By PIP HANRICK

Plans are almost complete for updating the northern end of Landsborough Avenue, Scarborough (north of Brisbane) between Bunton and Rock Streets.

The final round of consultation took place last month.

Community consultation for the upgrade took place in March and the revised Option 3 has been proposed by the council planning team.

Two options for the design were combined as the Revised Option 3 and presented at a final consultation last month.

Council said the revised upgrade proposal had taken the ideas and needs of residents, business owners and operators into consideration.

Moreton Bay Regional Council Division 5 Councillor James Houghton said maximising parking was the most contentious issue for the community.

Most discussed were the options of “reverse in” or “nose in”, he said.

The “nose in” option should win the day, he said, based on the consultation process and the existing parking arrangements in Landsborough Avenue.

Councillor Houghton explained parking needed to be consistent with the rest of street which is either “nose in” or “nose to tail”.

Other key features of the upgrade will be new central median strips and landscaping with low coastal planting and walk-through gaps.

A new pathway from the corner of the Pirate playground and park across to the carpark and toilets, including a raised pedestrian crossing, will be incorporated into the upgrade.

Old concrete planters and uneven paving will be removed and replaced with exposed aggregate and coloured concrete finishes to match work previously undertaken on the southern end of Landsborough Avenue.

The Translink bus stop will be moved further south to allow for the extended parking.

Other improvements include new street furniture, lighting and upgrading wayfinding signs. 

The upgrade will be delivered in two stages during the 2018/19 and 2019/20 financial years to minimise the disruption to local traffic.

Foreshore path and carpark upgrades will be delivered mid-next year to avoid Christmas and wet weather.

​The Moreton Bay Council is planning to complete the design work for the upgrade by the end of 2018.

Do you have any community engagement news? Email me today at piphanrick@hotmail.com

My last blog post was about community engagement – is it really what it ‘says’ it is?

Today I want to ask, ‘What do people want from community engagement?’

This may seem like a simple-enough question but I suspect, from plenty of feedback and conversations, that most community members (especially those who are ‘involved’ in their communities) have a high level of disillusionment.

They tell me that the hours of time (volunteered) given to many projects fail to achieve desired outcomes for anyone except maybe the corporate or government organisation that paid for the community engagement which was needed to tick the ‘community consultation’ box.

Perhaps this is because projects are not run by professionals but rather community members with ‘ideas’, or untrained people who think they understand how to ‘engage’ with their community.

Or it might be because, when all the work has been done, reports written and submitted, a change of government or leadership somewhere in the bureaucracy (Local, State, or Federal and Corporate) occurs and all the work is left to gather dust. There is no follow through.

And this has very negative outcomes for us. People are no longer able to ‘trust’.

In a 2013 survey, 53% of those surveyed had little or no trust in political parties and 52% had little or no trust in Federal Parliament. Trade unions, TV news and the legal profession also did not fare well in the survey.

The survey also asked participants to choose the most important national issues from a list of 20. First amongst respondents was the economy (33%). Second was trust in politicians and government (14%), then the rest of the list (environment, health, education, etc). (Thanks to Vern Hughes Director, Centre for Civil Society and the scanlonfoundation.org.au scanlonfoundation.org.au )

This ‘loss of trust’ is disheartening not only for community members but also for community engagement practitioners. So many now ask,

‘Why bother?’ and ‘It’s all a sham and a waste of my time,’ or ‘We are burnt out and disillusioned’.

This failure of ‘community engagement’ has meant different approaches are being used. The mining sector has developed a concept called a ‘social licence to operate’ which I take to mean: ‘We have consulted and given you this much in $$$ for certain projects, we can now get on with our business’.

There are many problems with this for communities and there are several blogs in that topic alone.

On the other end of the spectrum, models of ‘deliberative democracy’ and ‘participatory government’ are developing rapidly even here in Australia. Universities around the world have whole research centres researching this area and soon it will become main-stream. And recently the City of Greater Geraldton embarked on a Participatory Budgeting project for their 10 Capital Works Plan. http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcgg%2Ewa%2Egov%2Eau%2Fmajor-projects%2Fchanges-cgg-community&urlhash=JGtc&_t=tracking_anet So I ask the question: ‘what do you want and expect from community engagement?’

When I started researching my PhD this was one of the first questions I faced.

As well as my consulting work, I am a PhD candidate researching in the area of community engagement in rural and regional Australia.  Community engagement is a new term for something that has been around for many decades - public participation. A few years ago I worked as Community and Stakeholder Engagement Manager for a major infrastructure project. The experience left me believing that something was wrong with the process. Community engagement is legislated and regulated throughout Australia and is now undertaken by local government, government departments, health and education services and academic researchers. The 'community' is also being 'engaged' by mining and engineering companies throughout rural and regional Australia - or so they believe. So everyone is being 'engaged' more that ever, but people seem angrier and more disengaged than in the past. Is this the fault of the process, the agendas of the governments and corporates or does the media also play a role. These are some of the questions I am asking.