Nick Cooke

21:08 Nick Cook: My name is Nick and I'm here tonight to speak as a concern promoter resident about the placemaking study that has been thrust upon Pomona. I followed this study pretty closely. I've engaged in the process. I've engaged with the staff responsible for running it. And unfortunately, I've identified several issues with the consultation itself. This is very problematic considering this is one of the biggest town planning exercise Pomona has faced in years. And to have inadequate consultation is a red flag. The report to council from the placemaking committee back in February stated the placemaking must monitor, evaluate and report on the implementation and progress of the placemaking program. And here we are six weeks in and I don't feel like that's happening. I haven't seen it happening. At least I haven't seen it happening from staff or councillors. So I'm here today to address those issues, bring them to your attention, particularly these issues around communication, consultation, notification, transparency and scrutiny of the actual process itself. I have a lot of time, so I'm going to just go across some of the main ones I've identified, particularly the communication and notification. The communication with residents so far has largely been inadequate. So many people in Pomona really don't know what's going on.

22:23 It seems to be two camps in Pomona. You've got the people who have no idea the placemaking is even happening. And then the other camp where they know it's happening, but they can't tell you what it's about. They can't articulate it. I don't know what's going on. And it's creating angst in the community. If you ask most residents in Pomona, you'll find they'll say, we don't want Pomona to change, we want to stay the same. And to have a project like this come forward with, you know, very vague descriptions and not really clear and concise information, it adds to that angst. So the other issue is the fact that there hasn't, or appears there hasn't been any consultation with the community to actually select Pomona as the pilot town. I see that it seems to be it was decided in the council meeting and that if you ask the people of Pomona, do you want to be studied as the guinea pig for Noosa? They would say no. And so I think that needs to be considered in this. You know, this placemaking study has been in the works for years from the research I've done. And in fact, the committee report stated that it was included in the 2019-2020 budget and there was also a placemaking workshop in 2022. So that's been in the works for years.

23:39 But when it was released to the community for community consultation, we got approximately one week's notice. And those consultation events were crammed into two days, Friday and Saturday. Council have obviously recognised those problems and they've extended the consultation to the 8th of October, originally the 24th. But this is reactive and placemaking should never be reactive. It should be comprehensive at the beginning and it shouldn't be six weeks in already have these issues and these issues only identified by residents themselves. Some of them, like, for example, on Friday, there was a Friday social at 3 o'clock on a Friday and had no location online, so no one even knew where to turn up to. That was quietly changed on the website after I made complaints. There was nothing online of where to get a hard copy survey. That was again quietly changed on the website after the fact. Since then, Council have added another sketching workshop, another workshop through the town and two pop ups, one at the market and one at the Noosa show, which was problematic in itself because it's essentially behind a paywall where you have to pay to enter the show to engage in the consultation, which doesn't constitute equitable access. Again, it's reactive to add these things after concerns have been raised that should have been raised at the beginning, should have been identified at the beginning. One of the other issues a lot of residents are saying is that it's concerning that most of the consultation information is online only, mostly online, it should have really been sent to residents by post day one, you know, because this is excluding people in Pomona that don't have internet access and people, you know, they know that Pomona is an aged population.

25:12 The livability survey showed large section are over 65. In fact, two thirds of Pomona are over 45 years old and a large section of them are over 65. So it's not inclusive. It's not as it removes their ability to engage. They don't even know about it, which I'm finding and speaking to people. Also, the consultation documents are not freely available to all. For example, this Pomona Place Plans workshop booklet. It's actually quite a good consultation booklet, 16 pages long, and it goes through Pomona street by street. Yet this isn't made available to everyone. You only get access to this if you go to the workshop and if you actually register, which places are limited, so even if it did have good turnout, which it didn't. The one I went to only had five community members there.

25:58 Only a small section have access. That should be online and everyone should be encouraged to fill it out. You can't. And there's only a couple of weeks left for the consultation. The other issue is this testing of new governance structures. Pomona has been selected to pilot this new governance structure that there's not much information out there. It's also not included in any of the consultation information. It's not not discussed at the consultations either. But in discussions with the consultants, I found out that it would be a committee that would be representing Pomona and it would be more than a reference group and it would be active actioning projects on the ground, which sounds great, but there's questions around it. How will it be selected? Will council be selecting them? Will there be conflicts of interests? Will there be registers? Will there be checks and balances on that? Questionable. And will it still be subject to council determinations and not subvert the democratically elected councillors? The other issue, which I would say is probably one of the major ones, is who is responding to this consultation and how can council actually determine who's responding when there's no mechanism in place to determine the identity or location of the respondents?

27:01 This is concerning. This is concerning when because it opens up the consultation to outside influences and it is not unwarranted when Pomona is under the microscope with the South East Queensland regional plan, basically Queensland might focus on Pomona. It's been earmarked for development. So you've got external influences that want to get into Pomona. You've got town planning, construction companies, developers. One example of the outside influence is the QUT student study. This has been happening in Pomona for years, I think about nine years, and the students come in and they reimagine the town and places and buildings. It's great for the students. But this year, I don't think it's going to be great for the people of Pomona because it hasn't been a subject to community consultation. And it is, it's well, at the last, was it the sketching workshop? Councillor Lawrenson said that she'd be working with, who was it? Brian O'Connor from the Pomona Chamber of Commerce to work to get these students projects inserted into the placemaking study. It's absolutely concerning and it shouldn't happen because, again, it was not the result of the community consultation.

28:18 The QUT students works were actually, they didn't have a limitation on what they could do. It was open to whatever they did. Like some of the students could do a zip line into Pomona. You could have a big water park at the theme park. It was designed for an academic exercise, not necessarily for implementation in Pomona. So I think that needs to stop if there's any plans in there to incorporate. That's that's an example of the outside influence, the data.

28:45 Councillor Wilkie: It would be OK if you can attempt the comments that it doesn't personally target any individual in this room.

28:54 Nick Cook: OK. That was the rationale for raising it.

28:58 Councillor Wilkie: Yeah, OK.

28:59 Nick Cook: Because I've always been told it was an academic exercise. There's no right of reply.

29:02 Councillor Wilkie: It's an unfair form.

29:05 Nick Cook: OK, well, in general, no counsellors should be working to include any of these works into the placemaking study without consultation with the people. Well, at all, actually, because the actual study itself was not a result of community consultation. The other problem with the outside influence is the day after this QUT study that students come into town, which is the first study that was done, company called Built Environment Collective posted the Pomona Community Board online.

29:30 Councillor Wilkie: Sorry, Nick, I think the point was that counsellor lies in dispute. That was the case. OK. That's an incorrect statement.

29:38 Nick Cook: OK.

29:41 So I'll retract the statement. Thank you. And I'll clarify that.

29:48 Built Environment Collective. Yeah, so they're a town planning company, done lots of big projects across Australia. And they put this post in the Pomona Community Board asking the community what they wanted. And people in Pomona, you know, not unsurprisingly objected to it, asked, what are you doing? What are you, what's your interest in Pomona? And they said the placemaking study had quite peaked out interest. So that's another example of an outside company from Brisbane that has an interest in this placemaking study. And without any mechanism to determine the location or identity of respondents, it's basically open to direction, driven to be driven in the direction of economic interests.