I am a member of the Dolphin Sands Ratepayers Association (DSRA).
The committee has published on the DSRA website a copy of its submission to council on the Cambria Green rezoning application. The submission is said to be based on the views expressed by the 71 respondents who participated in a survey conducted by DSRA.
The committee advised that after the completion of the survey it would not consult members on the submission to be forwarded to Council.
Having read the submission I wish, as a single respondent to the survey, to make it known to all respondents that the submission supports the SAP with amendments. I strongly disagree with this outcome and encourage members of DSRA that are not aligned with this decision to send an immediate email to Council divorcing yourself from the submission.
It does not in my view reflect the views of the community overall and does not accurately reflect the survey results.
The submission appears to be predicated on the assumption that the SAP will be approved and seeks some amendments and assurances. The reality is that a substantial part of the community is not supportive of the SAP proposal and I think it is reasonable to say that sentiment is reflected in the survey results.
Mitty Williams
Cambria Drive
Dolphin Sands
Thanks Mitty, Brett and Grant. I agree, there were parts of the SAP I had no issue with, and parts I was opposed to. I have no idea how to translate that into a binary "Yes or No" as to whether I support the SAP in a survey question. If I say Yes I am choosing to not voice my opposition, if I say No, then I am throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
With hindsight, I think the DSRA members have expected too much of their committee in wanting them to put together a representative submission, given the polarised views evident in the community with various degrees of conditional support (or opposition) in between. In trying to meet this expectation, there has been a personal toll to our committee members and some damaged friendships up and down the peninsula. for what I now view was an impossible task. I don't think any of them took on the volunteer job expecting that to be an outcome.
As someone who spends all day making risk-based decisions, I truly hate hindsight. Where I went wrong is blindingly obvious after the s@#t has hit the fan, but none of the newly minted experts were providing advice when critical decisions had to be made.
Mitty has echoed the comments of another ratepayer I was talking to this afternoon. Maybe next time, we as members need to ask our committee to just make the information accessible to us, provide us with an expert report or 2, maybe do a survey and provide the results to us, but leave it up to individuals to make submissions on their own behalf.