Shoalhaven Council has voted to reclassify a group of council properties from community land to operational land, opening the way for them to be sold. Some of those buildings are used by a homeless shelter, a youth centre and disability services. The organisations affected reportedly learned their buildings were on the list only when the council report became public. I have spent years arguing that governments should speak to the people affected before making decisions. So my first question was simple. How does that happen?
If a homeless shelter, a youth service or a disability organisation is using a council building every day, how do they not get a phone call saying, “We’re under enormous financial pressure and we’re looking at every option. We need to talk.”
Maybe there is an explanation. I want to hear it. Yes a number of Councils are under enormous financial pressure. They are expected to deliver more services, maintain more assets and somehow make the numbers add up. I don’t envy them.
What I do struggle with is a decision-making process that appears to leave the people most affected reading about their future in a council agenda. That isn’t how trust is built.
My community has seen this in action. People in Kiama have already watched community land become operational land before it was sold. We know these decisions divide communities because we’ve lived through one ourselves.
That made me wonder whether Shoalhaven is an isolated case, or whether we’re seeing the beginning of a much bigger trend across New South Wales. That’s what I’m going to find out.
This is the first of three articles. The next one looks at other councils that have reclassified community land and asks whether a precedent is emerging.
The third asks the question sitting underneath all of this. Why are councils reaching this point in the first place?
This article is part of a series examining the decisions that shape our communities long before most people hear about them. I am following the stories behind local government decisions to better understand how public assets are managed, how communities are involved and what those decisions mean for future generations. See my second blog in the series here