Strathfield pumps it up

This weekend marks an important milestone for Strathfield.

It will see the first in a series of big events designed to transform Sydney’s view of the municipality – and hopefully position it as one of the movers and shakers of the inner-west.

It is, in effect, the launch of Brand Strathfield. Expect to hear much more of this in the coming weeks.

The two-day Spring Festival has a new and youthful feel. Justice Crew (pictured right), a top hip-hop band, is the headline act. Chinese kites, Bollywood films and Japanese drummers will all underscore the value of Strathfield’s multicultural community.

Next month, a separate food event and the annual Food Guidewill be launched as part of Sydney’s Crave International Food Festival. The Town Square will become an al fresco dining area so tens of thousands can sample our multicultural cuisines.

Details of the town centre project, which promises to reposition the municipality not just as a transport hub but as a retail centre too, will be unveiled soon. Stunning high-tech computer graphics will be used to ram home the advantages of this multimillion-dollar project.

A number of Strathfield councillors have been organised to spearhead projects: Bill Carney is in charge of pressing for the new Town Centre; Keith Kwon is reviving the Korean Garden; Hope Brett-Bowen is in charge of arts and culture.

It doesn’t stop there.

The council also plans to re-energise the democratic process.  There will be more citizen consultation programs than ever. That knock on the door could be a councillor asking for your opinion.

Strathfield has been planning its emergence as a regional leader for some time. Now a new state government and new energy around major developments have allowed the council to put the case for growth and eye a leadership position in the region.

The Mayor, Cr Tony Maroun, and general manager David Backhouse recently attended a meeting of local governments across NSW called Destination 2036.

What they heard was pretty depressing. Half the state’s 152 LGAs are financially unsustainable – while Strathfield has a surplus and has already streamlined systems to operate with fewer staff.

Much was said at the conference about how to halt a growing debate about the A-word – amalgamation. For years, Sydney’s councils have fought this idea, which they see as strangling local identity and replacing community-based democracy with expensive, bureaucratic mega-authorities.

Proponents say dealing with a large number of NIMBY authorities makes solving complex planning and transport problems such as Parramatta Road more difficult.

Opponents point out that mega-councils don’t fare any better. Brisbane has 26 councillors representing a million people. Victoria reduced its councils from more than 200 to 78. But none of this has fixed the financial failures or quickened the pace of change.

Bigger is rarely better at getting things done.

Strathfield is firmly in the opponents’ camp – but sees little reason for mergers anyway.

The council is already co-operating with  neighbouring municipalities including Canada Bay, Ashfield and Burwood. But it is implacably against the creation of a super-council.

It sees the coming campaign to re-engineer Sydney’s view of Strathfield as playing a
role in convincing the state of the value of small but efficient councils, although that is not its primary purpose.

So after Cool Britannia, it could be Sizzling Strathfield.

“Strathfield is best practice in local government, and we are very proud of that,” Maroun told the Scene. “Strathfield is a financially sustainable and community focused council. That’s why we are so successful.

“We say: ‘Strathfield is a brand. We are very proud of our product.  Come and learn from us’.”

 “We have for several years now maintained a sustainable financial position that is not at a cost or penalty to capital works,” Maroun says.

The future of the municipality looks equally promising. Investors from far and wide – including some from overseas – are eyeing the area as one of the last LGAs with industrial development land available.

Strathfield’s proximity to Sydney and Parramatta and its transport links through road and rail make it an ideal spot for big-box warehousing; a demand being driven by online shopping.

The council maintains amalgamation with other councils is unnecessary, instead preferring to pool resources with other local authorities. Co-operation is already taking place across a broad range of services: from waste disposal and recycling, to community activities.

Strathfield was the main instigator of the foreshore working group now responsible for Cooks River, which runs through Canterbury, Marrickville and other LGAs. The municipality will be the site of the Cooks River Eco Festival on 13 November.

Council staff and their counterparts in Burwood and Ashfield are holding talks about sharing resources for next year’s council elections.

“That’s the way of the future,” Maroun says. “We have to work with each other.”

But perhaps the biggest challenge is to re-engage local people in the process of local government.

“The real issue for the council and what council is to tackle improved democracy and engagement of our people,” Maroun says.

“We want people to be more actively engaged with the process of local government, right down to deciding whether we are going to be putting up new floodlights at one of the sports fields.

“We’ll be keeping them informed right up to full engagement in new matters. We have a number of sites we are looking at redeveloping, and we will be fully engaging with the community to feel what their expectations are.

“The best example of what can be achieved is the Town Centre. The project is not something that has been generated in council. It has been generated through the public feedback that
 we have had. So every component of that Town Centre work has come from our workshops
with people. That’s true engagement and that’s good democracy.”

Of course, if people are fully engaged with their local area, it is politically far harder to subsume them into some mega-authority created by bureaucrats in Macquarie Street.

Maroun suggests residents had better be prepared to see a lot more of their councillors: “We are the last level of government, the grass roots. And we are going to capitalise on that.”

Charles Casuscelli, the local MP, has made moves to create a local forum of councils, including Strathfield, so consensus can be created on cross-border issues. Maroun says Strathfield is happy to take part.

But he believes the state government needs to get its own house in order. While it is happy to remind councils to get back to the three Rs – roads, rates and rubbish – the state needs
to decide who does what in regard to infrastructure and transport.

Maroun says there can be no doubt about where the residents of  Strathfield stand on amalgamation. “I have people stop me in the street and say, ‘We don’t want amalgamation’,” he says.

“That does not mean we’re not open to entering into partnerships or alliances in order to achieve common goals with other councils. But amalgamation is a Band-aid solution that will not resolve any issues.”