Council Watch

Watching Central Coast Council on behalf of fair-minded and reasonable people.

Central Coast Council Watch

Happy new financial year

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Here’s what council plans to do in the next 12 months

 

1/ Capital works program highlights
The 2023-24 Capital Works Program is targeted at renewal and upgrade works to existing assets, with 85.6% or $172.9M of the $202.1M Capital Works Program focussed on renewals and upgrades of existing assets.
“This allocation allows Council to maintain and renew existing assets and to address the asset backlog,” Council-under-administration states.
Council has budgeted $29.2M, or 14.4% of the Capital Works Program, for new or strategic assets.
Water and sewerage and drains are getting the majority of the capital works funds (see screenshot) including Gosford CBD sewer infrastructure – $10M. .
Pages and pages (more than 40) of what will be improved include:
Plant and fleet – $17m.
Gosford regional library $8.5m and double that next year.
Magenta shared pathway $5m and the same again next year.
Umina Skate Park upgrade $3.9m.
New community centre at Norah Head – $1.7m
Environmental land acquisition is allocated $1m.
Warnervale airport is getting an upgrade worth almost $1m while improvement works at St Huberts Island Bridge fencing upgrade – $900,000.
Central Coast Stadium – $700,000.
A seawall at McMasters – $590,000.
Another 38 projects worth $40m are subject to external funding and will be added if funding is successful.
The majority of these are for or natural slope and embankment stabilisation at a number of locations including Avoca; at Cedar Brush Ck; and at Wisemans Ferry Rd Greengrove.
Details here: https://www.centralcoast.nsw.gov.au/…/capital-works… Capital works start on p81.

 

Studies

 

A draft regional public art plan will finally land by June 30, 2024, according to the operational plan.

Click the link for  a story written more than two years ago about Council’s public arts policy.

https://www.facebook.com/CCCouncilWatch/posts/pfbid0Z3H6j4kh59nVgTfkNomCgLVDvsBc7F1WyYgpYw4GahgDCC1Wfne84o4dba9uf9sal.

A Masterplan for Warnervale Airport is planned to be developed and adopted by the end of December 2023. This too has been coming for some time. The Catchments to Coast Advisory Committee had a sneak preview of the masterplan at their March meeting in 2022.

After months of chats with locals last year, the adoption of a water and sewer customer charter is less than three months away: we should see it by September 30, 2023.

Council is aiming for less than eight Water Quality complaints per 1000 properties this year and less than 30 wastewater overflows per 100kms of main.

 

And, put this one in the diary: Council-under-administration is going to conduct “A wellness survey” by March 31, 2024.

Other reports coming include:

 

FOGO 

A report on FOGO (Food organics and garden organics) feasibility and business case for FOGOs being processed into “beneficial use” is due by the end of the financial year; June 30, 2024.

 

Strategy planning

Council’s Community Strategic Plan and operational plan for 2025 – when we should have councillors again – will be reviewed and “engagement results”will be documented and a recommended approach will be written up for the consideration of the incoming elected councillors.



CMPs

New Coastal Management Programs for various areas completed or stages completed by June 30, 2024.

These include the open coastal areas; Tuggerah Lakes; the Hawkesbury River as well as the Coast’s lagoons such as Avoca.

 

History

Prepare a draft Heritage Chapter of the Development Control Plan for exhibition by 30 June 2024.

 

Environmental Lands Review

This related to more than 3000 blocks of land in the former Gosford area that still need zoning updates.

This has been dragging on for years, before amalgamation.

The operational plan states that Complete phase 2 “deferred matter report and planning proposal” of the Environmental Lands Review will be done by 30 June 2024.
 But going on information available in January, we were expecting public exhibition of these lands ASAP as the plan was to be finalised by March 31, 2024 and prior to that, it was in last year’s operational plan to be completed by June 30, 2023..

 

Operational targets

Development applications will be determined in less than 80 days -but that is the mean number of days for all applications.
And it is ten more days than the target set in the final delivery program, a three year forward plan, for this year.
An additional target is that more than 30 per cent of residential DAs will be determined within 40 calendar days.
The timeframe for assessing commercial, industrial and tourism related developments will reduce by 25 per cent by June 30, 2024 – but there is no explanation of what timeframe that 25 per cent is reducing from.
Council used to give quarterly updates on the days taken to process DAs but stopped last year.
Talking about going to the dogs; 200 animals will be desexed this financial year and 400 animals microchipped.
And council says it will have started preliminary site works of the new regional animal care centre by the end of the financial year.
Under biodiversity management, predator control in the habitat of threatened fauna species (such as the little tern breeding colony and longnosed potoroo) will be implemented by June 30, 2024.
Actons will include fencing and camera monitoring.
As for what council rangers will be doing, I’m afraid the action and the target is too vague to tell us.
A “proactive program delivered each quarter” will have “Ranger Operations targeting high-risk or high-volume issues/
noncompliances based on customer requests and other drivers”.
But here’s the one I love the best.
“Undertake Service Optimisation Initiatives of Democratic Support Service, and Road Maintenance and Pothole Prevention (through Street Sweeping) by 30 June 2024”.
The unit responsible is Strategic Planning.
Good one. What does it mean exactly? Is this a fancy way to describe street sweeping – or is there more to it? And why no KPI?
See more council KPIs, actions, targets and timeframes here: starts on p28. https://centralcoast.infocouncil.biz/…/OC_27062023_AGN…