A carefully-worded Logan City Council statement is at first glance innocuous, celebrating a proposed private hospital for the city – the same one announced on the front page of MyCity Logan two weeks ago.
Council’s release includes quotes of support from the mayor – on a deal not yet done.
It makes sense to support such a project. It’s a great one. And one the city should be proud of, when it happens.
So what’s the matter?
The matter is that council is bound by equity – a process of fair and accountable assessment for all development projects.
When a development application is lodged, city planners, engineers and others will look at it and assess whether the project meets legal, zoning and other town planning requirements.
There is then be a 21-day public notice period, during which people are invited to submit objections or points of note. Policy states how these should be dealt with in the overall process of approval.
It must be clear: The issue here has nothing to do with the hospital which is rightly stating its intention to expand into our great city. That’s an exciting prospect.
Council’s statement uses the right words – “proposed” and “being assessed” – yet the problem sits with the political pressure it puts on council employees to keep the mayor and others happy.
Can council officers be swayed by political opinion. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is if council is happy to declare its hand on this development, it should be happy to openly discuss the status of “all” developments proposed for the city – good, bad or ugly.
The latest statement has the potential to create a precedent, which might indeed be a good thing – that is, if equity is as important to councils as it was when the CCC swept through the state’s local government system five years ago.
Rest assured though, that won’t be the case.
When asked for an opinion on other, less glamourous projects, council’s response is often less glowing.
One councillor, when asked about a particular project recently, said he would rather wait for the results of the public notice period before passing judgement.
Other councillors, despite an apparent feeling that social media is an appropriate place to post thoughts among friends, cite policy as a reason for not sharing opinions with the media – a policy which incidentally, does not exist.
What may exist is an internal process which requires media enquiries to go through a professional team. Fair enough, but councillors remain legally entitled to a public opinion on all matters.
Queries to council on other projects have been met with responses such as: “under assessment”, “commercial in confidence” or “the matter is being dealt with by the courts”.
The at times deafening silence is a far cry from the mayor’s “council welcomes this project” because it “will” create new jobs – prior to hearing out what his team of professionals, or the public, think.
Under a truly equitable communications policy – built with fairness and integrity – council would be bound to treat all projects the same way.
They can offer an opinion on how they believe all projects align with the city’s goals “before” the assessment process takes place.
Or, if that’s not seen as a good way forward, all projects should be assessed before council goes looking for cheap brownie points.
Equity. Take your pick.
