Thank you, Ray Darney, for your clarity in looking at this matter. We are fortunate in this local government area to be allowed to have rural land-sharing communities under certain conditions so that we can live in nature in this beautiful natural environment.
Byron Council’s 1998 Rural Settlement Strategy set up the basis for environmentally responsible closer settlement in our rural areas. To expect older intentional communities to retrofit to the 1998 guidelines is difficult, however access, building structure, and effluent disposal are baseline considerations.
The conflict that Council has in assessing this is that if they approve dwellings for occupancy then Council takes on liability. This, in my opinion, is based on insurance and the perceived idea that everyone needs insurance. Potentially, for various reasons, people don’t want to take out insurance.
More recently meeting Council conditions of consent for rural land-sharing communities has become a sticking point. Council conditions of consent for the overall MO community must be satisfied prior to getting development approval for individual dwellings. To date this process has been cumbersome and allows Council to say there is a measure of failure in setting up rural land-sharing communities, thereby voiding the allowance of further investigations into rural closer settlement.
With regard to transparency, thank you councillor Elia Hauge for your clear vision and for Cr Lyon’s information, it is fundamentally important that the ratepayers of this shire be consulted and brought along with the process of compliance as we are all effected by this and other Council decisions.
With regard to the general manager’s comment about liability and the agony this matter has caused grief for Council for 50 years and needs to be addressed so that we don’t have another 50 years of uncertainty.
Boyd Warren, Main Arm
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