Councillors knock back Brooms conflict consultant proposal

By Tim Howard

Arriving at a plan of management for the Brooms Head Reserve has become so contentious Clarence Valley Council staff considered a conflict resolution consultant necessary to continue the process.

Council resolved in February to hear a further staff report on the long running attempt to arrive at a PoM for the reserve.

But when the report arrived it recommended ditching previous efforts and estimate costs for a new draft plan.

It also included recommendations to engage both a planning consultant and a “facilitator specialising in conflict resolution given the polarisation within the community regarding future management of the Reserve.”

To fund it the plan was to allocate $100,000 from the Crown Maintenance Reserve and include it in the 2024/25 Operational Plan.

The proposal was not to the liking of councillors.

Cr Debrah Novak (pictured) moved council continue with preparing the draft PoM in accordance with the resolution in February 2024, allocate funds up to $40,000 from the Crown Maintenance Reserve to complete this PoM.

The motion recommended funding the engagement of a planning consultant, but not a conflict resolution consultant.

It also stipulated the Terms of Reference for the PoM do not include, or relate to, the 2017 Concept Design

Report for Brooms Head Holiday Park.

Most councillors believed the need for conflict resolution was overstated, although all admitted the process to arrive at a PoM had been long and contentious, with some reference to attempts in 1995 to come up with a PoM.

In moving her motion, Cr Novak said many people at Brooms Head were happy with what the council proposed in its February 24 resolution and this motion if successful would “provide clarity” for the community.

But Cr Karen Toms said she could see trouble ahead if the council pressed ahead with current February resolution.

“It’s it is a it is a very contentious issue,” she said. “And I wish we could fix it so easily.

“But I come back to the information in the report that tells us that the Local Government Act 1993 does not make provision to amend an existing PoM.

“And we’ve got a very old PoM that I don’t think we even had proof that had went out to community consultation.”

Cr Toms said there she knew people in the community who were unhappy with the process.

“It’s it’s complicated because I think some of the community stakeholders don’t really understand what a plan of management is,” she said.

“They wanted to have it to have more teeth, they wanted to have nitty gritty things in there, but that’s not what Plans of Management do.”

Cr Toms was also concerned the $40,000 allocated would not cover what needed to be done and and the absence of conflict resolution consultant.

“In the report, it talks about $34,000 And it was $54,000,” she said.

“So we’ve got a bit of money.

We don’t know if that’s enough.”

Cr Toms said conflict resolution was perhaps not the right term, but she believed there needed to be some interaction with the community to ensure both it and the council were on the same page.

“We need to somehow bring the community with us,” she said.

“That’s what was said back in February or before we need to bring the community with us but I think the community also needs to understand really what a PoM is.”

Cr Steven Pickering said he had heard many different messages coming from the Brooms Head community about what was needed.

“They want a different goal from the plan of management I think that by putting the conflict resolution consultant back into the mix, will give for a more streamlined and hopefully a better outcome,” he said.

“In the end, we want to we want to plan of management that the community agree with.

We don’t we don’t want a plan of management that is being forced on the community because it just won’t work.”

He said the community were engaged and consulted in the previous plan of management, but when it came to council, there wasn’t one person that he spoke to me that agreed with the entire plan.

“If we don’t have the conflict resolution, and we don’t end up with a PoM that they all agree with, we’re going to be back to square one again,” he said.

“And we’ll be doing this for the third time within a couple of years and I don’t want to see that.”

But the majority of councillors were more optimistic.

Cr Bill Day said beginning again would offend many in the Brooms Head community.

“It seems this Brooms Head plan of management issue has been argued for just so long,” he said.

“Finally in February we seem to have reached a degree of consensus with most parties.

“I had quite a bit of feedback from Brooms Head, people, residents and people who use the caravan park saying that we’re very very happy with council’s decision in February.”

“It seemed that we were on the right track.”

Cr Greg Clancy said there were different views about what needed to be done, but his feedback was that it did not need a person to sort them out.

“I went to the campers and caravans annual meeting and I’ve talked to locals and I’ve talked to visitors so I’ve got a bit of an idea of across the board and I think we need to employ a planning consultant to complete the job,” he said.

Put to the vote, council voted 7-2 in favour of Cr Novak’s motion, with Crs Toms and Pickering against.

On 24 April, an upgrade to Byron Shire Council’s document management system resulted in some internal development related documents being viewable on the DA Tracker public web portal.

The DA Tracker is Council’s online portal that allows users to track the progress of development applications.

“Access to the DA Tracker was temporarily suspended as soon as we became aware of the issue, and the removal of the internal documents from the DA Tracker public web portal was completed on 29 April”. Council’s Manager Business Systems and Technology, Colin Baker said.

“We are currently investigating this incident to determine the exact nature and extent of the documents incorrectly published.” Mr Baker said.

Council takes the privacy of its customers very seriously and has engaged the NSW State Government’s Cyber incident response team to assist with the investigation. If it is determined that a data breach occurred, Council will be contacting any person directly impacted, and following other mandatory reporting requirements.

Customers concerned about this incident can contact Colin Baker, Manager of Business Systems and Technology by calling 02 6626 7347.