Johnsons Creek seems to be one of Council’s biggest balancing acts.

Its design is meant to work for everyone.

It’s supposed to finish off a masterpiece –an Oasis in the Inner city.

It’s meant to be beautiful, useable, practical, ecological and elegant.

The plans are wonderful.

And the community hates it.

Instead of unifying everything and everyone it’s ended up, an uncomfortable mix of design and stodginess.

In effect, we’ve produced a Mullet.

It looks great at face value.

But when you turn it around it makes you shiver.

And the community is saying “Oh Dear, this isn’t what we expected”.

The Johnson’s Creek Masterplan is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

We need to get the balance right.

And a Mullet, isn’t it.

As always, items drag on in the City of Sydney but once they hit Councillors we rarely have enough time to get our head around the issues and there is always such a rush – such a push, such a last minute scramble to get something through.

The language always is, we need to make a start – we can change bits later. Staff have been working hard – it’s not fair to them to wait another month.

That’s how you get a Mullet.

This, once in a lifetime project needs more than the standard City of Sydney consultation, which consists of:

Here it is, have your Say, we’ll tweak it a bit, but overall we know more than you and you should be more appreciative of what you’re getting.

I’m moving that we conduct a properly facilitated Johnsons Creek Summit with all the community, experts and stakeholders.

Then the community and council would have informed decision-making underpinned with proper facilitated communication.

We will end up with a Grand Master Plan that everyone has bought into and is proud of – rather than the uncomfortable Mullet.