Outrage over new flood mapping impacting 20,000 local properties has become “out of control”, with police called to a town meeting last week and another cancelled following online threats to council staff.
Despite the chaos, mayor Jon Raven described the meeting as productive, saying he left with 10 potential fixes to flood policy that came “straight from the mouths of the community”.
Over the last few weeks, 20,000 landowners received letters informing them their properties would be impacted by updated flood mapping.
For many, it was déjà vu – an unsettling reminder of a similar controversial letter sent out to residents in 2022.
At the time, due to state government requirements, the local council introduced new flood modelling that labelled properties – some never touched by flood waters – as “at risk”.
Ever since, residents have reported sudden spikes to their insurance premiums (some by more than 400%, and reaching tens of thousands of dollars), while others have cited concerns over potential hits to property value.
Things came to a head at a town hall meeting in Jimboomba last week attended by 350 people, with rowdy residents heckling the mayor and council staff.
Those in attendance described the situation as scary, and police were called. Eventually the situation diffused. Residents were able to ask questions and chat with council staff.
Days later, deputy mayor Scott Bannan announced a follow up meeting had been cancelled over violent threats made to council staff.
“First and foremost, staff deserve to feel safe,” Cr Bannan said.
“We are going to get a solution [to flood mapping concerns], we can’t get a solution when people are threatening to injure or harm staff.”
Regardless, he said online consultation would continue, and he encouraged residents to partake.
Cr Raven said council was listening to residents, and was already working on changes to the flood policy which would help solve some key concerns.
While he didn’t say what those changes were, the mayor said he was focused on ensuring the mapping did its job, which was to keep people safe and protect the flood plain by not building structures that would disrupt it.
“The mapping as it is now aims to be very thorough. The direction that was given when [councillors] voted for this back in 2022 was to do a review of the flood mapping, make them align with the state planning requirements, and then implement them,” Cr Raven said.
“Now, a lot of my questions, which residents asked at the town hall meeting, are around: have we gone beyond what the legislation requires? And if we did, is there a reason for it?
“Because that is not what we understood we were voting on.”
Logan City Council has invited residents to submit their ideas through the official channel -logan.qld.gov.au/loganplan.
Cr Raven has also asked residents with hiked insurance premiums to forward their quotes onto his office, which will forward them onto the Insurance Council of Australia.
“… because they told me that wouldn’t happen,” he said.
Don’t get cranky at the council or insurance companies. The climate change risk to our properties is caused by fossil fuel companies, promoting and selling a killer of our planet, kids and grandkids – and our elected reps too timid to call them out.