Archive: Amendment C47
Last Updated 13/6/08
Minister for Planning Approves Amendment C47, Opens The Door For Supermarket and Petrol Station At Woodend Railway Station
(13/6/08 - P) Not all of the amendment was approved, but enough to see the old CFA building, and former railway goods sheds (the produce store and insectarium) now facing demolition - there aren't any heritage overlays on the land that has been rezoned, or the CFA and former goods sheds.
The contentious Amendment C47 has been approved in part by the Minister for Planning, Justin Madden. An independent panel recommended two key elements of the amendment NOT be approved because they lacked a strategic basis for rezoning. These were a small parcel of land on the High Street (next to the railway line) and the (light) industrial area near Anslow, Urquhart and Bowen Streets. The C47 Amendment proposed rezoning the land in High Street to a Business 1 zone, and the industrial area to Mixed Use. Neither rezonings were supported by the independent panel, but a majority of Macedon Ranges' Councillors overturned the panel's recommendation. The Minister has taken the middle ground - approving the business rezone, but not the Mixed Use.
MRRA Says:
Considering Woodend hasn't had a strategic study done for the town for 34 years, it's disappointing to see more ad hoc rezoning occur, no doubt soon to be followed by some more ad hoc development. Although these days, looking at the sardine-like crush of cars wall-to-wall at the railway station, filling the surrounding roads and gardens, and even parked along the railway line, it's a real head-scratcher to imagine how a supermarket and petrol station application can be jammed in, especially when it is apparently intended to count those chockered (non-existent) railway car spaces as parking spaces for the supermarket!
C47, The 'Dog's Breakfast' Amendment: Planning In Macedon Ranges Shire Disintegrates As Council Defies Panel's "No" To Get Woodend Rezoning For Developers
(31/3/07 - P) Last Wednesday's Council meeting confirms this Council will do "whatever it takes" to get developers what they want. Community, rules and process can just sod off.
It wasn't a large gallery at last Wednesday's (28th) Council meeting in Gisborne, but all of those who weren't developers spoke with one voice. They were disgusted with the performance put on by the majority of our Councillors, and with their decision-making prowess, as they somehow decided they knew best and voted to ignore an independent Planning Panel's recommendations to abandon two rezonings in Woodend. The Panel has said Council hasn't done the strategic work to justify the rezonings. Five Councillors apparently either disagreed, didn't care, or didn't know what strategic work is.
Standing orders were suspended and a range of people, including Chief Executive Ian Morris, made some blunt, some might say offensive, statements about Planning Panels and their ability or otherwise to get it right or to be objective.
Gisborne policeman Cr. Geoff Neil (East ward), perhaps not unexpectedly after recent Chamber performances, led the charge to overturn Council's March 14th decision to accept all of the Amendment C47 Planning Panel’s recommendations, instead putting forward his own alternative motion to not accept the Panel's findings to abandon two rezonings in Woodend. He found a willing ally in Cr. John Letchford (South) who seconded Cr. Neil's series of three motions that picked over the Panel's recommendations. Crs. Neil and Letchford were staunchly supported by two "Woodend" (West ward) Councillors, John Connor and Deputy Mayor Noel Harvey, and by the Mayor Cr. Helen Relph (South).
The night's work of these five Councillors resulted in Council deciding to go ahead with two ad hoc rezonings in Woodend. The first rezoning puts a new Business zone on a small parcel of land (and at least one public accessway) fronting High Street near the railway station. The owner/developer has said publicly that he wants to put a petrol station and a road on the steep land next to the railway bridge at the town's southern gateway. The second rezoning relates to an entire block of industrial land in Urquhart St. Council has now arbitrarily (and rather sloppily) rezoned the land to a Mixed Use zone (a zone never before used in the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme), which will create new opportunities for residential and commercial development near to Five Mile Creek.
Cr. Neil closed the debate on the Business zone motion with the words "Councillors, let reality steer your course in this area, not fiction." From where MRRA was sitting, Councillors Henry Bleeck and Sandra McGregor (East ward), Tom Gyorffy (West ward) and Rob Guthrie (South ) seemed to take Cr. Neil's advice on board and opposed both motions to rezone, but were defeated by those who supported the rezonings.
The joke was, only minutes before approving the rezonings, Council had supported a motion put forward by Cr. Tom Gyorffy, seconded by Cr. Rob Guthrie and backed by Crs. Sandra McGregor (East), Henry Bleeck (East) and Mayor Helen Relph (South), to undertake community consultation in Woodend about whether the community wanted Council to purchase the piece of land near the railway station for a community park or other public use. Then, at the next agenda item, Council rezoned the same land to a Business zone, putting it out of the community's reach and making a farce of any community consultation proposals. The Mayor, Helen Relph, voted both ways: to consult, and to rezone. See also 28/3/07 item on C47.
MRRA Says:
It has been 30 years since the people of Woodend were last asked what they think and what they want for the town’s future.
From comments made on Wednesday night, it seems Council is considering finally undertaking a formal process to produce a Town Plan for Woodend, to start within the next year, if funding is included in this year’s budget. The C47 Panel has said the rezonings (now approved by Council) shouldn’t go ahead before that Town Plan is produced.
The Woodend community needs to pay attention because this Council appears to be handing to town over to developers, without a community-endorsed plan in place, and in this instance, in defiance of expert planning advice that Council’s amendments to the planning scheme in Amendment C47 are premature, not appropriate and should be abandoned.
The decisions Council so arbitrarily made on Wednesday have potential to have long-term impacts on Woodend’s amenity and economy. At the very least, they will tend to lock the town into positions that may be found to be detrimental when finally assessed through a strategic process.
Last Wednesday's Council decision brings to a head a raft of recent, serious Council planning blunders, and confirms MRRA's fears that the Council elected in 2005, with few exceptions, would take the Shire backwards. MRRA believes it is doing more than that.
As of last Wednesday, Macedon Ranges has now entered the uncharted and very murky waters of having a Council that seems to think it can sweep aside Panel recommendations that get in the way of clearing the path for whatever ad hoc development proposals some Councillors might think are 'good ideas'.
Think about it, particularly with ad hoc amendments looming for the Braemar and 1,000 residential lot proposals on Golf Course Hill, where the current zones are Farming and Rural Conservation which need to be changed before either proposal can go ahead.
If a Council thinks it can change zones at the drop of a hat (or the request of developers), and we've seen some ripper examples of where this Council has thought exactly that (e.g. the C52 Macedon House amendment), the whole Shire is at risk of being overrun by Councillors' personal preferences. More than that, as we've already seen, that approach effectively shuts proper and orderly planning, and broad community interests, out of decision-making processes.
Not much to look forward to, is it...
As MRRA Predicted, C47 Proves To Be A "Dog's Breakfast" Amendment As Independent Panel Recommends Most Rezonings Be Abandoned Because There's No Strategic Justification For Them
(28/3/07 - P) Council agrees to Panel's recommendations on 14th March, but rumour has it some will attempt to reverse that decision on March 28 to get major development moving: will five Councillors do 'whatever it takes' to get these rejected proposals up? Is C47 set to become Woodend's version of the 'development at any cost' Gisborne Call Centre fiasco?
At tonight's Council meeting in Gisborne, tensions will be high as Council decides whether it will uphold its Planning Committee's decision to go with an Independent Planning Panel's recommendation to abandon several changes, including 'spot' rezonings, proposed in Amendment C47. Cr. Geoff Neil was particularly enthusiastic at the 14th March Planning Committee meeting to arbitrarily overturn the Panel's recommendations to abandon two rezonings in Woodend, these being conversion of an industrial zone to a Mixed Use zone in Urquhart St. (near Five Mile Creek), and the rezoning of a small piece of land on the embankment in the median strip between the old Highway and the railway station (at the railway bridge) from Public Use to a Business 1 zone.
The Mixed Use proposal has now twice been rejected by a Panel and the landholder who requested the rezoning in 2005 no longer owns the land, which is (along with other land in the same area) believed to now be in the ownership of a local businessman.
The small piece of land near the railway station, which currently has a former railway house on it (one storey at the front, two storeys at the back), was last used by an auto electrician but has been empty for some time. The current owner told Council last week he had been in discussions with Council for a year and he intends to put a petrol station and a road (1 in 16 grade) on the site. This of course would necessitate demolishing the existing building, possibly some of the exotic trees for which the area is noted, and also the public pedestrian stairway access that links High Street with the railway station. But first the land needs to be rezoned, and the Panel has said that's not what should happen at this time.
MRRA Says:
This amendment has been a mess since its inception in April 2005. Most of the proposed changes (rezonings) came from individuals wanting their own land rezoned to suit their own purposes. The Council officer's 2005 report stated most were 'technical changes'. It's hard to see how introducing a totally new zone into a planning scheme constitutes a technical change.
Then in April 2006 former Planning Minister, Rob Hulls, somehow approved the amendment being put on public exhibition. The Panel's 2007 recommendations to abandon most of the rezonings is, as predicted by MRRA, an embarrassment for the Planning Minister and once again raises questions about standards of quality control within the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
If Council tonight goes down the path of defying the independent Panel's recommendations, it will be yet another example in a long line of examples of a Council where the majority of Councillors are prepared to step well outside the acceptable and required principles for decision-making on planning issues. MRRA will then consider turning to the new Planning Minister, Justin Madden, with a request for Council's planning decisions to be investigated.
Declaration: Woodend resident and MRRA secretary Christine Pruneau was an objector to this amendment and attended the Independent Panel hearing.
Council Almost Goes With Illegal Move On Amendments C47 and C49
(23/7/06 - P) Claims that Department of Sustainability and Environment agreed to recommendations not allowed by Act
At the 12 July Council Planning Committee meeting, Macedon Ranges Council had before it recommendations to send elements of these planning scheme amendments to the Minister for Planning for approval, despite there being submissions objecting to and calling for changes to the amendments. Under the Planning and Environment Act, a Council has only three options for dealing with submissions asking for changes to an amendment: it can make the requested change, it can abandon the amendment or it can send the amendment to an independent Panel. The recommendations before Council represented a fourth option: ignore submissions (and the Act). Someone seems to have confused an amendment process with a planning permit process, and recommendations to forward parts of the amendments to the Minister seemed to have been based on an assumption that there wasn't a lot of opposition, so just approve it (which perhaps gives an insight into how Council views objections to development proposals).
On the night, the Council planning officer present seemed to verbally advise Council that the Department of Sustainability and Environment [DSE] originally supported the 'to the Minister' recommendations but now did not support doing that. Only two Councillors spoke on C49: Cr. Rob Guthrie (South ward) read section 23 of the Planning and Environment Act to his fellow councillors, and advised that the recommendation before Council was illegal. He then moved (seconded Cr. Tom Gyorffy (West)) that the amendment be sent to an independent panel (carried unopposed). Cr. Noel Harvey (West) advised near the end of the C49 agenda item he had just noticed that Parks Victoria submitted to the amendment and he may have an interest in the matter as he had recently been appointed to the Parks Victoria Board. The only change in how Council dealt with C47 was that Cr. John Letchford (South) seconded the motion to also move that amendment to a Panel.
Note: The C47 amendment proposes various changes, several initiated by individuals looking for site specific rezoning to support future development proposals (including introduction of the Mixed Use zone into the Macedon Ranges planning scheme), while the C49 amendment would rezone a business zone in Riddells Creek to a residential zone to support a residential subdivision proposal. There were some 33 submissions to C49, and 12 to C47.
MRRA Says:
It would be a matter of immense concern if DSE had in fact condoned such a deviation from the Planning and Environment Act's requirements, as represented by the recommendations before Council for these amendments. It is also of concern that submissions seem to have been misplaced by Council (two were 'found' on the night), that not all submitters seem to have been told about meetings or about the amendments coming before Council, and that no-one from the community addressed Council on agenda items as usually happens at these Planning Committee meetings (the Mayor advised the meeting he did not have a list of speakers). But the greatest concern of all is that one way or another, poor processes and breaching the Act almost got through the approvals system. That's not an acceptable situation.
Embarrassment As Minister Hulls Approves Exhibition of "Abandoned" Amendments C47 and C49
(5/4/06 - P) Latest in a series of Department of Sustainability and Environment blunders disadvantages Macedon Ranges yet again! Isn't it time for an inquiry into departmental operations?
DSE's done it again. In yet another blunder that disadvantages Macedon Ranges, an absence of quality control at DSE has seen the Minister for Planning, Rob Hulls, approve exhibition of Amendments C47 and C49. Both of these amendments claim they are justified because the changes they propose were included in Amendment C8: the disastrous - and abandoned - amendment that tried to put the Residential and Industrial Land Review into Macedon Ranges planning scheme. Obviously DSE either didn't read, or ignored, the report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee (appointed by then Planning Minister Mary Delahunty) which said:
"After considering the amendment against the Terms of Reference and Strategic Assessment Guidelines, the Committee concluded that the proposals contained in the amendment should not proceed" and that "strategic justification is inadequate".
The Committee recommended "That Amendment C8, a variation of it, or any individual element of it, should not be included in the Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme..."
MRRA Says:
So how come parts of this failed amendment are now being 'recycled' as Amendments C47 and C49? And why are Macedon Ranges' ratepayers having to waste time, energy and money on amendments that can't and won't be approved just because the Department can't get its act together?
Amendment C47: ‘You want it? You got it…’
(22/4/05) Council supports another grab-bag of ad hoc applications for amendments to Macedon Ranges Planning Scheme.
The latest in a rolling series of ad hoc applications for amendments to be supported by Council is the debacle of Amendment C47. The officer’s report on Amendment C47 (misidentified as C46 in the Council agenda) describes the amendment as ‘generally technical changes’. It seems one of those ‘technical changes’ is to introduce a Mixed Use zone into Macedon Ranges’ planning scheme (we haven’t had one before) and apply it to land in Woodend township. Another is to rezone 10 or so hectares of rural zoned land in North Woodend to Industrial 1 zoning.
MRRA Says:
Council, these are not ‘technical changes’, these are major changes in strategic direction, without strategic justification. Council also claims these changes are supported in the Residential and Industrial Land Review 2000 and that the Review, as Amendment C8, was abandoned due to PROCEDURAL FLAWS. Not so.
Can someone at Council please read the C8 Amendment’s Panel Report because the C8 amendment actually fell over because IT WASN’T STRATEGIC. And then can someone read the Planning and Environment Act where it says Council CAN refuse to support an application for an ad hoc amendment to the planning scheme? And then can someone have a think about where these ad hoc amendments sit in the context of proper and orderly planning? Most of our Councillors may not understand planning but surely our planning officers do, don’t they?