ALL nine Frankston councillors voted behind closed doors to nominate Long Street Reserve in Langwarrin as their preferred site for a new kindergarten last year.
Frankston Council is currently considering two different options to build a kinder on the Langwarrin reserve. At their most recent council meeting they unanimously decided to make the secret vote they held on the matter last year public.
In October last year, no councillors opposed a confidential motion to “endorse the Long Street Reserve to be the preferred site for the Langwarrin Child & Family Centre to enable further planning and feasibility to be undertaken”.
Once the kinder plans were publicly revealed, community backlash began. A protest was held at the reserve last month, and council has received a petition with 1751 signatures opposing the plans.
Councillor Brad Hill said that making the confidential motion public was “about transparency, opening that information up, and releasing it.”
“It’s clear there’s a lot of angst in the community about the Long Street kindergarten – that’s clear from the responses that the councillors have been receiving and from the petition we have also received,” he said.
Councillor Steven Hughes told the 30 January meeting that he was sorry to have voted for the confidential motion in October. “I have to apologize to the residents of Langwarrin. I voted this through, I wasn’t aware of what I was doing at the time,” he said. “Only when the community gets involved do you realise it’s not as straightforward as what you’re thinking.”
The confidential October motion read that the report should be “retained as confidential indefinitely on the grounds that it contains information that is council business information, being information that would prejudice council’s position in commercial negotiations if prematurely released.” However, it also read that the resolution would be released after council staff had “commenced conversations with the Langwarrin Pre-School Committee of Management”.
Community consultation on the Long Street Reserve project is underway. The first option presented to residents is for the new kindergarten to be built towards the edge of the park. The other option would see the centre built on a more central location in the park, but would result in the loss of fewer trees (“Kindergarten plans threaten parkland”, The Times, 16/1/23).
The Herald Sun coverage of the Long Street Reserve protest last month showed deputy mayor Liam Hughes posing next to a notorious conspiracy theorist who believes Frankston Council is illegitimate (“Deputy mayor poses with fringe group founder”, The Times, 16/1/23). The Times has confirmed that attendance at the protest was partly organised by members of a fringe Facebook group.
Make a submission to council on the plans by 26 March at engage.frankston.vic.gov.au/early-years-infrastructure/new-kindergarten-langwarrin