Council’s consultation sleight-of-hand

COMMENT
Nobody is more enthusiastic than Council about its own consultation process. But everywhere I go in Sydney I hear the same story from residents – that the process is a sham designed to sell Council’s ideas to the community rather than the reverse.

This is particularly true of Kings Cross, which has a history of opposing many Council’s attempts to drive it towards bland suburban uniformity.

The first public meeting about the Fitzroy Gardens project was presented with a fait accompli as the budget (and therefore the scope of the works) had been decided, and the designers already appointed.

At that meeting people were asked to post sticky notes on two boards, one labelled “What we like” about the Gardens, the other “What we don’t like”.

Excluding one-off comments, those that could be themed were listed in a Council report. There were 146 ‘like’ comments and only 66 ‘don’t like’.

There were several that said ‘leave it as it is’ but these were ignored.

These raw figures make a case for abandoning the project in favour of minor fixes, but the content of the negative comments push this further.

The Ibis birds and their mess were the most unpopular aspect of the park with 28 comments. But the new plans do little or nothing about this knotty problem.

Next came ‘broken and cracked pavers’ with 17 comments – Council’s main justification for the whole project. But these pavers, previously neglected by Council, have been fixed.

Next came the ‘ugly’ police station with 11 comments. But this is outside the scope of the project. The proposed screen of trees will give the police “privacy” (which they have apparently requested, for some reason). But the trees will also reduce police sightlines across the park, reducing public safety.

Next on the negatives came the weekend markets with 10 comments. But 37 people also liked the markets, and their continuing success is the best evidence that the community supports them.

So the things people ‘did not like’ will not be addressed by the new project, leaving Council with no real community support for a change.

But subsequent public meetings were engineered to disguise this. The second presented three design concepts for comment but no option to leave the park alone. It recalls Henry Ford’s famous offer that customers could have “any colour they liked so long as it was black”.

Last weeks meeting was even less democratic, structured so residents could not ask questions or address the room. After the presentations finished, everyone was bundled off into the next room where people could speak only one-to-one with council personnel, a classic divide-and-conquer tactic.

There will now be a three-week exhibition period. Again the design is presented as a fait accompli. There is no option to leave the park alone, and the comments garnered will be presented as support.

“I was disgusted at the emasculated community consultation process last night,” said Adrian Bartels, Chairman of the Potts Point and Kings Cross Partnership, the local business organisation. “I couldn’t find any details of the proposed plans on the Council website before the meeting, so I couldn’t investigate and arrive with an opinion.

“Then the meeting was broken up so any questions had to be asked individually or in small groups, silencing dissent.

“The more I become involved – the more I drill down beneath the warm and fuzzy sounding banalities of their spin – I see a Council that is fearful of an informed and organised community.

“All this park needs is maintenance. This Council’s preoccupation with fixing things that don’t need to be fixed, and which residents don’t want to be fixed, is an appalling waste of public money.

“And, in 2011, a year in which we should be using the park to celebrate our 2011 community, we’ll have a construction site at the very heart of it.”

by Michael Gormly