My name is Flora Fox.
As the most experienced Kingborough Councillor, I promote long-term vision for Council.
Councillor Flora Fox stood for Mayor in 2021.
I have now been elected as a Kingborough Councillor now the 35th year, and have served as Deputy Mayor & Acting Mayor of Kingborough.
With 35 years experience as an elected Councillor, plus 42 years experience as an engineering Company Director, https://www.foxdesignptyltd.com.au/our-people I ensure good governance to provide value for your rates. To achieve results, I chair Council & Community Committees at local and State level. I work with Government Ministers, Mayors, Councillors and staff to get things done. I will lead Council to provide the infrastructure and services that keep Kingborough a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family.
Becoming part of a community. It takes a community to raise a child.
Belonging to a caring and connected community creates strong, resilient citizens, and generations of happy children.
My parents arrived as migrants from Holland in 1952, eager to raise their twin babies, my sister and I, in a safe and unspoiled environment, and to set up their own business. My father was a skilled auto mechanic, and my mother was an experienced Secretary and Bookkeeper. My parents joined the Blackmans Bay community, expanded their family, and continued to live in Blackmans Bay and work at their Shell Service Station and Workshop for the rest of their lives. In summer holidays, my father went exploring in the South West Wilderness. The rest of the family spent most of their holidays at the beach or in the bush behind our property in Gourlay Street. My father regularly took my two brothers out in the dinghy to catch fish or crayfish. Our large garden provided us with fruit and vegetables for the table, and we preserved or shared the rest with friends and neighbours.
The family was supported by neighbours and the wider community and we made life-long friends in the area. Mum joined the Blackmans Bay Progress. We children went to the local schools, became Brownies and Scouts, and I also joined the local theatre group, The Kingston Players. We got to know everyone in the area by name, and where they lived.
Belonging to a community builds relationships and allows a two-way support system, which leads to volunteering and community service groups being formed. Sporting Clubs, Landcare Groups, Hall Management Committees and Service Clubs thrive and the whole community benefits. A major part of Council’s budget supports these clubs and groups, but it is hard to put a dollar figure on the value that these activities and the volunteering involved contributes to the community.
Prior to becoming a Councillor, as a volunteer, I helped establish a gardening club, bush care groups, children’s play groups, school mother’s group, and I enjoyed being Secretary to the Howden Progress Association for many years. When I was first elected to Kingborough Council in 1988, and for the next 6 years Councillors were all volunteers.
Kingborough’s has been one of the fastest growing areas in Tasmania for the last 30 years. Our population has doubled from 20,000 to nearly 40,000 people in that time. The new State-Wide Planning Scheme will allow for further growth and denser living. A record 785 Development Applications (DAs) were lodged in 2020. Our small coastal communities of Blackmans Bay and Kingston are spreading to blend into a massive single housing mass. Large old farming properties, including Huntingfield, are being subdivided into large high density lots. Multiple-unit developments, surrounded by concrete, are springing up in leafy residential areas to replace modest homes and gardens, dramatically changing the rural feel of Kingborough.
State Government is overriding Council Planning Schemes, forcing Councils to allow more houses.
Examples include:
· 30% more houses can be built on a given area of land.
· Houses can be built right up to your back boundary.
· Houses do not have to have sun coming into windows for living areas.
· Revised vegetation removal exemptions.
Kingborough has no control over these changes as they are driven by the State Government. Council needs to pay for all this new development. Existing residents lose their space, sunshine, and views. Councils are unable to charge the developers for community infrastructure and services (headworks). Even the State Government is not contributing to the external infrastructure and services needed to cater for their own subdivision. Everyone wants to live in Kingborough because of the historical and current success of the community. Council and I have spent the last 35 years advocating for the community and the environment. As a result, Kingborough is a safe, connected, and healthy environment, where people want to move to from overseas, interstate and elsewhere in Tasmania. Council is actively attempting to keep Kingborough as a nice place to live, now, and into the future.
You, as a Kingborough resident, should tell the State Politicians what you think and how you feel.
A Clean Beach for Blackmans Bay
Council staff and Councillors work together on a 20 year financial plans for service provision, capital works, maintenance and replacement of existing infrastructure. This plan links to strategies for new facilities, such as toilets, roads, footpaths and stormwater pipes. A service strategy will include rubbish removal, land-use planning, environmental management, compliance and facilitating community activities.
Long term plans provide the basis for development of the 5 year capital works plans and the recently approved 2020/21 annual budget. These complex decisions must consider financial, environmental and social sustainability, as well as community expectation. All of these plans and strategies require input from the community.
The rates must be pitched to provide effective assets and services, which the community reasonably expects. Council must try not to disadvantage present or future generations by either keeping rates too low, or by excessive borrowing. Council must also retain the capacity for unexpected eventualities, such as and fires and storms. Important issues like beach water-pollution, resulting in un-swimmable beaches, required urgent attention. and the Council now has a dedicated stormwater pollution expert.
Residents and Councillors demanded answers to questions about pollution of Blackmans Bay beach. Bacteria counts of 129,970 and 24,800 for enterococci and E.coli respectively had been detected near the boat house at the southern end of Blackmans Bay. (Counts of 140 normally trigger a retest, and 250 triggers closure or failure.).
Council has extended the testing regime over the summer and will publishes the results on Council’s website, showing specific area results. The Derwent Estuary Website will show their independent testing results. Council has identified that the issue goes beyond Kingborough Council and has asked the State Government to take a pro-active position on this and investigate.
My research has revealed that according to The Derwent Estuary Programme, Beach Watch,(Derwent Estuary .org.au) investigation of Blackmans Bay Beach south, on 17th January 2019;
“Council and Taswater investigations have uncovered several breaches in the stormwater and sewer networks and Taswater has repaired their broken sewer pipe. Council’s stormwater officer’s monitoring continues to ensure that there are no further sources of contamination.”
In simple terms, sewage system leaks get into the stormwater pipes and flow out onto the beach. In dry weather, sewage that gets into the storm water pipes does not get diluted, causing high concentrations of pollution at the beach stormwater outlet. Three thousand (3000) Blackmans Bay houses each have a sewer and storm water pipe. Inadvertently swapping any one of those pipes will pollute the beach. A few lumps of dog faeces in the street will add to the mix. Unfortunately, undetected errors and omissions always occur.
As populations increase, large beach-side cities have long recognised the inevitability of storm water contamination. California’s beach-side city of Santa Barbara installed artificial-sunlight ultraviolet (UV) stormwater sterilisers decades ago. Sydney’s Bondi beach recently installed UV storm water sterilisers. Kingborough Council could consider a UV stormwater steriliser at the southern end of Blackmans Bay Beach.
California’s Santa Barbara City recognises the benefits of engineered wetlands to control beach contamination: “Constructed Wetlands ... are commonly used to reduce bacteria levels, and can be very effective.” Kingborough Council constructed the successful Kingston Wetlands decades ago to reduce pollution of Browns River. UV sterilisation could be the next logical step to further improve Browns River water quality.
With ongoing co-operation from all parties involved, we now have a clean beach at Blackmans Bay.
As Kingborough’s longest serving Councillor, I look forward to your emails, phone calls and comments. I will listen to you and work with Councillors, staff and government to provide the best infrastructure and services for our community.
Development in Tasmania
The Tasmanian community neighbourhood is being sidelined by developers.
New rules allow ‘fast-tracking’, infill, and high density unit approvals, to the detriment of the locals. Fancy footwork by the Government has changed the planning rules to force local Councils to approve developments that no local wants to live next door to. This passes the blame for unacceptable development to the Council. Planning schemes have been changed by State Governments, despite community and Council objections, to support developers. This started in the northern states of Australia. Tasmania is the last cab off the rank.
Both major political parties are supported financially by developers but because candidates do not need to declare this in Tasmania, we don’t know the details. In NSW this is not allowed. Refer to web page below and quote on last page.
https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/Funding-and-disclosure/Political-donations/Unlawful-political-donations/Prohibited-donors
I am very concerned for Tasmania.”
As a Kingborough Councillor since 1988, I have witnessed a steady erosion of community input to Planning Decisions in Tasmania. Both Liberal and Labour governments have been under constant pressure from the developers lobby (the Property Council) to dilute the amenity and assets of local residents in favour of development at the cost of the locals.
Existing residents are suffering from increased neighbourhood housing density, building height, plus loss of privacy. Wider community losses include skyline preservation, coastal protection, head-works charges and environmental protection. The Tasmania Wide Planning Scheme does not protect any of these values.
All responsibility for sewer and water infrastructure has been removed from Local Government, which means that money raised from larger council areas is subsidising green field developments in rural areas, rather than maintaining existing urban infrastructure, where the majority of the people live.
Planning Schemes are set by the State Government and Councils are being blamed by residents for allowing these high rise, high density or infill developments. Councils have very little room to move when acting as the so called Planning Authority, as they are obliged to implement the Planning Schemes.
Objections to development applications and appeal rights by residents require expensive planning or legal advice, placing this option beyond the means of most “mums and dads.” Objections under the rules by locals are meaningless, because the rules have been cooked to over-ride the interests of the locals.
https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/Funding-and-disclosure/Political-donations/Unlawful-political-donations/Prohibited-donors
Examples of prohibited donors
A prohibited donor is:
· a property developer
· a tobacco industry business entity
· a liquor or gambling industry business entity
· any industry representative organisation if the majority of its members are such prohibited donors
· a close associate of a prohibited donor.
Property developers
A 'property developer' is an individual or corporation that:
· carries on a business mainly concerned with the residential or commercial development of land, with the ultimate purpose of its sale or lease of the land for profit, and
· in the course of that business:
one relevant planning application has been made by or on behalf of the individual or corporation that is pending
three or more relevant planning applications have been made by or on behalf of the individual or corporation and determined within the preceding seven years.
A person who is a close associate of a property developer is also a prohibited donor.
A relevant planning application has the same meaning as in section 10.4 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.