Around 12,000 Logan homes received a letter over the past fortnight, letting them know their property had been impacted by council’s new flood plan.
Residents are saying the letter was confusing and aggravating.
A “lack of compassion” from bureaucrats caused former deputy mayor Jon Raven to lambast those responsible for the communication breakdown.
“We voted on this in February, I know it was contentious and some councillors disagree with it. No matter what your position is on climate change or floods I think everyone can agree that eight months is plenty of time to write a letter,” Cr Raven told a council meeting last week, and repeated in a Facebook video.
“The content of this letter is confusing residents. We asked for feedback on this letter, but it was at such short notice that it delayed the letter going out which is why it got out a week after the information was made public.
“Real estate agents, Joe Blogs down the street, developers, those that are most impacted have been put in the flood plain with the new flood awareness mapping and found out from everyone else but council.”
Cr Raven was one councillor who in February – despite advice by senior planning experts not to proceed with current mapping processes – voted to go with a new modelling plan, taking into account the latest rainfall data, climate change considerations and recent aerial surveys of ground levels.
Councillors Lane, Fraser, Bradley, Russell, Koranski, Raven, Stemp, Murphy and Mayor Power voted for the changes and councillors Bannan, Heremaia and Willcocks voted against. Councillor Hall abstained.
“There’s been $1.2 million spent on this flood mapping over two financial years. You can’t tell me in all that time we think of doing a communications plan last,” Cr Raven said.
“Eight months we had to get the letter right, to communicate clearly with our residents about what it means. There is confusion from people in the industry, these are planners, these are developers who understand planning and they don’t understand this letter.
“I expect us to do much better when we are impacting peoples live, when we are impacting the value of their properties, when we are creating a situation that can create fear we need to do better than that, we need to communicate with compassion, it needs to be concise and needs to be timely.”
Last week, Cr Scott Bannan also took aim at council’s communications strategy.
“The community should have been notified six months ago. It was done the wrong way,” he said.
