This report covers my third term as President of the Gungahlin Community Council. The contributions of the committee have enabled us to continue the impressive record of achievement for a local community council and to demonstrate strong commitment to local issues.
GCC maintained a high profile through its use of traditional and social media in pursuing and communicating issues. We used our contacts, networks and the media to very good advantage!
Setting the scene –Gungahlin’s development melange
Gungahlin scored 5 new projects in the last act budget with the only major items being the signalisation of the William Slim Drive/Barton Highway roundabout and construction of an access road into the new suburb of Throsby.
We missed out on the duplication of Gundaroo Drive and relief of parking problems at Yerrabi – both in our top 5 list. 7 more projects were classified as work in progress and one, the completion of Horse Park Drive, was achieved in mid-July. Another GCC priority issue – intersections in the eastern end of the town centre – is under consideration. However the ‘waiting game’ continues in the town centre, in particular along Hibberson Street.
Gungahlin Town Centre is evolving – moving inexorably away from the concept of a quiet urban village – but it is not yet at the stage of a dynamic commercial environment.
Activities
GCC progressed its objective to upgrade communications with community residents through greater use of the various forms of media available. We sought to make the community more aware of plans and developments in the area and of issues that the Council intended to pursue.
GCC continued to update its list of issues and provided these to stakeholders as well as publishing them on the GCC website and in most editions of Gunsmoke.
Our Gunsmoke newsletter was improved to provide more reader-friendly material. The invaluable support and advice provided by James Milligan of JM Publishing enabled steady improvements to the quality and content of the publication so that readability and appeal were enhanced. In the past year we produced 6 editions (July September, November, February April and June) to the set schedule, with all editions being available for the public meetings in the month of release.
Relationships were enhanced with My Gungahlin to develop opportunities for better promotion of events and issues throughout the Gungahlin community.
We participated in a number of NBN events and featured in media interviews on a wide range of topics. Comments were frequently featured in newspaper, radio and television media. GCC sought to ensure that the provision of the long awaited NBN services continued throughout all of Gungahlin with an aim of our district achieving the highest take-up rate around the country.
GCC maintained its contact with a wide variety of groups, including the Planning and Development Forum, to convey its views on matters affecting the Gungahlin community. We established strong links with Community @ Work to support their profile after merging with the GRCS and retained involvement in seeking continuation of the Gungahlin Community Forum.
As President I maintained contact with a number of ACT Government Directorates at senior level to discuss issues of concern and to ascertain information about developments. I participated in Bush on the Boundary meetings to keep abreast of conservation issues (and learn form a broad range of conservation interests) and attended forums on Light Rail, Water Quality, Air traffic Noise, Climate Change, City to the Lake planning, City Centre planning and Aged Cities planning.
GCC continued its efforts to encourage community participation in Community Council activities:
•The community were encouraged to respond to issues featured in the issues list, on Facebook and to email surveys/comments. •A hard copy version of Gunsmoke was retained with regular attempts to elicit community interest. Print runs of over 1000 per edition enabled distribution throughout the community. •Notices of meetings noted the topics to be covered and meetings featured an update on issues as well as planned activities. •The GCC sought to ensure community was well informed about events in the region.
GCC continued to hold regular monthly (with the exception of January) community/public meetings. Meetings were advertised on the GCC website, via Facebook, in hard copy versions of our newsletter (Gunsmoke) and through the extensive GCC email contact list. Specific topics for each meeting were promoted and all members of the community invited to attend.
Committee Expansion
Seven new members joined the Committee with four members continuing. It is pleasing to see more residents showing an interest in community activities. I hope that our approach to representation of community issues will continue to attract more talent, of different age cohorts, to become involved in helping to address the concerns and interests of the Gungahlin community – both residential and commercial.
Achievements
Development gains take some time to reach fruition in this area. I continued my theme that the provision of services, infrastructure and amenities significantly lags the population growth and that we seem to wait for years to get the essential services we require.
However we can now see significant progress on issues that have been pushed for over the past 4-8 years. We now have a Leisure Centre and an Enclosed Oval. The office building is surging ahead and starts have been made on the Commonground complex, the mosque and the Park’n’Ride facility. The new cinema complex is still outstanding! Light Rail remains a prominent issue. Other developments and improvements (Bunnings site, Raiders Club extensions, new club site and Woolworths extensions are in train but generally with no firm start dates yet. All will add life to the centre. It is likely that the lack of a quick start to most of those projects will result in huge disruptions to users and residents of the town centre if they come on stream together.
By far the biggest impacts will be on traffic flow and parking. In fact lack of parking, already at critical levels on the northern side of the town centre, will become much worse when the above projects are commenced.
Add to this the ‘uncertainty’ about light rail and its impact on the town centre and we have a situation where residents, businesses and visitors to Gungahlin will be faced with significant inconvenience for long periods.
Development continues along Flemington Road, with more to come, but this has not been matched by commercial development in the Town Centre. Traffic problems been not been fully addressed to the satisfaction of residents.
The Gungahlin Community needs urgent comprehensive consultation about the Gungahlin Master Plan so we can engender comment about future developments. The key theme is to provide Gungahlin with amenities and services we need and want so that we (the residents) do not have to leave the district for jobs, shopping, recreation and entertainment. The aim is to make us a truly self-contained satellite centre!
A great initiative we introduced this year was the holding of Business Breakfasts. After 2 highly successful events (February – featuring the Chief Minister and CEO ACT Chamber of Commerce and July – featuring the ACT Opposition Leader and CEO of Canberra Business Council) we plan to continue with that theme and perhaps add another form of business program. The primary theme for each event was the potential for business expansion in Gungahlin and the speakers provided a valuable range of perspectives. Overall the events considerably raised awareness of business conditions and opportunities in Gungahlin.
We continually seek to improve communications to get out to a large component of the community. We advance issues to test community reaction and will not proceed if there is insufficient reaction. But we can combine the views of significant community reaction by targeting the right areas in government to seek change. We can achieve this through the Issues List and representations via the large number of forums in which we are involved. This is well beyond the scope of a typical resident.
However we rely heavily on community input to frame the right messages. We rely heavily on community involvement and participation. We want to see more people attending our meetings, reading Gunsmoke online and joining our Facebook page. We also want to use email communications and surveys to a greater degree as well as social media.
We arranged to embark on a major community survey in conjunction with the University of Canberra but they withdrew due to other priorities. GCC will undertake the survey process itself with a slightly longer timeframe. We are partnering with In Love 40% to conduct a one day Inquiry by Design forum (on 8 September) on Light Rail to explore the needs and wishes of local stakeholders in relation to the Gungahlin to Mitchell segment.
We are in a sound financial condition and the new committee looks forward to serving you well in the coming year.
Ewan Brown President July 2014.
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