to be provided. DCSCA believes that Geelong and the Bellarine has the potential to become an internationally recognized tourist destination for recreational walkers and cyclists.  Co-ordinated actions to identify and promote these scenic trails will attract more visitors to the region. 

Objectives of the project

• To grow the local economy and increase local employment opportunities.
• To increase and promote the tourism attraction of the Bellarine.
• To improve community health and well-being, reduce obesity within the community and reduce the cost burden on the health system.
• To increase social activity (and reduce anti-social behavior) by promoting healthy lifestyles and by encouraging active recreation and an engaged community.
• To encourage the community participation in non-polluting sustainable activity
• To promote and enhance the natural environment.
• The cost could possibly be entirely offset by obtaining sponsorship. This is the type of activity with which State and Federal Government, commercial enterprises and community service groups would be glad to have their name associated.

DCSCA has, for some time, actively promoted scenic trails in Drysdale, Clifton Springs and the Bellarine Peninsula in general. As a result, some are now identified in the REMA Tourist Information Map and in the 2014 North Bellarine Business and Services Directory.

DCSCA has volunteer insurance and members would be happy to assist in any way.

Street address and suburb: The Bellarine Peninsula.

Council ward: Various

Estimate of total project cost: $5,000

'Community Concepts' - DCSCA submission 2

This is the second submission by the Drysdale and Clifton Springs Community Association (DCSCA) to the City of Greater Geelong's 'Community Concepts' programme.

For background on the programme, and DCSCA's initial submission see "'Community Concepts' - making the process transparent" on this blog (22 January).

Signage for Scenic Trails in Drysdale and Clifton Springs.

Provision of signage to identify existing scenic trails (for both walking and cycling) linking points of interest and scenic locations around Drysdale Clifton Springs.  For example a notice board at Drysdale Station would display a map highlighting trails, which would encourage people to undertake a scenic walk or ride to the spectacular Dell Lookout via McLeod’s Waterholes and Griggs Creek.

DCSCA believes that Geelong and the Bellarine has the potential to become an internationally-recognized tourist destination for recreational walkers and cyclists.  Co-ordinated actions to identify and promote these scenic trails will attract more visitors to the region.

For some time, DCSCA has been actively promoting scenic trails in Drysdale, Clifton Springs and the Bellarine Peninsula more broadly. As a result, some are identified in the REMA Tourist Information Map and in the 2014 North Bellarine Business and Services Directory.

Objectives of the project

• To grow the local economy and increase local employment opportunities.
• To increase and promote the tourism attraction of the central Bellarine.
• To improve community health and well-being, reduce obesity within the community and reduce the cost burden on the health system.
• To increase social activity (and reduce anti-social behavior) by promoting healthy lifestyles and by encouraging active recreation and an engaged community.
• To encourage the community participation in non-polluting sustainable activity
• To promote and enhance the natural environment.

Street address and suburb: Drysdale and Clifton Springs 

Council ward: Coryule

Estimate of total project cost: $5,000. Total cost would depend on the number of signs.  The project could start with four signs: one each at Drysdale Station, a location on the Rail Trail, the Boat Harbour and the Dell. The cost could possibly be offset by sponsorship.  This is the type of activity with which State and Federal Government, commercial enterprises and community service groups would be glad to have their name associated.

DCSCA has volunteer insurance and members would be happy to assist in any way. Any on-going maintenance should be minimal.

'Community Concepts' - making the process transparent

In December 2013, the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) invited individuals, groups and organisations in the Greater Geelong area to submit proposals for capital works, to be considered for inclusion in the council's 2014 - 2015 budget.

The programme is called 'Community Concepts' and the submission process opened in December and closed on January 17 2014. This is, of course, a time when many people are away on holiday and the council has been criticised consistently over many years (not least by the Drysdale and Clifton Springs Community Association) for conducting its 'public consultation' exercises at this time, preventing many people from participating in them.

No accountabilty, no learning from mistakes
Compounding that error, the council is refusing to make submissions public (other than listing their titles on its web site); and, once successful submissions have been chosen, it is refusing to explain how the choices were made. So people who have submitted proposals won't know a) how their submission compared with others and b) what it was about their submission that caused it to be judged a success or failure.

So not only will the whole process be removed from any public accountability, submitters will have no chance to learn what makes a submission successful and, therefore, to improve the quality of their submission for the next year. What a wasted opportunity!

Opening the process to scrutiny - if only a little bit
Drysdale and Clifton Springs Community Association (DCSCA) believes that the 'Community Concepts' programme could be an opportunity for the council and its constituents to collaborate on deciding how the council's capital works budget should be spent. Not only would this open those budget decisions to public scrutiny, it would also improve the quality of those decisions by involving a broader section of the community.

At this stage, the council shows no willingness to grasp those opportunities. No one submitter can break open the council's secretive policy by itself, but DCSCA believes that submitters can at least tell each other about their submissions. This will help us to decide on the good and bad points of our submissions and, in doing so, give us some grounds on which to question the council's final choice of submissions.

To this end, DCSCA will publish its submissions on this blog site; and it invites other submitters to send us their submissions, so that anyone who is interested in the 'Community Concepts' programme can study it in a way that the council won't allow. Please send submissions to DCSCA Secretary Neil McGuinness (mcgnj@bigpond.com)

DCSCA's first submission (of thirteen) is below; the remainder will be published on this blog in due course.
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Beautification of Council-owned land at Spring Street, Clifton Springs.

Implement Stage 1 of a Community Plan presented to the City of Greater Geelong in 2010. This would entail planting about 100 flowering native shrubs to approx. 1.5m tall to encourage native birds and to obscure the fence line.

Objectives of the project 

• To beautify the area and enhance community well being
• To promote healthy lifestyles by encouraging passive recreation
• To encourage native birds and enhance the ecosystem of the nearby Dell and foreshore
• To contribute to the council's plan to plant 20,000 native trees and shrubs in the next 12 months.

Street address and suburb: Spring Street, Clifton Springs

Council ward: Coryule

Estimated cost: $1500. Council already mows and maintains the area, so there will be minimal additional maintenance costs.

Travelling the Wathaurong Way?

 

Geelong City Hall

On 24 September, the City of Greater Geelong council decided to fly the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian flag over City Hall.

This decision follows the state government's decision in May to rename the 4.5m arterial link (formerly known as '4C') in Armstrong Creek Baanip Boulevard. The name honours local Aboriginal man Willem Baanip, a Wathaurong man who was born in 1836 near what is now Market Square,  lived on the Duneed Aboriginal Land Reserve near to the current Ghazeepore Road and died in 1885. The newly named road will link the Geelong Ring Road and the Surf Coast Highway. VicRoads expects to start work on the new road in late 2013 and finish it in 2016.

Many communities are taking similar actions to recognise their Aboriginal heritage; and this is happening as Australia prepares for a referendum on a proposal to recognise Australia’s Aboriginal peoples formally in the country’s Constitution.

A local act of recognition

Drysdale and Clifton Springs continue to be enriched by the culture of today’s Wathaurong people, which goes back thousands of years. In the lead-up to the Constitutional Recognition referendum, we could consider making our own formal recognition of the area’s Aboriginal people and heritage. One suggestion made to DCSCA is that we ask people on the north Bellarine how they would feel about renaming the Portarlington Road as Wathaurong Way.

Communities often name roads after local dynasties - Drysdale and Clifton Springs have several examples. How appropriate, then, to name Portarlington Road after the area’s longest-standing ‘dynasty’ – the Wathaurong people. To make the re-naming a real act of community recognition, it needs support from across the community. DCSCA invites local people to start conversations in the area about the proposal and to tell us your views.

 

A new sports precinct - a new approach?

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Local sports clubs have told DCSCA that they can’t cope with the continuing expansion of demand for their facilities and are frustrated at the lack of progress on the long-awaited Regional Sports Precinct planned for Drysdale.

 

Theyu argues that existing sports facilities were never meant to serve the expanding local population and their inadequacy affects not just Drysdale & Clifton Springs but the whole of the North Bellarine.

Making the case
In response, DCSCA convened a meeting on September 16 of all local sports clubs, together with local councillor Rod Macdonald and relevant officers from the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG). Cr Macdonald and the officers said that while CoGG has adopted a Master Plan for the $40m precinct in 2011, the project needed state government funds to proceed.

CoGG's 2011 Master Plan for the proposed Sports Precinct shares the cost between the council and the state government, so when the state government refused to provide its share of the funding, the project had to be postponed indefinitely. Consequently, everyone at the September 16 meeting agreed that during the November 2014 state elections, each club and club member should ask each local candidate what they would do, if elected, to make the planned Sports Precinct a reality.

Meanwhile, clubs and individuals should ask local councillors and state & federal MPs to convince the state government to pay its share of the cost of the Sports Precinct. Here are their contact details:

·    Cr Rod Macdonald, Cheetham ward: rmacdonald@geelongcity.vic.gov.au

·    Cr Lindsay Ellis, Coryule ward:  LEllis@geelongcity.vic.gov.au

·    Ms Lisa Neville, MP for Bellarine (state parliament): lisa.neville@parliament.vic.gov.au

·    Mr Richard Marles, MP for Corio (federal parliament): richard.marles.mp@aph.gov.au

What? No Plan B?!

Faced with the state government's refusal to pay its share of the cost of the Sports Precinct, CoGG has no '(Master) Plan B' and shows no sign of even looking for one. As a result, people on the North Bellarine must cope indefinitely as local population growth - planned, of course, by CoGG - renders local sports facilities increasingly inadequate.

Rather than wishing and hoping that a future state government will provide the cash for a Sports Precinct in Drysdale, CoGG should be planning and dreaming of a different model for the project that would enable it to proceed. For example, instead of relying exclusively on public money to pay for the Precinct, CoGG could examine ways to mix various forms of public money with various forms of private money.

One approach would be to create a Public Trust to build, maintain and manage the Sports Precinct. The Trust would invite investment by public financial institutions (e.g. pension and superannuation funds), private financial institutions (e.g. banks) and individuals.

As a community facility, the Precinct shouldn't be run purely as a profit-making business at the expense of accessibility. Instead, investors would receive an annual dividend, only after the annual costs of building, maintaining and managing the Precinct (including contributing to a contingency fund for emergencies) were paid; and the legal documents establishing the Public Trust could include clauses to limit the dividend while retaining its attractiveness.

More work needed!

Schemes featuring public-private collaboration have had very chequered results, both here and elsewhere. Therefore, a lot of work will be needed to avoid their worst aspects, such as private investors profiting quickly from a scheme and then withdrawing, leaving the public sector to deal with long-term management and maintenance costs. 

Such a Public Trust is but one suggestion to overcome inadequate funding and it may be an inappropriate for the area. However, its underlying assumption will remain valid - the North Bellarine needs a Regional Sports Precinct, it is the council's responsibility to provide it and the council should actively seek ways to overcome the current stalemate.

 

Bellarine foreshore under attack – and under repair

The recent storms damaged the foreshore at various points around the Bellarine Peninsula, washing away parts of beaches and undermining safety signs!

In Clifton Springs,  engineering contractors have undertaken extensive works at the foreshore below Edgewater Drive. Many local people will have watched contractors moving earth and shifting rocks in this area of the foreshore. This work (with more to come) should prevent further erosion of the beach and cliff face.

The work is in response to continuing erosion by the sea. Landslides have created near-vertical cliffs with, at their base, eroding debris. In response, a new 150m sea wall of rock-filled metal baskets ('gabion baskets') is being created, which should prevent further erosion. Elsewhere in the area, large quantities of  boulders are being used to create protective walls ('revetments' or 'buttresses') at the cliff face to prevent waves undermining the cliff and causing more landslides.

CoGG engineers have kept DCSCA informed about the work, which we appreciate. In turn, they have asked us to inform local people about the works. This article is one way in which we're doing this; another will be a DCSCA Public Meeting about foreshore safety on 17 July at 7.00 pm at SpringDale Neighbourhood Centre. Hear City of Greater Geelong engineers explain how recent work on the Clifton Springs foreshore will make the area safer, then have your say.

Drysdale bypass - what's the secret, Minister?

Peak hour - Drysdale High Street

VicRoads is undertaking yet another study into traffic issues in Drysdale, even while keeping its previous study a secret.

In December 2012, VicRoads completed a feasibility study into a bypass for Drysdale, but hasn't published it. Lisa Neville (MP for Bellarine) has requested a copy of this secret study from state Transport Minister Terry Mulder, but he has failed to provide one.

Meanwhile, VicRoads is undertaking another study, this time to create an Integrated Transport Model for Drysdale that will propose a 'holistic' solution to the town's traffic problems. The new study has no completion date and it isn't clear whether it will be published.

DCSCA Committee members heard about the latest study on 18 June, when they discussed Drysdale's traffic problems with Lisa Neville and representatives of the City of Greater Geelong. Lisa Neville had called the meeting; the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) was represented by local councillors Rod Macdonald (Cheetham ward) and Lindsay Ellis (Coryule ward) and by Gary Van Dreel, General Manager of City Services. The Regional Director of VicRoads had been invited but at the last minute he withdrew and was unable to provide an alternative. 

Seeking a 'holistic' traffic solution

The absence of any VicRoads representatives at the 18 June meeting precluded any serious discussion about local traffic issues. For instance, has VicRoads updated its 2011 Drysdale census, which found 18,000 vehicles a day using the High Street? That figure is well on the way to the 24,000 vehicles a day that would trigger the building of a bypass; and in the ensuing two years, major housing estates have started in Jetty Road and Murradoc Road and 'infill development' is creating more houses on empty blocks. So it's not a question of whether traffic in Drysdale High Street will reach the 24,000 vehicles/day trigger point but when; and it makes sense to start building the bypass now, rather than wait until 24,000 vehicles/day bring the High Street to a halt.

(Incidentally, a big DCSCA 'Welcome!' to new residents to the area.)

The absence of any VicRoads representatives also precluded any discussion about what the elements of a 'holistic' solution could be, but they could include upgrading existing outlying roads, rather than creating a new bypass. VicRoads estimates that the Drysdale bypass will cost $60-80 million. It owns about half of the land required to build the bypass and is acquiring the rest as it comes on the market.

The secret to success?

VicRoads looks to local planning bodies for guidance on which roads should be built next; and while a Drysdale bypass is on the priority list of the regional planning body G21, it isn't a stated CoGG priority. So while people in Drysdale await the publication of the existing secret feasibility study into the bypass, together with the forthcoming Integrated Transport Model, they may wish to ask their local councillors, 'How many secret reports does it take to build a bypass?'