Archive:  Concerns With Planning Scheme Amendments In Macedon Ranges Shire

Last Updated  9/4/13

Concern Mounts At Macedon Ranges Council's Growing Habit Of Changing Its Planning Scheme To Fit Individual Development Proposals

(16/11/12 - P)  Hanging Rock, Macedon RO, C82 in Gisborne - and now another amendment in Woodend - fail to recognise basic principles of proper and orderly planning

What's going on at Macedon Ranges Council? 

Hanging Rock:  This quiet, illogical 2010 rezoning of the land next to Hanging Rock was called a "housekeeping" change, and approved by Ministerial amendment, without exhibition.  The new zone doesn't mirror the original environmental zone but is instead one which coincidentally gives a leg up to Council's very expensive and still-secret plan for a resort on the land.

Macedon Restructure Overlay: 

Not long after adopting the 2011 Macedon Ranges Settlement Strategy's finding of 'no-growth' at Macedon, Council contrarily decided Macedon needed more development.  In a move that overturned 40 years of strategic planning, most Councillors rushed to approve a review and an inaccurate assessment of development opportunities, as well as an amendment they hadn't seen that gives some 18 landowners new windfall development opportunities at Macedon.  Ratepayers are paying for these changes.  Council wasn't deterred by the CFA, a community survey and submissions saying "don't do it", or new development requiring extension of or sitting outside the existing sewer district, or Departmental concerns that the amendment conflicts with Council's adopted 'no-growth' policy for Macedon, and conflicts with the 2009 Bushfire Royal Commission's recommendations.  The Minister apparently hasn't yet agreed to exhibit the amendment, and if just a trace of planning principles are applied, hopefully won't.  PS  The C84 panel report also supports the 'no-growth' scenario at Macedon.

Amendment C82:  Frith Road, Gisborne. 

C82 rezones Rural Conservation Zone to Residential 1, and removes an existing Restructure Overlay from land on the Jacksons Creek escarpment, to allow a 6 lot residential subdivision to go ahead.  This despite the recent approval of the Gisborne/New Gisborne Outline Development Plan (which took 7 years and is one of the most extensive strategic planning exercises in Gisborne's history), and despite both the ODP plan and the Settlement Strategy NOT supporting residential development of the C82 land. 

The 27 June 2012 officer's report said services are available and rezoning is strategically justified; it was approved by Council in the a multi-agenda-item "en bloc" motion. 

It has also been said that because the land was in different ownership in 1985, it 'missed out' on being included in a nearby residential subdivision of that era.  This is not relevant.  What counts is that C82 overturns 30 years of strategic planning (as incorporated in both the former Gisborne and existing planning schemes and endorsed by various panels), and conflicts with the Gisborne ODP, the Macedon Ranges Settlement Strategy, and the Macedon Ranges Cultural, Heritage and Landscape Study.  NB  MRRA has objected to this amendment.

Mt. Macedon Road, Woodend (the "Lodder" amendment):   This amendment, to rezone Rural Living 1 to Low Density Residential at 102 Mt. Macedon Road  (i.e. a greenfields rezoning), was given in-principle support at the July 27, 2011 Council meeting.  It was approved in a split vote right after Council's adoption of the Macedon Ranges Settlement Strategy, contrary to the newly-adopted Strategy's finding that 'No greenfields rezoning is required at Woodend' to accommodate projected growth. 

The proposal came back to Council on 29 August 2012, this time expanded to rezone the land next door as well, all the way to Bowen Street (some 25 ha instead of the original 12.5ha).  There isn't an application for the additional rezoning; Council requested it be tacked onto the developer's application (as if popping a forgotten sock into the already-running washing machine) - a first in MRRA's experience.  The "Lodder" subdivision creates 16 new lots (not counted - or supported - as future land supply in the Settlement Strategy), while the 2011 proposal's 2.5ha of open space shrinks to 0.5ha.  Council moved it all forward in the multi-agenda-item "en bloc" motion.

The North Central Catchment Management Authority [CMA] wants an Urban Floodway Zone on this horribly floodprone land, but Council says no.  Seems Council thinks rezoning land from Rural Living 1 (40ha minimum lot size) to Low Density Residential (0.4ha minimum lot size) in response to a development application, and on what appears to be a whim, is strategically justified and doesn't pre-empt the Woodend Town Structure Plan process, but applying an Urban Floodway Zone required by a referral authority isn't, and does. 

Council is yet to produce credible justification for this ad hoc rezoning.  PS  Relying upon a failed amendment (C8, abandoned in 2004) and one VCAT decision that made assumptions about Woodend's growth that went well past VCAT's jurisdiction, do not constitute strategic justification.

MRRA Says:

Does anyone else see a disturbing pattern here of making the planning scheme fit individual development proposals rather than the other way around?  Of poor process, ignoring constraints, one rule for some and another for others, and unreliable information informing decisions?

When taken together with the shambles that is Amendment C84 - where Council has tried to substantially alter policy while saying it wasn't, where the interim panel report is a litany of 'do-it-agains', where officers alone made many of the decisions without consulting Councillors - are we all not entitled to ask why and how this is happening?

This is a pattern of behaviour that is guaranteed to fuel perceptions of under-the-table deals and something murkier going on.  It also raises big questions about how on the ball Councillors have been, and in particular, the CEO.

The CEO is responsible for staff, and how Council operates, including its planning unit and the quality of professional advice it provides.  The 'quality control' and 'standards' buck stops squarely at his desk.

MRRA's questions to the CEO are: 

• Why does Council appear to be operating as if it answers to no-one, can write its own rules and favour those it chooses?
• Why are ratepayers paying for inconsistent if not incompetent planning advice, and the mistakes that flow from it?  
• What are you going to do to reverse the current culture, improve skills, and achieve high quality administrative and performance standards and best practice outcomes? 
• What are you going to do to stop ratepayers' money being wasted on substandard work and "pet" projects, and start producing the high quality strategic work this Shire needs?

The challenge facing the new Council(lors) is how to:

• get the CEO to lift standards and performance;
• regulate officers' powers to make decisions without consulting Councillors;
• breathe transparency and accountability into the darkness that planning has become in Macedon Ranges.

We encourage residents to start asking these and their own questions as well.