Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

There appears to have been much discussion around the Kelvin Avenue project whilst I have been allowing the doctors at TQEH to beat me up.

I arrived home on Friday to find the resolution to the City Strategy Meeting had not been reserved out in the time required and I left well enough alone. If an item is not reserved out it cannot be, as I understand it be re-debated. In other words the only way that a resolution of a committee of council be not endorsed is for it to be reserved out.

Whilst I felt I had solutions for the issues that closing Kelvin Avenue would create, addressing those solutions would now be an after thought that still must get through the system.

This does not address the concerns about our procedures for consultation however. It has been an ongoing concern of mine since joining council, whether this project, the Culvert Street project currently being challenged or the recent McLeay Park project (Parkside ward) I got involved with.

My concerns about the evidence presented regarding our consultation process are such that, even though I moved the motion last week, I have sought advice as to whether or not it is still too late to reserve out the matter for further deliberation. I may have left this too late as a result of being in hospital. Hopefully not. We will find out tomorrow if this is the case.

If it is not too late I will reserve it out in the interests of transparency and will be encouraging a re-think by elected members on Kelvin Avenue. If it is too late I will (as I have previously intimated) seek to change our consultation processes.

We need to do this to avoid coming into conflict with the people we are representing.