Get involved in Coast planning urges Cr Russell Green
THE Sunshine Coast Council has a draft plan to take Noosa into the future and Councillor Russell Green is urging locals to get involved regardless of the looming de-amalgamation process.
The council is planning to take its first regional draft planning scheme - which started to take shape in 2009 - out on the road for people to learn how it may impact on them, so they can then make submissions before the December 14 deadline.
The first of the Noosa planning information displays will be at The J, in Noosa Junction, on Tuesday, October 30, from 2-6pm and Cr Green is finalising a series of Noosa-based add-on public forum sessions to follow on from these.
"The Noosa Plan when it was done received 1500 submissions, so I'd expect we'll probably have a minimum of 3000 submissions Coast-wide and staff will have to respond to all of them," Cr Green said this week.
"A lot of the questions that are going to come to us are, 'When de-amalgamation occurs, how does this Sunshine Coast planning scheme affect Noosa?'
"Well, the answer is it's very easy. You just take out the pieces, the maps, the codes, the levels of assessment that are relevant to Noosa."
Cr Green said the new Noosa councillors then might want to make amendments if they were not entirely happy with what they had inherited.
And there is also the old Noosa planning fallback.
"The Noosa Plan still has a currency of 12 months after this plan has been adopted where people can asked to be assessed under it," he said.
"What we're saying to people in the first instance is this is really about having a look and trying to understand what the changes may actually be. And once you've done that, either go to one of the planning displays and talk to the planners or go to the council office and make an appointment to talk to a planner."
Cr Green said the associated public forums were about sharing information and communicating rather than debates on the floor about what might be happening.
"People need to find out, will the planning scheme affect me?" he said.
"So they need to get involved and view the planning scheme on the council website and make a submission."
The draft scheme has also been assessed by the former Noosa Iconic Place Advisory Panel, of which Cr Green is a member, for suggestions about fine-tuning. A four-page council information sheet on the new planning scheme is being posted out to all Coast residents and states this important new document "seeks to protect the iconic values" of Noosa.
