Council staff have given their draft area-wide plan of management of community land a rating of 99 per cent good enough.
It says only one per cent needs a second look.
The complicated issue involves categorising community land so how it can be used is controlled by a Plan of Management (POM).
It had a list of more than 2000 blocks of land on public exhibition recently and held five community meetings to get public feedback on their categorisations of the blocks.
The public said the process was flawed for a number of reasons including the fact council did not explain why it was categorising land a particular way or why it was changing categories.
It was obvious from attending all five meetings, that council has done a broad sweep to get this paperwork done and dusted and that it could not answer questions about individual sites.
Now it is bringing this area-wide draft POM to the April 26 meeting asking the administrator to adopt 99 per cent of its work.
Council reckons only one per cent of more than 2000 blocks of community land need to be held back from categorisation.
“In a small number of cases (22 parcels of land, representing around 1% of land in the draft POM), Council officers have formed the view (taking into account detailed and extensive community feedback) that good management of the individual pieces of land would be better served by changing the recommended categorisation,” the report to Wednesday’s meeting states.
“As it is not possible to change a proposed category without a further period of public exhibition, and because Council officers are mindful of the need for a POM to be adopted to facilitate desired community uses of land currently not able to be accommodated at the current time, these lots have been removed from the schedule of land that is part of the POM.
“Removal of these parcels of land is not considered to constitute a substantial change to the draft POM.”
That means Council is recommending Administrator Hart can simply adopt the report without further ado.
The report says the 1% can go through the process of another public meeting with the first update of the POM.
Reviews of the POM are expected to occur annually or biennially.
“Initial preparations are already in place for the first review of the community land POM,” the report states.
If the administrator adopts the POM, it would mean the removal of all pre-existing plans of management for Council owned community land except for the following:
a. Kincumba Mountain;
b. Grahame Park (Central Coast Stadium); and
c. Gosford City Bowling Club.
A POM is required, by law, to be in place prior to the issue of leases and licences for the use of the land, meaning the use of community land is restricted where there is not an adopted POM in place.
Council says the new POM is intended to provide a single high-level source of reference for management of the vast majority of Council community land (more than 90%) and to replace a large number of pre-existing POMs that apply to different areas of land and to different categories of land in each of the former Gosford City and Wyong Shire areas.
“As part of the preparation of the new draft POM, the existing categorisation of 1748 parcels (lots) of land was reviewed by a team of internal subject matter experts and 594 extra lots were categorised for the first time,” the report states.
“The largest number of lots were confirmed or newly categorised as Natural Area (more than 1000 lots) or as Park (about 500 lots).
“A significant number of parcels of land were categorised or re-categorised as Sportsground or as General Community Use (between 150 and 250 lots of each category), the report states.
A total of 343 submissions were received and the report states which blocks and categories were objected to but it doesn’t provide a rationale for its decisions.
“No amendments to the overview or detailed provisions for the finalised POM have been considered necessary on account of the submissions,” the report states.
The report recommends the Administrator agree to adopting the POM but lists two other options:
Option 1: Council could determine not to proceed further with the area-wide generic POM because it now wishes to take another approach. For example, Council could decide that, based on the views expressed in some community submissions, the documentation in the draft area-wide POM be reconfigured as a series of different POMs. These could be set up in different ways, for example, on a category-by-category basis or by based on identifiable areas of interest e.g. coastal areas, lakeside areas, inland areas.
“This option is not recommended,” the report states.
“It would delay the replacement of the existing collection of POMs that are both outdated and inconsistent with contemporary practice.
“It would also mean that more than 500 parcels of community land would remain uncategorised.”
Option 2: Council could determine to recategorise some of the lots of land that are included in the draft POM.
“That would mean subjecting the lots of land in question to another round of public hearings,” the report states.
“To prepare for this, there would need to be a detailed investigation of the logic of any proposed recategorisations to establish whether they are merited.
“The consequence would be a significant delay in the adoption of the Council community land POM.
“For the reasons set out under Option 1 above, this is not considered desirable,” the report states.
It says the benefits of adopting the area wide Council community land POM and start implementing it include:
• relevant provisions will come together in a single document for the first time
• as far as practicable, all community land will be categorised and listed in one place and the land schedule in the POM will be relied upon as a reference point
• land in each category can be used in a consistent way
• consistent rules will exist for occupancy of land (by way of lease or licence or other dealing) for each category of community land.
The meeting starts at 5.45pm if there are residents addressing the administrator on items such as this one.
Otherwise, it starts at 6.30pm.
