Council shame on City Road Master Plan

At the last Future Melbourne Committee (FMC) meeting on June 3, Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) made a submission questioning council process and authority.

FMC meetings are generally held every two weeks where councillors consider and approve items related to the Council Plan. This is where most items, including planning applications, are considered.

At the meeting of August 20, 2024, there was an agenda item for the City Road Master Plan and SRA made a submission reminding councillors that the plan encompassed so much more than the northern undercroft, which seemed to have been receiving all the attention.

The City Road Master Plan was endorsed in 2016 and was supposed to be completed in 2023. Year-in, year-out SRA has been lobbying the council to keep this plan on the agenda.

During the August 20 meeting, it was resolved to make a submission to the state government for funding and a draft submission was submitted for consideration. From this, five motions were moved.

A key motion that was resolved from the meeting was, as deemed by former Cr Rohan Leppert, that the draft funding submission for the state government was insufficient and certainly wasn’t competitive or robust enough. Three months was allocated for council officers to improve the draft for submission in November 2024.

In that draft was stated, “New traffic surveys undertaken in July 2022 verify that the Master Plan continues to meet the needs of current traffic conditions”. I think we are all on the same page with agreeing that this is fundamentally wrong and a travesty to think as such.

City Rd is a significant concern to the community as its safety continues to be an issue. City Rd is responsible for fatalities and many pedestrian injuries from accidents involving vehicles, yet after almost 10 years of the City Road Master Plan very little has been incorporated.

About a month ago in early May, SRA decided to ask the council for an update to the resolutions from that meeting. We forwarded a series of questions four days prior to the first FMC meeting for May in anticipation of detailed answers for when we asked our questions at the meeting. Unfortunately, we only received answers to some of our questions and, what we thought were the most important ones on the draft submission, were taken on notice. We expressed our dismay that after giving advance notice of our questions that they were taken on notice, we submitted the question early deliberately so there was no need to take the questions on notice.

After some time we eventually received a response, but only after I requested the intervention of the CEO to hurry it along, to learn that the two days after the FMC meeting on August 20, 2024, when the motion was resolved the Lord Mayor met with the Premier and submitted the council’s funding submission. However, it was not an updated version – it was the original version, which was deemed insufficient at the FMC meeting two days prior. No wonder the council didn’t want to answer my questions!

And so, we found out last week at FMC the submission was unsuccessful and no funds have been allocated from the state budget. No wonder it was unsuccessful since the draft was not updated, as Cr Leppert predicted.

This is what made me question the council’s processes and authority at that meeting. I asked who deemed that the submission didn’t need to be updated considering it was a resolution from the August 20 FMC meeting (and the motion was passed unanimously with the backing of all councillors). I was informed that “at the time the meeting between the Lord Mayor and the Premier was considered both constructive and positive. As such, it was viewed by the Lord Mayor’s office and the advocacy team as fulfilling the intent to advocate for the City Road Master Plan budget submission”.

This meeting with the Premier was only two days after the FMC meeting where the motion was moved. They talked about their decision to submit the submission being the positive and constructive nature of the meeting, but the Lord Mayor went into that meeting with the submission.

Clearly, they had already made a decision to present the submission as they furnished the Lord Mayor with the submission for the meeting. It would appear the atmosphere of the meeting had no bearing on their decision not to update the submission. How were they to know the meeting was going to be so positive and constructive?

What confidence can the community have in the council’s processes if council officers can arbitrarily override council meeting resolutions?

Today it was a state government funding submission, tomorrow it could be that development next door that the community objected so strongly about, which was rejected by councillors.

What’s the point of even holding council meetings if the council officers have the authority to override decisions made by councillors? Why even have elected representatives if the officers can arbitrarily call the shots?

This was an appalling act by the council, which has likely cost Southbank its desperately-needed funding for the City Road Master Plan. The council has not even guaranteed future advocacy actions for the 2025/26 annual plan.

If you would like to help us with our advocacy efforts, we would love to have you on our committee. If you would like to know more, please reach out at [email protected] •