Our first full City of Perth Council meeting after October's election took place at 5pm on Tuesday 21 November. As usual these updates are my personal opinion only and do not reflect the official position of the City or my colleagues on Council. You can view a livestream of the meeting by clicking here.
Sponsoring events, conferences and festivals
Council approved the following requests to secure future events in the City:
- $750,000 to AusCycling Road National Championships for three years (securing events at $250k per year from 2025 to 2027)
- $165,000 to Australian Oil & Gas Energy Conference for three years (securing events at $50k cash + $5k in-kind from 2024 to 2026)
- $80,000 to Strange Festival for June 2024
- $80,000 to Perth Chinese New Year Fair for February 2024
- $49,000 to Tarmac West 2024 for August & September 2024
- $18,100 to Skal International Perth for an international travel, tourism and hospitality conference in March 2024
Protection of trees on public land & managing pruning requests
In March 2023 Council supported my motion which asked the administration to report on the management of public tree pruning requests, including:
- details on the City’s current approach,
- a comparison of approaches used by other local governments, and
- consideration of a mechanism to escalate tree pruning related grievances for our residents and ratepayers.
To formalise this request and to provide a clearly articulated process for our community to follow, two new sub-sections were added to the ‘Tree Maintenance’ section on page 5 of the guidelines (page 139 of the agenda), outlining:
- the City’s process for assessing ad-hoc tree pruning requests, including the criteria under which pruning will be supported, and
- a grievance procedure whereby a resident can apply for review of a determination where pruning was not supported.
This is a positive move forward for the City, whereby we still maintain our protection of our valuable trees in the public domain, while allowing a transparent process for requests to prune where this previously did not exist. More information will be made available in the coming weeks as we update our public facing website.
Preparing for 2029 - Perth's Bicentennial
While it's many years away, Council has saved its first allocation of ratepayer funds ($2 million) to ensure the celebrations to mark our City's bicentennial are met with the appropriate preparation. Our 200th birthday as the greatest city in Australia deserves a special occasion and this will be achieved through saving ratepayer funds now so as to not burden ratepayers in the future.
Other decisions included:
- A change to the way the Perth City Deal strategy will be delivered via our planning team (click here to view my speech on the topic).
- Locking in our supporting security services provider for the next three years - this is a massive investment (one of the largest contracts we enter) which delivers new technology and better support for our in-house security and ranger services. This is a level of commitment Council has decided is necessary to keep our City as safe and as clean as possible
- Approving minor changes to parking local laws and kerbside parking rules which make it easier to understand and comply,
- Approving the advertising of a draft new signage policy which reduces complexity and provides greater clarity for ratepayers/applicants (page 7 of our agenda)
As usual if you need any help with the City please give me a call on 0406 681 432 or brent.fleeton@cityofperth.wa.gov.au
*Welcoming 6HEAD to the City of Perth - the 90th business to open in the City of Light this year*