Flood meeting a fiasco

I like many other affected ratepayers attended the public meeting held last Wednesday by Baw Baw Shire to discuss the C144 amendment.

The shire administration did not want a public meeting, they were directed to hold it after ratepayer representation and a decision by councillors and it showed in how it proceeded.

This meeting was nothing short of a fiasco and can be summarised by the following points.

Too short a duration - 1.5 hours did not allow the considerable number of ratepayers to ask questions and get responses on the night.

Time expended on an unnecessary presentation of duplicated information.

Presented questions not answered properly or not at all.

Extremely poor quality audio leaving a large majority isolated from the discussion.

Confusing and misleading information regarding the process moving forward.

There are glaring errors in the Land Subject to Inundation Overlay application of which I have examples of just in the Warragul North area alone.

Other affected ratepayers and I have previously requested a meeting with BBS and West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority representatives to discuss the situation and resolve our objections to the matter, with no response from BBS to date. The WGCMA have not yet provided responses to previous questions regarding anomalies.

If the Baw Baw Shire administration’s key objective was to further alienate their ratepayers and to strengthen their resolve to have this planning amendment abandoned at the next council meeting, then that was certainly achieved.

Danny Mills, Warragul