What is it about councils that makes them so unresponsive and unimaginative? To get something done about the environment and get attention It seems that one must grab councillors by the niagaras and squeeze hard until they groan in agony. And all the time developments continue to go up at a relentless pace, shopping centres with no trees, housing estates with minimal garden space and no native plant corridors, no havens for wildlife, no sanctuaries for water birds, increasing litter and pollution, etc, etc. There should be two simple and basic questions for councils to ask before development or public works take place. Firstly, will the proposed development improve the quality of life of existing ratepayers? Secondly, will the proposed development improve the natural environment? Unless its a clear yes to both questions, proposals should just not be considered any further. When will they ever learn sang P, P & M.
Our local council here, although not the best, has done a lot concerning tree planting and the erradication of weeds from bush and park reserves in the district. They even donated some "bird boxes" to the local school and brought in a cherry picker to secure them high up in the school ground trees, all free of charge.
Over the past three years they have installed "pollution traps" in the storm water drains to catch all the rubbish before it ends up in the local streams. Last year a large underground tank was installed at the playing fields to catch rain water to use in watering the said fields, many complained about the cost, but I think it was a good idea.
Depends who is elected too, we have a mix of Independants and Greens plus the Labour/Liberal crowd. Last year I had a problem with a neighbours dog that wouldn't stop yapping day and night, council dealt with it swiftly and the dog is no more. So I cannot complain, currently they are looking at the Indian Mynah problem, which is very bad in some areas.
It all boils down to the saying: "You get what you elect"...
I like your comment Raven, "you get what you elect" .
We can't complain either. Cardinia Council (in the east of Melbourne) is very responsive to anything. But Melbourne Water is great, they look after the local lakes, and the wetlands around my area, and always have responded when asked to cleen up.One of the lakes is used a lot as a drinking spot at night, so lots of broken bottles and other stuff (!?) turn up in the water. But because I met with them at that location, it now gets cleaned once a month. Even more often if I ring them. Not much more you can ask for?
M-L
Yes, there are some councils which are very environmentally sensitive, others are tokenistic about the environment & the rest couldn't give a rat's armpit. The general impression I get is that if you want developers, with their one aim of making as much money as possible by whatever means, to dominate local government, don't vote in council elections. And that could be a key reason for so much bad development across our great nation. Only about 25 - 30% of eligible voters bother to vote.
To get better environments, peruse the candidates' policies & vote for the ones with the environment as top priority. And after they're elected keep them up to the mark & lobby their environmentally insensitive colleagues to do good environmental deeds. Write letters to the local & wider press about environmental issues. Always be positive towards council when its environmentally positive. Join an environmental group & lobby through that group.
But don't expect everything will go your way - at least not immediately. A case in point is that a number of people lobbied a local council near where I live about getting rid of feral vegetation from a creek. The council duly responded positively & got rid of the feral vegetation. Three years later they planted new feral vegetation to replace the old! Oh, dear, back to the drawing board.
Some of these comments make me think that the Greens, regardless of what people might think of them in the federal and state government sphere, may give good value at the council level. The same might be said of independents with environmental vision. I guess the message is vote wise and maintain vigilance and pressure.