ICAN not, say the majority – City of Ballarat Council meeting briefs

A NOTICE of motion brought on by deputy-mayor Cr Belinda Coates seeking support for the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons was defeated at City of Ballarat’s Wednesday, 2 September council meeting.

The move would have seen support given to the ICAN Cities Appeal and involved writing to the Federal Government urging national endorsement.

Cr Coates said supporting the ICAN push was within the scope of local government.

“It is common place for councils to advocate on issues that are of state, national or global significance,” she said. “That fact that we’re a signatory to the compassionate cities charter is a case in point.

“Seventy-eight per cent of Australian’s are in favour of abolishing nuclear weapons.

“It’s a really simple request that’s being asked of councillors. A simple request to put up your hand and vote in support… to simply endorse this position.”

Dialling into the meeting to take part in the discussion were a range of community groups, like the Ballarat Interfaith Network as well as ICAN founder Dr Margaret Beavis.

However, a majority of councillors chose not to support the motion, including mayor Cr Ben Taylor and Cr Amy Johnson who said the City should be dealing with other issues.

“We’ve got dead CBD streets, people are being forced to stay at home… our economy’s being crippled, people are jobless, people’s mental health is suffering, and what are we doing? We’re talking about nuclear weapons,” Cr Johnson said.

“We don’t even have any nuclear weapons in Australia. It strikes me as virtue signalling at its best.”

In a recorded vote the motion was backed by Crs Coates, Daniel Moloney, and Mark Harris, all others opposed.

ICAN was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its push to end the development and use of nuclear weapons and depleted uranium munitions.

 

A park by any other name would look as sweet

Ballymanus Central Park will now be known as Djila-tjarriu following unanimous endorsement of the move by council.

Pronounced “jilla-ja-roo”, the word means “place of play” in Wadawurrung and was developed in consultation with Traditional Owners.

Cr Coates said the move was inline with a push by council to better recognise First Nations Peoples.

“It’s one of the actions that councillors have supported as part of the reconciliation action plan, to undertake Aboriginal Place naming across the city where there are opportunities,” she said.

“This is a prime opportunity to do so.”

Djila-tjarriu sits in Ballymanus Estate on the north-side of Ballarat-Carngham Road, one kilometre west of Learmonth Road.

 

Book it up

A true cost of the deal between the City of Ballarat and Studio Hollenstein for design work on the renovation of the Ballarat Library on Creswick Road became slightly clearer.

The project has an overall budget of $2.4 million, but as yet the split between the design and construction work hasn’t been made public.

In response to a question by Michael Moloney from Moloney Architects on why the municipality had chosen to go out of town on the job, Cr Taylor asked interim CEO Janet Dore if she could disclose the value of the contract.

She said she couldn’t but did say that it was less than half of the overall project budget.

In an attack on media coverage of the issue, Cr Tillett was able to get closer to the true figure for the architectural design component.

“This was not a matter dealt with by the contract sub-committee, nor the council, because it was an amount of money less than the amount at which those two committees work,” he said.

“This was an officer’s contract, which means it’s got to be less than $250,000.”

During the discussion, Cr Des Hudson took aim at the potential cost of local tenders.

“It must come back to the local people applying on tenders to sharpen their pencil about wanting to be competitive for council work,” he said.

“We’re in charge of ratepayer’s money and there are many things that are always asked for by ratepayers and not everything can fit in. Where there’s value for money, of course that should be taken into consideration.”

 

Gates closed

A notice of motion from Cr Samantha McIntosh relating to the Lydiard Street railway gates that had been shelved during the 24 June meeting found its way back on the table.

It was then swiftly defeated three to six, replaced by an alternate put forward by Cr Moloney.

Cr McIntosh’s motion has wanted council to affirm “the established heritage importance of the Ballarat Station railway gates”, that the municipality had relevant planning authority over the location and that VicTrack should keep council informed on what was going on at the site.

During original discussion over two months before hand both Crs Taylor and Moloney had pushed heavily on the safety element of the crash and subsequent closure of the road, and that was again reflected in the alternate motion.

The decision finally adopted by council noted the VLine was the responsible authority and called on the organisation to reopen Lydiard Street to traffic as soon as possible.

It also noted the heritage importance of the gates and said the preference was they were reinstalled if it was safe to do so.

 

Rolling in cash

$54.658 million will be carried over from the 2019/20 budget into the current financial year.

The money comes from a range of unfinished municipal projects, with nearly $19 million coming from a range of State and Federal Government grant programs.

The issue also revealed City may not need to take a budgeted $22 million loan following an enquiry from former mayor, and public question time frequent flyer, John Barnes.

Mr Barnes question related to the process around planning for the loan in May and said he’d warned council against going too early. Acting finance head Sean Portelli agreed.

“There are some good points in the question and there a few learnings we can take from this,” he said.

“My advice to the next director of corporate services, as part of the budget process, all these carryovers be incorporated into the budget as close to the 30 of July as possible.”

 

What speed is it?

After a push to get uniform 40kph limit around Lake Wendouree hit a speed bump, the issue came back before council for further action.

Originally initiated by Cr Moloney on behalf of the Lakes and Gardens Advisory Committee, Regional Roads Victoria put the breaks on the plan telling the municipality it was happy with the current mix of 40kph in high pedestrian and school zones and 50kph in residential areas.

City of Ballarat officers then submitted a plan for consideration what would have seen an education campaign rolled out, further data gathering, and councillors endorse the RRV advice. They did not.

Cr Moloney moved an alternative motion that asks RRV to change the current speed limits to make a more uniform 40kph section between Ripon Street and Loretto College.

“The logic behind this really comes from some of the comments from the Regional Roads Victoria themselves in the report,” he said.

“That’s that it’s not ideal to have short, intermittent 50kph sections interspersed among the 40kph bits. It’s really quite an odd, frustrating, and confusing situation for motorists.

“Take the south-side… where it starts at 40kph at Loretto, then switches to 50kph past the St Pat’s boat shed, then it’s back to 40kph again. As you get to Pleasant Street Primary School back to 50, then another 40. I could go on, there’s about seven different changes.”