There’s a few Council-led housing projects burbling away under the surface, one of which has popped up again with the statutory requirement to engage with the public.
How pesky is that! Imagine what our bureaucratic and political tyrant overlords could achieve if we weren’t in the way to slow them down?
All that consultation must be quite a chore. Not that there’s much evidence it ever gets taken into account, but that’s another story.
What the community have in front of them at present is a major development plan to turn a public asset – the former Mullum hospital site – into presumably a private housing investment project.
Mayor Michael Lyon enthused in his recent press release, ‘This land, which was once home to the town’s very valued hospital, has enormous potential to deliver much needed housing and community facilities’.
It’s proposed to have higher density than is currently allowed in the town, and if the planning proposal is accepted (why wouldn’t it be?), it will set a precedent for further height limits elsewhere.
It’s one of the issues when Council becomes the developer.
One of Council’s main functions is to determine development applications (DAs). So when they propose a development, you would hope that the utmost care and diligence is taken to ensure it is socially and environmentally beneficial.
Yet with the former Mullum hospital site planning proposal, it appears Council are acting like all speculating developers do – that is, playing down the impacts and doing the minimum to get it across the line.
That means more money for the developer and generally less amenity and stretched infrastructure.
To their credit, Council propose fewer dwellings than were previously proposed. Given there is no public explanation for that, perhaps they were told it wouldn’t be accepted by the state government?
The development is also dependent on hooking up Mullum’s water supply to Rous County Council’s Rocky Creek Dam. Currently, Mullum’s water source is from Lavertys Gap in Wilsons Creek.
Should Mullum retain that independent connection, or switch entirely to be dependent on Rous?
As for the existing congested traffic which occurs nearby at the corner of Azalea Street and Jubilee Avenue, Council could propose works to ease it.
But because the report – that we paid for – says it is not needed yet, they won’t (See page 1).
It’s a game which leads to inadequate outcomes and unfair pressure on small towns like Mullum.
Not the original proposal
The original vision for the site, as penned by residents in 2015, was a precinct for aged care facilities and services, housing for people with a disability, and affordable social housing for vulnerable and disadvantaged people, including domestic-violence victims.
What is more likely is that Council will try to sell the public asset to recoup the remediation cost of around $4.7 million.
As we know with Council’s attempts to attract a community housing provider to develop the Mullum car park, developers aren’t interested unless they own it.
If Council’s ‘affordable housing’ rhetoric can be believed, there will be just 20 per cent put aside, and it’s unclear if it will be in perpetuity.
Will the other 80 per cent sit within a wealthy private portfolio, as Mullum’s real estate and congested traffic continues to increase?
Submissions are open until February 11 via www.byron.nsw.gov.au.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
Thank you Hans. Well said. Of course ‘the Developer ‘tricks’ will influence Council re removing the original Vision to house vulnerable people. The Law of Value revolves around Capital, no empathy, care, equity etc., Thus the community is once again expected to ‘follow the leader’! There are just so many ‘leaders” assembled in the Development imperatives for the NSW Northern Region. Cronies, Handlers, Lobbyists, Influencers abound. They sit in a Cafe adjacent to NSW Parliament House. A local Crony was spotted by Party Members who greeted him upon entry to the Cafe. So shocked was that recipient of the greeting that he dropped his fork of food, which was poised mid-air to his mouth and made a very hasty retreat out of the Restaurant! Now does that bespeak a guilty conscience? Never again has he been seen in the Restaurant.
Marx’s ‘Law of Value’ is based on his ‘Labour theory of value’. All debunked a long time ago. Items aren’t more valuable based on the number of human work hours put into their creation. As Mises explained, the value of something is based on its ability to satiated human psychological unease. That’s the empathy and care. The price is based on distributing limited resources to those that produce the most ease for others. That’s the equality.
Is the new development going to pay headworks charges to Rous, or will they try and get a free ride.
Someone should have a real close look at payment of headworks charges to Rous, as there is a lot of uncertainty about the payment of these charges, especially considering each new standard connection should pay $9,951 per ET.
Rous used to include the new connection data in their business paper, and every month there would be a handful of new connections (about 30), until in August 2012 the number of connections was increased by 1,771 in one month due to “reconciliations”. This included an extra 1167 connections in Ballina and 16 connections in Byron. At $10k per connection, did Rous receive an extra $17m in connections charges from the connections identified from the “reconciliations”? If not, what happened to the headworks charges the developers paid? If the developers didn’t pay the headworks charges – why not? And if some developers are not paying their headworks charges why did Ballina get approximately $11m in free connections yet Byron only got $160k in free connections? That doesn’t seem fair – why should Byron subsidise Ballina?
And why, in 2020, did Rous stop including the new connection data in their business paper?