• Screenshot, p14 Annual Report, Sydney City Council 2023/24
According to the Council’s 2023/4 annual report, on average, each week, four civil works firms share $16m paid to them by Sydney City Council.
If shared equally that’s $4m each week to each of the four firms. Or, over a year, over $250m to each firm.
The total paid by Council is $1.018B over the 52 weeks in the year 2023/2024.
Or, as the Australian philosophers, Roy and HG, put it, “When too much is barely enough”.
We see these civil works where we live. We see how roads, paths, and other civil works are built, maintained and how they function over the years. We see ‘raingardens’, cars and bikes function in dry and wet weather. We see what designs fail.
We see and live with designs, some of which are so silly we laugh. We marvel at the almost weekly, at least monthly digging up, excavations and construction works in our streets. We see how high is the use and cost of concrete, steel and climate destructive civil works.
Of course, not all the civil works fail. But many do.
Unlike the private sector which must first advertise development plans through the Council, the Council does not need to first advertise its own works.
What to do?
Where I live in the Council area, Chippendale, we have made a plan to reduce civil works costs to ratepayers and the avoidable pollution of Earth’s collapsing climate.
Our community action plan is the Chippendale Sustainable Precinct Plan.
• First concept images in our plan are ready for design development - for example, we plan to build what we call ‘Raintank roundabouts” to celebrate rain that falls in Chippendale, to make rain water visible, expressed in water sculptures that come alive during rainfall
And, wonderfully, as we see it, the city Councillors have unanimously voted to support our plan.
Thank you, Councillors and staff. We’re in this together.
And thank you Mayor Clover Moore who has also supported the offer in our plan to cut civil infrastructure costs and grow community.
Thank you, too, to the Council CEO, Monica Barone, who has asked staff to work out which bits of our plan can, can’t and might be supported by staff.
With more than $1.018 B involved there’s a fair bit of money at stake. And, with Earth’s climate collapsing, what a delight to have Councillor support for retrofitting the streets and infrastructure to make it sustainable.
Its such a pleasure for our Chippendale community to be working with Council to put our rates money to good use - thank you Sydney City Council.
Michael Mobbs