Council must respond to disastrous vote

THE results of two important community votes were in over the weekend; one we know a lot about, the other, not so much.

In the Voice to Parliament referendum, the local electorates of Monash (66.46% ‘No’) and Gippsland (72.93% ‘No) voted strongly against setting up of a Voice to Parliament advisory group. But if you drill down, the picture wasn’t quite so clear, with several local communities including Cape Paterson, Cowes, Fish Creek, Inverloch, Kilcunda and Newhaven saying ‘Yes’ and just one vote the difference in Tarwin Lower and Rhyll.

In the other vote, to decide whether the Bass Coast Shire Council goes ahead with its $35 million road and drainage improvement project in the Surf Beach and Sunderland Bay residential estates, there was also a resounding vote against the project from the residents, we’re told.

What the exact result was, we don’t know.

The shire dumped the outcome on its Engage Bass Coast website last Friday night with little explanation, despite the fact that they have already spent more than $1 million of ratepayers’ money on design and preparation.

Apparently, the writing was on the wall from day one that the homeowners of Surf Beach and Sunderland Bay didn’t want to pay typically $24,000 for their share of the $35 million project. A number simply didn’t want the ubiquitous kerb and channel with bitumen roads and concrete footpaths you see in a metropolitan setting.

And perhaps they were right. A different sort of treatment, along the lines of Lohr Avenue at Inverloch, at least in the area of the magnificent but incredibly important foreshore, beside the Short-tailed

Shearwater rookeries and fragile coast, might have been better.

But as much as they consulted, the shire didn’t listen.

The tragedy is that something needed to be done with the third-world conditions that exist across these estates, not only to keep the dust down and upgrade the unhealthy drains, but also to save the rest of the people in Bass Coast the cost of constantly maintaining this area.

The shire needed to come up with a unique project for this magnificent area and then embark on a comprehensive campaign to “sell” the project, highlighting health concerns, the opportunity to add significant value to homes and to save the rest of the shire’s ratepayers millions over the next 20 years.

The council could also have offered everyone, regardless of financial circumstances, the chance to pay it off over 10 to 20 years.

It needed to be a “charm offensive” not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Instead of wasting our time on grandstanding over The Voice and whether or not they’ve “achieved” their goal for a family violence reduction in Bass Coast, the council needs to stay in its lane and get their own job done first.

This disaster needs to signal a major change in the approach of this council to more collegiate government and effective, outcome-driven community consultation.