Mayor Robert Armstrong
Cr Dr Rosalie Woodruff
Huon Valley Guessing Games
Predictably, on Wednesday evening, the mayor and his fellow council-controllers settled for mediocrity, no compromise, non-consultation and more secrecy over the inappropriate car park that — bugger the township plan — council is determined to inflict on long-suffering Cygnet.
Rejection of the Cygnet car park petition to get council to revise its car park plan to be consistent with the township plan (see http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/is-near-enough-really-good-enough/) was predictable in the sense that I never expect Mayor Robert Armstrong and his five solidly aligned supporters to seriously consider the views of those electors in Cygnet who are largely confined to the ranks of what both sides of the community divide call “the blow-ins” — recent arrivals (say, 20 years minimum).
This was evident in the mayor’s rambling, rancorous serve against his hometown, or, at least, those in it who get on with their lives without (not for any special reason) ever setting foot in the Cygnet RSL.
It’s near impossible to take meaningful notes when the mayor is making an off-the-cuff speech, so disjointed are his utterances. But here are a few snatches of what he had to say as he blasted away at the Greens’ Cr Rosalie Woodruff’s give-compromise-a-chance alternative motion to the staff-recommendation that the petition be disregarded:
“We have already called tenders . . . Inspiring Place, I don’t know whether they are able to design car parks . . . People I speak to . . . Cygnet is known as the stop-everything town — the toilets, the bridge, the scouts . . . We [presumably meaning Cygnet] are the laughing stock of the valley . . . This is not what the people of Cygnet are telling me . . . It is an insult to us that councillors go to the minister’s office to speak against a council motion . . .”
Armstrong harangued Woodruff, and her seconder, Liz Smith, also a Greens councillor, for talking to the State Government about what they see as council’s failure to keep its car park planning consistent with the Cygnet Township Plan 2010.
He told them — in a display of what might fairly be described as dictatorial displeasure — that, “when a council motion has been passed”, councillors are “supposed to support the decision”.
I can’t see such an obligation anywhere in the Local Government Act 1993. Section 28, relating to the “functions of councillors”, does say (4) that they must “represent accurately the policies and decisions of the council in performing the functions of councillor”; but nowhere does it say that councillors who feel that a decision made by a council is a poor one are not entitled to pursue means designed to persuade the council that the decision it has made is, indeed, a poor one and ought to be revised.
After listening to Woodruff at Wednesday evening’s meeting, it seems to me that the Greens pair have been doing exactly that.
The way council has determined that the car park behind the Town Hall is to be built is clearly not consistent with the Cygnet Township Plan. And Woodruff and Smith, in carrying out the much more important functions listed in Section 28 (1) — “to represent the community” and “ to act in the best interests of the community” — have only been doing their jobs.
Over her more than a decade on council, Smith has become renowned for always being ready to lend an ear to an elector, whether they be handing out council bouquets or brickbats, and for doing her duty to advise them on how best to deal with their problems if she cannot help them directly herself.
In response to Armstrong, Woodruff said it was “totally appropriate” for councillors to “approach ministers”, and that she was not going against the council’s decision with her alternative motion to request the minister (David O’Byrne) to indicate within a week that the State Government would not withdraw the promised $300,000 towards the car park if it were not started before June 30 (as Armstrong has repeatedly asserted).
This, said Woodruff, would enable council to consider the alternative car park design (privately commissioned by a stakeholder affected by the car park) from Inspiring Place, the consultant that produced the Cygnet Township Plan. Her motion would only involve, at most, a delay of the seven days allowed for the minister to reply, she said.
In response to the mayor’s attack on Cygnet as “the stop-everything town”, Woodruff countered: “Is Cygnet the problem or do we need to look at the way we communicate?”
As things stand, council is pressing on regardless with a back-to-front design that leaves its critics wondering why council ever went through with its charade of endorsing a township plan that it evidently had no intention of honouring.
Thanks to council over the past decade, Cygnet has inappropriate (locally dubbed “mop-top”) street trees; a tiled pavement that is hazardous in rain and frost (council last year, at last, put up signs warning pedestrians to take care); the Mary Street subdivision, on which building-design restrictions are inadequate; an in-the-making pocket park at the bottom of the Mary Street subdivision that has ended up with little or no community input; an extraordinarily ugly and huge public toilet that cost a quarter of a million dollars and now defaces the Loongana Park (the walkway of this brand new structure was awash in recent rain and, reportedly, the urinal blocked up during the Folk Festival in January); a footbridge that appeared on the western side of Burtons Reserve without any public consultation . . .
At least the mayor didn’t get his way when he was eager to have a hole cut into the façade of the heritage-listed Town Hall to accommodate Bendigo Bank’s ATM, which now is sensibly installed in the window of the butcher’s shop alongside the Town Hall.
It’s not fair to lay all the blame at the door of the Huonville Council Chambers. Apathy about local government and the democratic process, and fear, in the Cygnet community — especially among those who grumble about council’s ineptitude yet do nothing about it — are just as much to blame for council riding roughshod over public opinion (expressed twice in my time in hugely supported, but rejected, petitions).
I can’t remember how many people I have met who have — quite irrationally — said they were unwilling to voice complaints about council publicly because they were awaiting a decision from, or might be making an application to, council for some development or another. Their irrationality, I believe, is their fear of council retribution. I simply cannot imagine, in a civilised society, that such fears are warranted.
So many people seem to forget that we live in a democratic society; and that, no matter how imperfect it might be, if we don’t put our faith in it (and also challenge what we see wrong with it), it will, sooner rather than later, be lost to us.
Cygnet could have had a sensitively designed, environmentally efficient and attractively vegetated car park behind the Town Hall. Instead, unless a miracle happens, it’s now going to get a bland, over-engineered monument to the near-enough-is-good-enough approach of a council that seems rooted in all the worst developmental attitudes of a bygone era. — Bob Hawkins
(The author, a close friend of both Greens councillors, is affiliated with no political party but, like so many newcomers to Cygnet, is concerned that too many decisions of the Huon Valley Council as it is now constituted are inimical to the well-being and progress of a township whose charm was influential in their decisions to settle here.)
