Attention Lord Mayor Bradbery – we need a new community-centred form of Council organisation.
HONEYMOON PERIOD IS OVER
Since the election of the new Wollongong Council last year I adopted the attitude that the new Lord Mayor and Councillors should be given a chance to settle in and show what they can do. It is, after all, a very step learning curve with impossible demands on their time.
During this time I also attended various events connected with the formation of the Community Strategic Plan, such as the Summit held at the Wollongong Town Hall.
Recent events in the Neighbourhood Forum 2 area have taken me past the point of with-holding the use of my critical facilities while the new Council beds down.
There is a real disconnect between what Council is doing and where our local community is at. If this is so in Coledale, I have no doubt it is true in many other places across the city.
Council is, I believe, lacking the appropriate leadership necessary for us to effective reform our means of dealing with community business, and needs a bit more ginger in its diet if it is to come up to full speed.
DEAD HAND OF PAST IN VISIONING PROCESS
It was while I was attending the Town Hall Summit sessions for the Community Strategic plan that I became aware of something which I then found vaguely disturbing.
That is, the whole process of forming the 10 year plan is being shaped by an obsolete 20th century view of Wollongong City Council as a form of organisation.
This old form of organisation is unconsciously given privileged treated by the internal culture within Wollongong City Council – that is, by the staff who make important decisions about both the consultation process and how the result of that consultation process are to be interpreted.
These people, always very pleasant to me I must say, work and live within the existing framework and cannot see beyond it. But they have an institutionalised view of the reforms necessary for our form of local government.
In addition to this, there is a systematic privileging of a CBD centred view of Wollongong as a city – and a corresponding neglect of the actual communities where we all live.
We are effectively locked into the past by a ‘centralisation’ process which filters out the steps necessary for us to change in the right direction. And the past model is not fine-tuned enough to deliver the kind of services we, in local communities, need – that is, timely and effective use of our scarce resources to address real problems.
A FRACTAL IMAGE
For a very small example as a fractal – it is impossible, it seems, to get Council to merely trim some vegetation on Cater Street, Coledale, which blocks drivers vision on a dangerous bend. It has taken months of messages – following up a 200 plus petition about these dangers – and still no action.(But see footnote.)
Council have told us that it will be years before there is any possiblity of action to take care of the main dangers to drivers and children on the dangerous bends on upper Cater Street – if ever.
And there are many more and important examples of this disconnect between what Council needs to be doing, and what it actually does.
We just can’t afford to be this inefficient. We need to have more direct local say over how, where and when our ratepayer dollars are spent in keeping with local needs and priorities.
Neurologically speaking, the present form of Council organisation is akin to that of a dinosaur.
FAILURE OF CREATIVE IMAGINATION
Creatively imagining our future is key to the process by which energy follows thought. The vision of Council in the present Wollongong 2022 is dominated by the dead hand of the past, and i believe something vital for our success is being filtered out in the present process.
It is my position that, if there is any major flaw in the present plans being drawn up to cover the next 5 and 10 years, it is the failure of those in key decision-making positions to be able to creatively imagine an improved form of organisation for Council – and to institute effective changes now – not in 5 or 10 years.
That is, there is a failure of the imagination necessary by our civic leaders to creatively address present and emerging challenges.
If we are to be able to effectively address our real challenges (in these rapidly changing economic times) we need a form of organisation which is re-centred in our actual communities.
Despite the lip service being paid to being ‘a connected and engaged community’ I can detect no evidence of this in the draft plans to date. I have seen no evidence of this even from the Greens, who have Precinct Committees as part of the Local Government policy.
Our new Council was elected with a mandate for reform and change. They should not be waiting for a finalised 10 year plan to show us what they are capable of. We need action now, not in 2022.
NEED A NEW NETWORK TO ADD A BIT OF HEALING GINGER
The only way this is going to happen is for all those people concerned about genuine community empowerment before the last Council election to now form a new network to press for real reform.
A new community action network can make good use of the new communication and networking technologies available – so it can be formed across the whole area of the Greater City of Wollongong.
Not Green, Ginger!
Bruce Reyburn
Coledale
(Breaking news – Council machine clearing vegetation on Cater Street this morning, 9 May! Hoorah! Due in mid-March.)
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