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Our Glen Eira 2040 Deliberative Citizen’s Panel was placed on hold in March 2020 due to the impact of Covid-19. After 5 months of hoping face-to-face sessions would resume we decided to get back to working on the Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision online.
The 32 panel members representative of Glen Eira completed the draft Community Vision through a series of online panel sessions. Keep reading to find out how to get involved in this project and how your feedback has been used so far.
More details on when the vision will be released online for public feedback, will be provided soon. We would love to hear your thoughts.
Following public exhibition of the draft Community Vision, the Deliberative Panel is set to meet again for one final day of deliberation. This session will allow the panel to review and respond to the community’s comments and feedback; to edit and finalise the Community Vision which will then be presented to Council for endorsement.
The final Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision will come into effect once endorsed in mid- 2021. The Community Vision will influence all of Council’s future planning and strategies.
Thinking back it wasn’t all that many years ago, that the City of Glen Eira was formed (1994). Around that time, there were approximately 51,000 households and we had a population of around 112,000 (Census, 1996). The World Wide Web was beginning to take off and phones were mobile, however they were just phones with buttons — not touch screens.
Fast forward to today, and we have almost 60,000 households and a population of around 154,000 (ABS, 2018) that is rich with a diversity of culture, interests and needs — who can imagine what the next 10, 20 or 30 years might bring.
We believe it is time to imagine; to actively look to the future and imagine what we want Glen Eira to look and feel like. We seek to develop a vision with the community for the community to provide a clear direction for strategically creating a future Glen Eira.
Using a comprehensive engagement process, we want to understand the aspirations and priorities that create and achieve our Community Vision. This will be based on evidence of current and future community needs and will be used to guide our strategic actions into the future.
The Community Vision commenced with a co-design process. With 25 community leaders coming together over two sessions to determine the scope of engagement, key themes, strategies to increase participation and engagement activities. This process was used to create the remit, or guiding question, for the development of the Community Vision. This remit is:
“What is our vision for the future of Glen Eira and how can we reflect the aspirations of our diverse and growing community”
The co-design process also formed the basis of the engagement plan which included broad engagement activities and the use of a deliberative citizens’ panel, representative of Glen Eira, to write the Community Vision.
Using this plan, a series of broad engagement activities commenced in September 2019, including:
More than 3,000 people told us about their aspirations for the future of Glen Eira via these activities.
These action areas include (in no particular order):
These action areas were refined through the second stage of community engagement. This stage sought to gain an understanding of how our community feels about these areas. This includes gaining specific information, and to see if anything was missing. This stage of engagement included:
This stage of engagement presents participants with descriptions of the 12 action areas. We also ask the following questions:
This stage of engagement receives feedback from over 850 people. The depth of information collected was provided to the Deliberative Citizens' Panel to assist in their understanding of the Community Aspirations the Community Vision.
In early March, 42 community members were randomly selected to create a group broadly representative of Glen Eira. The registration of more than 300 people allows an independent consultant to choose a sample of people with a balance of ages, gender, location, social backgrounds and different cultures to reflect the diversity within our municipality.
The job of the panel was to review background information, hear from field experts and deliberate with each other to develop a Community Vision for Glen Eira that responds to the remit:
“What is our vision for the future of Glen Eira and how can we reflect the aspirations of our diverse and growing community”
The panel was facilitated by MosaicLab — an independent organisation with expertise in facilitating deliberative processes.
Our panel commenced their work in March with 37 members being able to meet in person. This allowed our panel to get to know each other, identify their working styles, hear presentations from experts and receive all relevant background information.
Following these two meetings, the entire panel process was placed on hold due to the impacts of COVID-19. After five months the decision was made to resume the work to develop the Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision online.
Of the existing Panel members, 32 agreed to continue on the panel to develop the Community Vision via an online process. This group were able to meet over four sessions via Zoom in August 2020 to develop a draft Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision.
This draft Glen Eira 2040 Community Vision has been written and agreed to by the Deliberative Citizens’ Panel with a super majority vote (over 80% agreement).
A Community Vision is an aspirational description of what our residents and ratepayers want for the future of Glen Eira.
A Community Vision captures what community members most value about their community. It sets out the future vision and aspirations for the community for at least a ten year period. It is developed in conjunction with the community and will identify and describe a vision for Glen Eira as well as priorities that define future success.
The Draft Local Government Bill, if enacted, will require Council to develop both a Community Vision and a Council Plan.
A Vision is developed with the community for at least a ten year period and sets out the community aspirations and goals. The Council Plan is developed by Council and is a more detailed document regarding specific strategies and actions.
A Council Plan is developed at the start of each Council term and sets out the strategic direction of Council for at least the next 4 financial years. The Council Plan is informed by the Community Vision and sets out strategic objectives and strategies for achieving Council’s and the Community’s aspirations.
Council seeks to develop a vision with the community for the community to provide a clear direction for creating a future Glen Eira. Over the next five months, we will be actively seeking to hear all voices of our community and we want to hear from you.
A comprehensive community engagement process is planned to ensure effective and inclusive communication engagement of the entire Glen Eira community.
To assist in designing the community engagement Council had an independent consultant deliver Co-Design workshops with 25 community members representing groups including police, community leaders, service providers and residents. The workshop identified the scope of engagement, key themes to be included in the community engagement activities, strategies for reaching groups that don’t often participate in engagement processes and suggested engagement activities.
We are seeking to involve all community members of Glen Eira.
The Community Vision is a document produced by the community and owned by the community. It will be used to guide strategic planning and decision making for the future of Glen Eira.
In particular it will guide Council’s priorities through the development of the Council Plan 2021–2025 and beyond.
© 2021 Glen Eira City Council