By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Short-staffing and budget cuts are hampering City of Greater Dandenong’s environmental agenda, according to a council report.
At current resource levels, the council would not meet its target of net zero emissions by 2025, as set in its Climate Emergency Strategy, it stated.
A long list of biodiversity, waste and sustainability initiatives would also be delayed or abandoned.
The report found that Greater Dandenong’s sustainability and its waste education teams were about a third of the size of those in surrounding councils.
“The impacts of this, along with reductions in budgets, is resulting in a large number of environmental projects being delayed or unable to be pursued.”
At current resource levels, only six of the council’s 44 sustainability action items in the next three years will be completed, the report stated.
Most of the six were “regulatory” such as ESD and native vegetation statutory planning referrals, and annual sustainability reporting.
The 38 delayed or abandoned projects included an annual Sustainability Festival, implementing the council’s Climate Emergency Strategy and its Sustainable Buildings and Plastic Use policies.
Efforts to increase electric vehicle charging stations and to apply for grants for more efficient public lighting would also be impacted.
There were also expected delays in parks projects such as the Greening Our City tree planting program, peri-urban weed management, One Tree One Child and implementing a Biodiversity Action Plan.
More resources were also required to implement waste projects on-time such as a Food and Garden Organics program at multi-unit sites, a container deposit scheme and a glass waste collection service.
It also needed to resolve the urgent need for advanced waste alternatives to landfill.
The report recommended $330,000 a year for four extra permanent full-time sustainability officers.
Up to two extra parks officers were also expected to be required, as well as more waste officers on at least a short-term basis.
Greater Dandenong employs three ongoing, full-time equivalent staff in the sustainability area, and 1.6 in waste education.
On average, eight similar councils employed 8.5 and 5.2 full-time equivalent staff respectively.
However, Greater Dandenong hires 7.5 full-time equivalent ongoing staff in the parks department – much higher than the 4.3 average in other councils.
At a 27 February meeting, Cr Rhonda Garad paid tribute to staff doing an “extraordinary job” but “clearly they’re under-resourced”.
“Compared to similar councils in surrounding areas, our council (staff) are doing it tough.
“I do hope we consider it as required when the budget comes around.”
Cr Tim Dark said the report showed how having a lot of policies as well as “green tape” and “red tape” impacted on the council’s “bottom line”.
“There’s a key saying that’s being published a lot on social media – ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’. So we’ll see how we go in budget deliberations.”
