New committee format is more conducive to community input says Mayor

A motion tabled by Councillor Barry Calvert to do away with all existing advisory committees, with the exception of the Heritage Advisory Committee, was met with stiff opposition by half of the chamber.

It took the mayoral casting vote of Councillor Patrick Conolly for the matter to be approved.

As of December 31, the following council committees will be dissolved: access and inclusion; human services advisory; tourism advisory; waste management advisory; civics and citizenship; floodplain risk management advisory; infrastructure; and environmental sustainability advisory committee.

Gone too will be the executive positions held by community representatives and their right to a vote.

Replacing these will be four new committees, each made up of five councillors, who will set the agenda and make all the decisions.

The new committees are: Community Services; Environment; Tourism; and Disaster and Emergency. They will be responsible for a number of items previously handled separately.

Before the matter was debated, council heard from community representative and deputy chair of the Heritage Advisory Committee, Graham Edds.

Mr Edds, a well-known specialist heritage consultant, said he was against dismantling the advisory committees.

"I believe that dissolution of all of the advisory committees will prove to be a retrograde step and one that alienates community involvement in the proper and best practiced development of the Hawkesbury into the future," he said.

"Amalgamation of some committees may well be appropriate, but I'm not sufficiently aware of their workings to discuss individual committees further.

"Are councillors saying that individually or collectively they have all of the skills to preside and make knowledgeable decisions for every council advisory committee?"

Mr Edds said that he believed this change would "stifle community input" and would not be in the best interest of the area.

He said that if denied a vote in his committee, he would not feel satisfied with his involvement and believed others may feel the same.

Speaking for his motion, Councillor Calvert said that the notion of restructuring council's advisory committees had been on the table for four years, with numerous briefings and workshops held over the last two.

He said that the new approach would give more community members access to the committees.

"Based on NSW parliament structure, where the committees are set up as committees of council and in this case committee members are councillors," he said. "That is the structure I have always been pushing for and I think I made that quite clear.

"They are not meant to be a merged committee, they are one committee that has a number of functions to deal with."

Under the new structure councillors will set the agenda. Items will be advertised and the public will be invited to take part in meetings, including debate, from the floor. The five councillors will then come to a decision.

"What we're doing here is not selecting a small number of members of the public to get involved, we're opening it to all members of the public and I can't see why people would be saying we're restricting the number of people that can get involved, we're actually increasing the number of people," said Cr Calvert.

"It is a move forward and it is something that should have happened years ago."

Councillor Danielle Wheeler failed in her bid to amend the motion to retain community members at the helm of the committees with the councillors.

"I wonder the mindset of us moving to a parliamentary style system when we are not a parliament," she said.

Cr Wheeler, who chairs the unchanged Heritage Advisory Committee, also questioned the notion put forward that more community members would be involved in the process.

"You might get more people attending but their involvement will be far more superficial," she said.

"We [councillors] have a vote in this chamber, we don't need to dominate the vote in the committees as well."

Councillor John Ross argued that the voice of many groups was crucial to the success of council's advisory committees, in particular those with a disability.

He feared those could be lost under the new structure.

Coiuncillor Peter Reynolds questioned councillors setting the agenda for meetings. He said it left the process open to "political manipulation".

He also said lessening the roles of community members could be a real loss for council.

"We're paid and they're not and they undoubtedly spend more time preparing for committee meetings than we do," he said.

"I'm flabbergasted."

Councillor Emma-Jane Garrow read the council and email she had been sent by Tourism Advisory Committee member and Hawkesbury Harvest CEO Ian Knowd.

In it Mr Knowd expressed his disappointment and frustrations after having worked hard on numerous items over the past three year period with the committee.

After the meeting, Cr Conolly issued a media statement celebrating the new structure, saying it opened the committees to the whole community.

"Committee agendas will now be published in a similar manner to the way that council meetings are currently published so that we can ensure the community has advanced notice of what will be discussed," he said.

"Until now, meetings of committees of council have been held in private, with only a handful of appointed community members invited to participate in each committee. This system has been replaced by new committees which will publish their agendas and allow any member of the public to address the committee on any agenda item.

"All members of the public are welcome to make submissions to the committees and they can attend and participate in the committee meetings.

"On behalf of Council, I sincerely thank each member of the dissolved committees for their many years of dedicated service. I will also be contacting them to inform them of the opportunity to participate in the new committee structure."