We are quite used to the City of Stirling blaming the MRA, the DAP, the SAT the Education Department the WAPC, in essence anyone else but themselves for many things, but we have a new one for the list, you, its your fault.
What’s did we do ?
The 1.2 million sqm of tree canopy ‘lost’ in the past six years, much of it from, wait for it,
“ordinary ‘mums and dads’ … unaware that their single development is part of a larger problem”.
Ignoring for a moment exactly who approves these developments (remembering in the City of Stirling your single development now does not require approval) .. I am not sure where to start, calling bullshit I suppose is the first step.
I was at a community and resources meeting recently where this motion was discussed prior to going to full Council where several Councillors brought up the fact that they were pestered(*) regularly by ratepayers asking why they could not have this that or the other tree removed, they were of course talking about street trees, trees on Council property, landowners can do as they like with their own trees. I am sure this happens, no doubt, but usually the answer is no and even when such might occur a replacement tree is usually planted somewhere else, in fact the City are Planting trees like a mad…
Only two Councillors at that meeting appeared to understand the first half of the real problem which is the Perth & Peel @ 3.5million directive requiring infill whether a Council wants it or not, the second half of the issue being the City’s own Planning Department who regularly approve non-compliant (they hate me calling them `non-compliant`) developments under delegated authority, the rest usually signed off by a pro-development development committee and passed anyway.
Existing single home developments that used to have 1 property on them are regularly built to more than the one boundary permitted by the R-Codes so they can shovel 3 houses on the same block and get the green light from the City, this happens on a regular basis.
The City of Stirling needs, and this is where I believe Councillor Lagan was going in the earlier committee meeting, to `grow some` and look at the examples of Nedlands and Cambridge where Elected Members are pushing back not simply taking infill targets on the chin with the City of Stirling’s usual ‘nothing we can do about it’ attitude. My experience is that if you do nothing, you get nothing.
Cr Karen Caddy said the City needed to “lead by example”, I am not sure pushing the City’s already miserable 18% target back by a DECADE, is the sort of example we were looking for and as for blaming ratepayers, an example of something else altogether.
* not the Councillors actual word
