Where's the Vision?

The City of Joondalup have no vision for infill. Though we have an infill policy, nearly 10 years after this whole debacle was set in motion, the City of Joondalup still has no vision to make it work.

Is this the vision for infill?

Instead, what we currently have is residential recoding, with the potential to more than triple development in suburbs that were never originally designed to receive the higher density of dwellings, people or cars. And that is all.

When I call for a vision, I don’t mean some fluffy, meaningless statement (though we don’t even have one of those), I mean a plan to make infill work. I’m talking about infrastructure planning, including footpaths, street lighting, parking, cycle ways etc. to help us navigate our suburbs as they get busier. I mean a plan to meet the increase demand in community facilities, parks and open spaces, as the population grows. I’m talking about commercial zoning considerations with mixed use development and commercial strategies, for all the extra shops and services that our new neighbours will need. I’m asking for policies to make sure we’re not losing all the trees and greenery that keep the temperature of our suburbs from soaring in summer. I’m asking that our Local Government is working with the State stakeholders, to make sure they are doing their bit to service areas of infill too with roads, public transport, education, health and so on.

I have looked through all the current documentation around HOAs and none of this work has been or is currently being done. As the City’s own Local Housing Strategy document says:

What stays the same:

• Existing public infrastructure, for example, roads, verges, parks, public access ways and schools are not proposed to be changed through this strategy.

I’m far from the only one who knows it either. In an extract from Hansard from 22 March 2018, in response to a grievance from MLA Emily Hamilton, the Hon. Rita Saffioti, Minister for Planning stated:

"I will seek clarity and certainty from the City of Joondalup about how it will meet its targets and, moreover, how it will address the community concerns in that process .... because Joondalup deserves better. It deserves a plan for the future."

The recent, half-a-million-dollar, ratepayer funded Consultant’s Report, which reviews the current infill policy, asserts that: 'The City's LPS3 is silent on the purpose and objectives of HOAs'. I am not surprised. There is no purpose or objective. There is simply infill.

So here we are, over a year after the grievance motion and still no closer to having community concerns addressed: still no plan for the future.

Worse again, our City’s Planners have failed to take this HOA Review as an opportunity to come up with a new plan for the future. Instead, their Tender Document, that set out the framework for this review, insisted upon keeping the deeply flawed HOA boundaries as a starting point and only asked the consultants to provide a ‘design led solution’ for the new developments. They weren’t asked to come up with policies for any of the above-mentioned community planning that is required to make infill work. It is like worrying about changing the colour of the upholstery, when the entire car is a crumpled wreck, lying on its back, on fire in a ditch.

The Tender Document was released in June 2018. A year on, and I am still waiting for someone to take ownership of and come up with a vision that we, the community can get behind. Yet the City is making it clear that the recommendations of the Consultant’s Report, a report that the City Planning Department instigated, is nothing to do with them. As their own report to Council stated:

“The City has not had any role in compiling or editing the report. The City has received the report and made it available to the Community via the City’s website.”

Yet that same report makes the recommendation that:

“Council endorses the draft local planning policy and draft scheme amendment for the purposes of public advertising.”

So in case you missed that, the City’s Planning Department recommended that our Councillors vote to replace the current infill policy with the contents of a Consultant’s Report, which the City’s own Administration had no hand in creating and are not taking any ownership of.

A Consultant’s report is just that. It is not a vision and cannot and does not offer a clear direction for the City of Joondalup to take with its infill.

This month, the Director of Plannings contract was up for review and by all accounts it is recommended for renewal. Last year’s Annual Report’s publishing of director’s salaries suggests that the role is worth in the vicinity of $280,000 - $290,000 per annum. For that, I would like a vision for infill please.