Archive:  Section 223 Committee

Last Updated  6/9/07

First Planning, And Now Democracy, Crash In Macedon Ranges

(9/4/07 - C)  The way this Council is going, are there any takers on how long it will be before 'Finances' joins Planning and Democracy in the 'not working' bin?

It is pretty well established by now that most of our current Councillors don't seem to know about planning or care about getting good development outcomes (look at how they overturned Panel recommendations on C47, approved Macedon Lodge, etc).  And we know they don't seem to have quite caught hold of the concept of accountability (look at the Code of Conduct adopted late last year).  So, how are they on consulting the community?   No, there's not much joy there either because now most of our Councillors have officially decided that listening to the community is just getting too much like hard work.

At last Wednesday's Council committee meeting most of our Councillors took another step away from 'commitment to the community' when they voted 7 to 1 to set up a 3 Councillor committee to hear community submissions on Council issues (under Section 223 of the Local Government Act).  Up until now, those community submissions (e.g. on the budget, land sales etc) had been heard by full Council.  Now, what the community has to say will be filtered back to the other Councillors via the Mayor of the day, and one Councillor from each other ward (and don't we all wonder who they might be?).  MRRA's information is that only Cr. Rob Guthrie (South Ward) opposed going down this path.  NB  Cr. Tom Gyorffy (West Ward) left the meeting early and was absent for this vote.