Protect Pittwater demerger campaign reinvigorated by new committee
Pittwater’s demerger campaign has been reinvigorated by a new committee focused on regaining an independent council.
Taking over as Protect Pittwater Association president is local lawyer Simon Dunn, the son of the first elected Pittwater Mayor Robert Dunn.
The senior Mr. Dunn was at the forefront of the original and successful fight for Pittwater to secede from Warringah in 1992.
Protect Pittwater announced the new committee over the long weekend, including local residents Anna Maria Monticelli as secretary and Amanda Robson as treasurer.
Mr. Dunn flagged a vigorous campaign in coming months, noting the NSW government’s promise of demerger plebiscites in former council areas that demand it.
“Never has there been a more critical time to engage the Pittwater community to protect the natural environment of Pittwater. A change of State Governments presents both a threat of increased reliance on arbitrary housing targets, but also an opportunity to hold NSW Labor to its election promise to allow communities who opposed the undemocratic forced amalgamations to return to their former boundaries and restore true local government. The honeymoon for the oversized Northern Beaches Council is coming to an end with the temporary boost in State funding to smooth over the community anger now drying up and the impossibility of such a large organisation being able to provide any semblance of local government now resulting in a mass exodus of staff and a lack of community engagement. More alarmingly, the promise of allowing each former council area to maintain its own planning controls has been forgotten and drastic rezoning looms large under the guise of so called “harmonisation”. With the recent passing of many of the previous great protectors of Pittwater, it is time for the next generation of Pittwater residents who appreciate the unique and beautiful characteristics of this great area we are blessed to live in to step up and join the push to restore Pittwater Council as the great protector of our natural environment it once was.” Mr. Dunn said.
Protect Pittwater, with the support of thousands of local residents, has kept the vision of a standalone Pittwater Council alive since its amalgamation with Warringah and Manly Councils into the Northern Beaches Council in 2016.
Since the association’s inception in 2017, the committee has organised crowdfunding to finance legal advice regarding a potential challenge to the merger, run and supported rallies at Parliament House and locally, as well as gathered more than 3,000 signatures on a demerger petition for the NSW state government.
Chaired by former Pittwater Councillor, the late Bob Grace, Protect Pittwater’s active members have at different times included: former Pittwater Mayor, the late Lynne Czinner; former Pittwater Councillor Sue Young; current Pittwater Ward Councillor Miranda Korzy; David Wenden; Pip Rey; Pru Wawn; Guy Finlay; John Ogden; and Marcia Rackham.
Protect Pittwater is also a supporter of the Demerge NSW Alliance (DNA), joining similarly concerned citizens from at least 10 of the 21 merged mega councils, urging the new
Labor government in Macquarie Street to uphold its election promise of binding plebiscites in local areas to assess support for demergers.
Mr. Dunn said Northern Beaches Council is seen by locals to be lacking an appreciation of Pittwater’s distinctive natural and built environments, illustrated in its Draft Conservation Zones Review last year.
The review proposed removing almost 1,750 Pittwater properties from the protected Conservation Zone to the developer-friendly Residential Zones, thus opening them up to the State Environmental Planning Policy for Housing which would allow increased density.
Although some properties exposed to serious hazards would move into Conservation Zones, the review’s proposals would reduce protections for tree canopy and wildlife corridors at properties downgraded to Residential Zones – extending from Palm Beach to Elanora.
“Pittwater residents are angry about NBC’s failure to meet the area’s maintenance and other needs, as well as forcing a conformist suburban character on an area distinguished by a geography and ecology not shared by the council’s more southern regions,” Mr. Dunn said.
“With its unnecessary planned ‘harmonisation’ of Local Environment Plans across Pittwater, Warringah and Manly, the NBC is ignoring the valuable ecological and geographic richness of Pittwater, proverbially killing the goose that laid the golden egg.” “NBC plans would change the nature of Pittwater forever!”