10 Reasons to vote for Peter Moran

           for Shellharbour Council.

1)      I know how Council works. I have attended nearly every Council meeting over the last 10 years. This is more than any other candidate, even those who used to be Councillors.

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Not one of the ALP or Liberal candidates have attended more than a couple of meetings since the Administrator was appointed over three years ago. Many have attended no meetings.

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2)      I have been involved in Council through the writing of submissions. In the last three years I have, on a number of occasions, had my suggestions adopted by the Administrator and incorporated into Council policies. After I spoke at a Council meeting recently (31 May, 2011) the Administrator said “…..the matters raised by Mr Moran were, as one would expect, legitimate concerns."

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3)      I care about how my community works. That is why my wife and I wrote a submission to the recent Council budget, as we have done in years past. Among other things, I called for the abolition of cold water pool fees.  NO OTHER CANDIDATE CARED ENOUGH ABOUT POOL FEES, OR ANY OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESS, TO WRITE A SUBMISSION. I make numerous written and verbal submissions to Council each year on issues that affect our community. Most of the other candidates only take an interest when elections roll around.

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4)      I ask questions. The only reason the community knows about the $176,000 legal fees and the $1.3 million “unliquidated damages” attached to the recent write-off of over $400,000 in relation to the Links golf course is because I questioned Council staff. Council was not going to tell the community about these costs otherwise.

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5)      I have been responsible for saving Council time and money through attention to detail. At a Council meeting on March 30, 2010 I pointed out a mistake by Council staff where a land swap was going to take place with the wrong piece of land being swapped. The Mercury reported this as an “embarrassing backdown” for council.

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6)      I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is. In 2003 I spent over $17,000 of my own money taking Council to the Land and Environment Court to force them to take decisions in accordance with the Local Government Act. Council had taken several decisions relating to the sale of public land in confidential session. I forced them to obey the Act and do things in an open and transparent fashion.

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7)      My team includes Sue Moran (my wife) who has been responsible for the release of the Shell Cove Management Agreement and other documents relating to this troubled project. Previous councilors had been unwilling or unable to have this document released. Sue took on Council using Freedom of Information and the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and had information released. After 12 years of being told these documents were secret ratepayers now can see what we signed up for and why this project is in such financial trouble. Sue has succeeded where others, including previous councillors, have failed.

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8)       Other members of my team include a retired magistrate and a JP. These are highly regarded local people who know how proper processes are supposed to work.

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9)      I have a plan to provide jobs in the area. The Shell Cove project includes a business park expected to provide 1000 permanent full-time job. Under the current plan these jobs will not come until 2018 at the earliest. Even that date depends on Council borrowing many millions to construct the marina first. I believe Council should use project funds to build the Business Park now.  We should seek Federal Government support to hook this Park into the National Broadband Network which is on line just 4 km down the road at Minnamurra.   We can wait at least 7 years for a marina that may never be built and use that to support jobs, or we can build the first NBN-connected Business Park near a major population centre in NSW and attract those jobs now. Most other candidates think those jobs should wait.

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10)  I do not believe in Party politics in local government. I am a member of the Greens but I am standing as an Independent, accepting no money or support from the Greens. If elected I would be answerable only to the community, not the Greens. I have fought for the local community’s interests for over 10 years – long before I joined the Greens. If eleOthers, including the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, wish to entrench Party politicted I would continue to fight for the local community.  cs in your council.

COUNCILLOR CALLS FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ON SHELL COVE

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Cr Peter Moran of Shellharbour City Council today urged the community to contact all the councillors and ask for the Council's Community Engagement Policy to be used in relation to the Shell Cove marina.

"For nearly twenty years Council has been telling the community that the Marina will be built using project funds. Not once have they ever actually asked the community if they want the marina. The Council has failed time and time again to deliver on this project, with missed deadlines and unrealised expectations. Now Council wants to commit the community to commercial risk based on heroic assumptions that even their own expert reports do not support" said Cr Moran.

"If the community supports this project, well so be it. The community should also be asked what services they are prepared to forego if the overly-optimistic assumptions prove to be inaccurate. Are we prepared to see swimming pools closed to help fund the marina? Do we accept that sports field fees will have to rise if the project fails to deliver on expectations?"

"I call on community members to contact all Councillors and ask for the Council's Community Engagement Policy (Level 3) to be used. This policy is to be used in cases of major projects that have a city-wide impact. There is no point having such a policy if it is not used. Given that the Council has never asked the community's opinion on this, let alone are we prepared to pay for it, now is surely the time to consult with the residents.

Clr Peter Moran (the good one)
Shellharbour City Council
0403 752838    

The Mystery of the Missing Jobs

Hallelujah. Miracles do happen.

At the briefing for councillors and the public last Tuesday night one of the slides showed that  the Shell  Cove project is expected to create 7200 jobs. I questioned this figure as it is, in my opinion, incorrect. I consider the true figure to be much lower and, in any case, most of the supposed jobs will be temporary construction jobs. I have raised this issue with Council in the past and have always had my concerns brushed off.

Funnily enough, as of Wednesday morning, Council is no longer claiming the project will create 7200 jobs. Overnight, and with no studies or modelling, Council has reduced that claim down to 6000 jobs. I wonder how much lower I can get them to go?

Shell Cove Briefing

Last night Council had the first of a series of meetings relating to the troubled Shell Cove Project. I have the impression it was a real eye opener to some of the Councillors.

It was good to hear Kevin James state that we (the Council) are the owners of the project and Australand is but a project manager for us. We cannot direct actions. We cannot require Australand to build the Marina any more than we can require them to turn back the tide or stop the sun in it’s tracks. 

There was a time when Council could have required that the Marina be built, but the council of the day decided not to have that happen. I refer to two documents from 1992, one of which is a tender matrix drawn up by Council and the other of which is a fax from Lang Walker to Council.

The tender matrix evaluated a short list of three developers against seventeen different criteria. Walker Corp was a distant third. Some six hours before the Councillors were to meet to decide the successful company Lang Walker faxed a revised offer to Council, part of which said “Walker would undertake to provide the necessary finance for the project works including a $2.0 million commitment to immediately commence Harbour construction.”

It will forever remain a mystery why those Councillors chose NOT to take up Mr Walker on his offer but one thing is certain, they believed the offer was genuine. How else would Walker have gone from last to first in a matter of hours?

Instead of having the marina constructed first council of the day chose to let it slide and the next year they signed a Management Agreement which does not allow Council to direct anything. Once Australand took over Walkers there was no chance of Council ever getting the upper hand.

Incidentally, last night I asked Mr James why Council had not pressed for the Marina to be constructed immediately, as the fax had offered. He seemed to suggest that with the complex approvals required for this project, perhaps the “immediate” time frame had not yet expired.

The most disappointing aspect of the night was the attitude of Council that this is a brilliant project that is going well. For years the community has been told it is all about diversifying the local economy and jobs, jobs, jobs. This is a residential development with a little bit of retail and a bit of tourism tacked on. Tourism retail accounts for 0.15% of the land area of the project and less than 0.5% of the jobs yet they still push it as being a tourist development.

I asked a question about jobs and got the response I expected. Council does not know how many jobs are being created by the project as they build subdivisions and lay services. This seems strange for an organisation that claims it is all about jobs. Council claimed last night that the project will create 7200 jobs. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I They don’t (and wont) tell us that more than a third of those jobs were temporary construction jobs in Shell Cove that have already been and gone. Thats right, those jobs built the present suburb of Shell Cove and those jobs are not here anymore. Another third of the project jobs are temporary construction jobs in the rest of the residential/commercial development. Nearly half of the rest of the jobs are in the Business Park. A total of 33 jobs are tourism related retail. They should say it’s all about job, job, job.

The biggest laugh of the night award went to the comment that a recent application to extend the life of the Bass Point quarry to forty years would take it beyond the time frames of the Shell Cove project.