Perth Voice Interactive

GREENERY has mostly been restored to plans for the Beaufort Street block that’ll replace the old laundromat.

The plan first floated in 2019 was a verdant oasis featuring large trees sprouting from balconies. Vincent council loved it and approved it, but recently the applicant Baltinas Architecture came back and said it might be too heavy and would be too expensive for the future strata to maintain. 

They drew up new plans dropping the number of on-structure plants from 58 to 38, getting rid of the bigger trees.

Vincent councillors bristled at the denuding, saying the trees were a big part of what made the plan palatable. 

After some negotiation councillors approved a third plan with smaller trees replacing the biggies, with 59 in total sprouting from the building. They’ll have about a 3m canopy when mature. 

Mayor Emma Cole said “it is quite disappointing when you approve a development [that] was mooted as a biophilic design” only to have a second version show up with the best bits removed. 

Commenting on the new re-treed plans, she said: “Faith restored”.

By DAVID BELL

THE rate in the dollar Vincent council collects from homeowners will have to go up nearly 16 per cent to keep the rates income “frozen” at last year’s level.

On average homeowners will have the same rates bill as last year, but any lucky homeowner whose rental value has bucked the downward trend will face a bigger rates bill. 

Every three years a state government valuer updates the expected annual rental value of houses, and council rates are based on taking a few cents out of each dollar, the ‘rate’. Major renovations, putting in a pool, or adding on a storey can lead to a higher valuation.

The valuer has determined that residential rent values have dropped an average of 16 per cent in Vincent, so if the council wants to bring in the same $35 million it collected last year then the cents-in-the-dollar will have to shoot up by 16 per cent to compensate.

The council’s finalising some hardship measures for those in a financial pickle due to Covid, including deferment of up to six months, and a waiver on penalty interest and charges for people on payment plans. 

All ratepayers will be able to choose to “smooth” their bills, paying either fortnightly or monthly, whereas in previous years the only options were yearly or quarterly. 

Volatility

Mayor Emma Cole said at the June 16 meeting: “While the city is committed to having a 0 per cent increase in rate yield, that volatility is there for individual ratepayers,” and they’d need to be clear with people how the rates are tallied.

The draft rate setting statement is soon to be advertised for comment for 21 days but Ms Cole says she wants thorough engagement on it, and not just the bare-minimum public notice required by law. 

The council’s taken about a $4m hit from covid-19 already and is projected to be down another $10m in the 2020-21 financial year, mainly from lost revenue from Beatty Park Leisure Centre’s closure, a drop in parking, and a few other smaller categories like refunded hire fees.

Many councils are dealing with explaining to residents how a rates yield “freeze” works while some people get lower bills and other people get higher ones, and the WA Local Government Association is soon to launch an information campaign to clear up the byzantine billing system. 

To connect with today’s homeowners WALGA is bringing in 1976 Olympic silver medalist Ric Charlesworth to front the campaign and explain how it works.

THE depressingly stark dog pound run by Bayswater council is set to get a $41,000 upgrade to meet “community expectations”.

In December mayor Dan Bull asked for the state of the council’s Wright Street pound to be reconsidered in light of new animal welfare standards currently working their way through WA parliament.

A new report from Bayswater staff says the pound does meet those “minimum standards”. However people have complained about conditions there and it “falls short of community expectation and lacks basic facilities such as hot water, suitable exercise/outdoor areas or an isolation area for sick animals”. 

The council considered outsourcing the pound operations to a private facility in Malaga, but the costs would’ve gone from $10,600 a year to about $28,000 and rangers reckon the digs for stray dogs at the private place aren’t any fancier.

Feeding, watering and keeping dogs at the private facility would’ve cost about $20 per dog per day, while the council spends $3.77 at its own pound (most of that cost is staff time: Food makes up just 30 cents per day). 

Keeping an in-house pound also means junior rangers can get some training being around angry dogs.

Planned upgrades include pulling out old asbestos, installing partitions so dogs can have some alone time, improved skylights to let in more natural light, fixing up the exercise area fencing to prevent burrowing, and grinding ripples in the concrete floor so liquid stops pooling around the centre drain. New heavy duty security doors are hoped to deter future break-ins following some “recent burglaries”.

Councillors decide on June 23 whether to go ahead with the upgrades, or to seek out other private operators for outsourcing. 

By DAVID BELL

NINETEEN trees are on the chopping block because residents near Embleton Golf Course don’t like mulching being done near them.

The City of Bayswater is planning to remove the trees at Lightning Park trees so their main mulching operations can be moved from the golf course to the park.

The golf course is an ideal spot in some ways – central and with space for a frontend loader, truck and woodchipper to access the site.

But a report to councillors says “this has unfortunately begun to cause some concern with residents immediately adjacent over the last couple of months due to noise and dust”.

Of the 19 trees, 13 are healthy, but 11 of those are out-of-towners (red river gums, which are common in the north of the state). 

The Friends of Lightning Swamp, a volunteer group which takes care of the adjacent bushland, has agreed to the removal on the condition that 40 semi-mature trees and 1000 endemic tree tube stocks are planted over the next year. 

They’ll also get a new “rural style fence” along the edge of the park to keep out illegal dumpers and off-road bikeriders. 

Bayswater councillors vote on the plan June 23.

Public left out in Hyde Park path plan

A CYCLE route dissecting Hyde Park is among some questionable paths in a new WA government bike plan.

The WA Department of Transport’s draft Long Term Cycle Network for Perth and Peel up for endorsement by Vincent council next week. 

While some councils have asked for input from their residents, Vincent councillors are scheduled to vote on June 16 without going out to consultation.

Aspirational

The network is only “aspirational”, but only routes identified in the plan will be eligible for future state government funding. 

North Perth resident Andrew Main was unhappy not to get a say.

“I know the DoT has developed the plan, but there’s been liaising and negotiations between the city and the department so it would have been helpful, I think, for residents to be involved in that somehow,” Mr Main said.

“I don’t think the plan is ideal; there’s areas for improvement.”

The Hyde Park route is a strange addition to anyone familiar with the area and century-long attempts to prevent it being a thoroughfare.

Highgate resident Sally Lake, a former councillor, recalls back in her day the council installed barriers on the existing footpath specifically to slow down cyclists. 

She says about a century earlier there was similar discontent when the lake was split in half to allow a road through; after a protest the plan was shelved and a walkway put through instead.

Vincent staff noted in a report to councillors that DoT developed the plan “in-house with little consultation with local governments” due to time constraints.

They had even told DoT a year ago some of the routes were “unlikely to be possible/supported”, while Stirling council’s warning about a proposed Walcott Street route was ignored and it made it to the final draft of the LTCN. 

Former councillor Dudley Maier says council staff are quite right to bristle at the Hyde Park route “but they haven’t done anything effectively to address it, like bring it to council in a timely manner or consult the community”. 

Squeeze

He says other councils have found time to squeeze in some consultation, with the Town of Cottesloe undertaking an extensive public comment process in August last year. 

Vincent CEO David MacLennan says DoT only sent the final draft on May 21, with a deadline for endorsement by the end of June.

Mayor Emma Cole has asked staff to find out if there’s any chance to wiggle the deadline and fit in community consultation. 

She says the council has its own bike plan from 2013, and is currently working on a new integrated transport plan covering cars, parking, bikes and walking. If there’s no time for a new round of public comment, they’ll fall back on the consultation from those two plans. 

“I’d like to see that [the LTCN] aligns with these documents, and that our community does have an opportunity to have a say,” Ms Cole says.

Cr Josh Topelberg said he’d like to know if anyone local actually had an “aspiration” to have a cycle route through Hyde Park, and said they should not endorse the plan unless that’s scrubbed out.

by DAVID BELL