City of Perth Council: 28 March 2023

Council met at 5pm on Tuesday 28 March. As usual the below snapshot is my personal view only. Any views expressed in my updates are given to explain in my opinion why Council has made certain decisions. To ensure you’re across the full debate, I encourage you to view our live stream and visit the agenda page to access officer reports.

1. Council endorses Perth's 2023/24 Events Plan

Looking back on the season that was, the City delivered our biggest ever Christmas Lights Trail and the shift from Skyworks to a series of six City of Light Shows provided a strong return on investment for ratepayers. Take into account other events including the Christmas Nativity, Twilight Hawkers Market and New Year’s Eve, we have successfully attracted over 500,000 people to the City who otherwise would not have come.

To build on this success, over $5 million has now been approved for events in the coming financial year. Click here to view a summary.

To support our own events line-up, an additional $5 million is allocated in the coming budget to provide support for third party-led activities that provide a clear benefit to our community and ratepayers. This includes sponsoring events like Fringe, Perth Festival and other big name attractions.

Looking at data to support these investments, we can see a clear increase in car parking in the City when these major events are on. Given parking subsidises all ratepayers (to the tune of about $11 million net profit per year), this is clear evidence that what we are doing is working.

2. Local Heritage Survey

Council has been forced to spend ratepayer funds on a project imposed on us by the State Government.

The Heritage Act 2018 requires each local government to identify places of cultural heritage significance in a Local Heritage Survey (LHS). The purpose is to record information on places of cultural heritage significance, providing an accessible public record.

Council adopted this Survey, with exclusions moved by the Lord Mayor based on feedback from each property owner. These details can be found here.

Importantly, the advice we received is the inclusion of a property on the LHS does not have any implications for future development. 

So, some may be asking, what is the point of it? Why do we have to spend $100,000 on consultation costs, and 2 years salary for 2 full time staff members for a PDF document? That's what I'll be asking personally of the State Government to consider in reforms to this process. If we are forced to do this, what's the benefit? Surely there has to be more than just 4000 pages of documents at the end of such an expensive process. Stay tuned...

3. Tree Pruning Requests

Since our election to Council I have seen many requests made of the City to prune public trees. I have seen a few cases where the City has indeed agreed to prune, but the vast majority have been rejected with differing reasons.

It seems to me, after observing communication back to residents after requests are made, there is no Council endorsed nor well-understood publicly available policy or process which equitably manages this situation.

I do appreciate every tree has value and contributes to our parks and streets. Perth would be a horrible City without trees. My neighbourhood of Crawley is well-protected from searing heat and high winds thanks to our local tree canopy. They are financially valuable too as an asset which the ratepayer owns. To prune them must be done carefully so as to not structurally damage or kill the tree. That is only common sense. 

I also appreciate that some trees have branches which are damaging or inconvenient to our residents. We are here to serve their interests, that is why I put forward a motion that a majority of Councillors supported to investigate a better system which carefully manages this delicate situation. I know there are many things to consider - which is what the motion asks for, time and research to work out what is possible. So if you're interested in this item, stay tuned as we work towards a solution.

Finally, there was a moment at Council last night which was simply too funny not to share with you. Click here to view an exchange between a visitor to the City and the Lord Mayor. I can assure you I have never heard such a noise made before in a council chamber.

Other important updates:

1. The City is undertaking works to maintain the popular Mounts Bay Road Share Path - it will be closed to all pedestrians and cyclists from 27 March to 8 May. You can find more info here.
2. We are trialling an e-scooter hire scheme across the City.
3. Perth has won its bid to host the World Energy Cities Partnership AGM in late 2023. 

As usual if you need help with any City of Perth issue please get in touch: [email protected].