Council Subcommittee to Consider UrbanGrowth MOUs - 22 July 2014

The MOU in relation to the Parramatta Road Corridor has provoked debate in some of the other 10 council areas that cover this UrbanGrowth Corridor. In Ashfield after a lot of agitating from the community changes to the MOU were negotiated before a majority of Ashfield Councillors finally agreed to sign. Leichardt Council has so far refused to sign the MOU.

Major concerns voiced have related to the extent of actual power Council’s actually have in making the final decisions. UrbanGrowth bring Councillors, Mayor and employees into the process but UrbanGrowth end up making the final decisions. If councils don’t sign up they do not get an input into the process. While the current MOU is an improvement on the one rejected initially by Ashfield the question that remains is will this MOU provide a better outcome for the City than has been achieved previously with other Government bodies such as Barangaroo. What this MOU will do differently that will deliver a different outcome to the problems associated with earlier MOUs is not addressed in the Council Officers Report.

Below are the links to the Council Officer’s report and to the texts of the draft MOU’s.

Attachment A is a broad MOU covering Council’s dealings with UrbanGrowth across the entire Local Government Areas (LGAs) including currently declared sites such as Central to Eveleigh, Green Square, the Bays Precinct and the Parramatta Road Corridor.

Attachment B is a specific MOU covering the Parramatta Road Corridor which covers 10 council areas. The City of Sydney is the only council in the Eastern Precinct and some differences with earlier versions of the MOU probably reflect this difference.

The officers report expects other Site Specific MOUs to follow.

We are alerting you to these MOUs going to Council so that you have the opportunity of taking up any concerns you may have with Councillors. We apologise for the short notice but the MOU’s have not been put out for community input by Council and we were only alerted to them today.

Following years of dealing with the Redfern Waterloo area being managed by the RWA, SMDA and now UrbanGrowth without reference to City of Sydney Council, REDWatch is keen to ensure that UrbanGrowth NSW works closely with the City of Sydney in the future in reality and not just in theory. We need to ensure that UrbanGrowth areas are dealt with in a wider Council context and that the Council’s skill and experience is also bought into the final decisions and that proposals come out of a collaborative approach, which includes local residents, Council and UrbanGrowth NSW.

REDWatch is also concerned to ensure that dealings between Council and UrbanGrowth are as transparent as possible so that the community is aware of what is happening and is able to discuss issues and raise concerns as they arise with both bodies without the MOU being used to limit that engagement.

The questions to ask when reading the documents is will the MOUs facilitate these outcomes or provide more barriers to these outcomes being achieved.

If you have comments to make please contact your Councillors ASAP and consider attending the Committee meeting at 4pm on Tuesday to voice your concerns before the Council Committee.