COUNCILLORS have decided not to rejoin an alliance of councils united against climate change since they believe Frankston Council already does enough environmental work in the climate change mitigation arena.
A council officers’ report tabled at the public council meeting last Monday (19 February) recommended council reinstate its membership of the South East Councils Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA).
A 6-3 majority of councillors voted down the proposal with some citing a “duplication” of existing climate change mitigation programs at council and were also concerned about the amount of time council officers would spend on the group’s projects.
The existing SECCCA council members are Mornington Peninsula Shire, Kingston, Bayside, Port Phillip, Dandenong, Casey, Cardinia Shire, Bass Coast Shire and Baw Baw Shire.
Frankston Council was a founding member in 2004 but left the group several years later.
Councillors at this month’s public meeting who voted against rejoining the SECCCA felt a $16,000 annual membership fee cost to ratepayers could not be justified.
Cr Steve Toms had supported council re-establishing itself as a member of the group.
“Climate change is one of the world’s most important issues, if not the world’s most important issue,” he said at the meeting.
“Council would be in a unique position to benefit from many grants available from the state government that council would not otherwise be able to benefit from if we were a member of this group.”
Cr Kris Bolam said council’s membership of other groups including the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV)
“It’s over duplicating the existing process,” he said.
“As a council, we already offer a number of services and initiatives to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
Cr Quinn McCormack also said “it is a bit of duplication”.
“We probably don’t need to be party to a group to achieve our climate change goals within council,” she said.
“I think we’re well and truly working on those and it’s likely that we are actually ahead of a lot of other councils with respect to our climate change and zero emissions targets as we’ve stated in our strategic plan.”
Crs Toms, Glenn Aitken and Sandra Mayer voted to rejoin the SECCCA. Crs Bolam, Brian Cunial, McCormack, Lillian O’Connor, O’Reilly, Toms and the mayor Cr Colin Hampton voted against membership.
Councillors agreed to look at membership of the SECCCA in a year’s time.
