JURMANNS INVADE BEVERLEY

‘Resistance useless’, terrified residents cry

Some York readers may remember Jacky Jurmann and her husband Tim.  Jacky was employed for three years from 2011 as the Shire of York’s planning officer or ‘manager of planning’, while Tim served the Shire as a building inspector.

In 2014, both Jacky and her husband jumped ship.  Jacky set herself up as director of a consultancy, Glenwarra Development Services.  In that capacity she continued for some time to provide advice to the Shire regarding SITA’s landfill application. 

Why did she resign?  Well, as I reported on this blog in August 2015 (see http://shireofyork6302realvoice.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/the-history-channel_15.html ), the popular explanation at the time was that she had done so in anger because the Shire had refused or ignored her request for it to delete all references to her from the ill-fated (i.e. rigorously suppressed) Fitz Gerald Report of 2014.

Enter Mike Fitz Gerald

Unluckily for Jacky, the Fitz Gerald Report (FGR) is freely available at various places on the Internet, for example at http://yorkwatransparency.weebly.com/uploads/4/2/7/1/42713461/york_final_report.pdf . 

As book reviewers used to say, it’s a rattling good read.  I commend it to the upstanding burghers of Beverley, where Jacky (and Tim) are currently employed.

The Shire of York, under then Shire President Matthew Reid, appointed Mr Mike Fitz Gerald to investigate serious questions concerning the conduct of then CEO Ray Hooper.  

Mr. Fitz Gerald’s investigation led him to raise additional questions about the conduct of Shire employees alleged to have acted maliciously under CEO Hooper’s direction (or on his caprice). 

One of those employees was Jacky Jurmann.

According to Mr Fitz Gerald, Jacky was an aggressively uncooperative witness, refusing to answer his questions on the supercilious and irrelevant grounds that she was a professional planner and he was not.   

I’d say that refusal was a mistake, because she passed up the opportunity to defend herself against allegations that as York’s manager of planning she had behaved, presumably at Ray Hooper’s behest, in ways unbefitting a professional planner (or any kind of professional, come to that).

In particular, she might have been able to tell us if (or explain why) she dealt as alleged in the report with planning issues relating to a couple of local enterprises, now sadly defunct, namely Saint’s Diner and The Dog’s Bollocks.

 I don’t propose to detail in this article the questions posed in the FGR about Jacky Jurmann.  Instead, I’ll just leave you with the link (given above) and a list of the numbered paragraphs that refer specifically to her, namely 2, 7.19, 7.21, 7.22, 7.49, 7.59, 7.62, 7.63, and 7.64.

My advice is to read the whole report.  It won’t take long, and you might come away with some valuable insights into what can go wrong in a small rural community under the thumb of a dictatorial CEO who is aided and abetted by a couple of gormless shire presidents (neither of them, I hasten to add, the public-spirited Matthew Reid) and a bunch of lickspittle councillors.

You might also find yourself wondering why the Department of Local Government insisted that the York Shire Council suppress the FGR; why it persecuted Matthew Reid and dismissed the Council for authorising the report; why the allegations the report contains have never been properly followed up by the CCC or any other government agency; why no politician of any stripe found the story interesting enough to give it a parliamentary airing, and why our current councillors seem to have conspired with successive shire administrations to keep the report officially under wraps.

Read it and weep.

Jacky reinvents herself, but I guess she’s still the same gal

In January of this year, the Shire of Beverley appointed Jacky Jurmann to the position of Shire Planner.  At the same time, it found work for husband Tim as building inspector.

For now, Jacky is also filling in as manager of health services.

Hold on a moment.  I must stop calling her ‘Jacky’.   She isn’t ‘Jacky’ any more.  On the Shire of Beverley website, her name appears as ‘Jacqui’. 

I must say the new name does seem more aristocratic, or at any rate, less, shall we say, bogan.

But to me the change seems a bit like putting your hands over your eyes in the hope that nobody can see you.

Despite her change of name, Jacqui still appears as Jacky Jurmann on the FIGJAM website Linked In.  There, she lists her qualifications as a ‘postgraduate’ bachelor’s degree (surely a bachelor’s is an ‘undergraduate’ degree?) from UNE in urban and regional planning; a master’s in ‘social ecology’ from Western Sydney, and an associate degree in health and building surveying from Sydney TAFE.

For those who don’t know what ‘social ecology’ might be, it’s an approach based on the radical ideas of the late US anarchist and utopian philosopher Murray Bookchin to the analysis (or in the modern jargon, ‘deconstruction’) of social and environmental issues. 

In some ways, social ecology is a fine example of the green-left nonsense peddled in today’s universities as an alternative (or antidote) to despised activities like traditional scholarship, rational argument, free and open debate and the use of commonsense.

York readers will be interested to know that real estate agent Michael Watts is listed on Jacky/Jacqui’s Linked In page as a person who ‘endorses’ her local government knowledge and skills. 

Mr Watts cracks a mention in the FGR as chairperson of the former Shire-sponsored York Tourist Bureau and Visitors’ Centre.   That enterprise fell in a heap after his daughter, controversially employed by the bureau as a bookkeeper despite a prior criminal conviction for stealing, diverted a very large sum of her employer’s money to her own use and purposes.   You can read all about it in numbered paragraph 5 of the FGR.

Jacky Jurmann as York's planning officer, 2014

Muscle car madness in Beverley

It didn’t take long for Jacky/Jacqui to make her mark as Beverley’s Shire Planner.  She’d only been in the job for a couple of weeks when she found herself facing a real social ecology challenge—an application to set up a muscle car tuning shop at 46 Dawson Street.

Allegedly, the applicant, Adrian ‘Pip’ Smith, is a friend and neighbour of Shire President Dee Ridgway, which of course if true would have had no relevance whatsoever to the success of his application. 

I only mention that because when the application came before council, a naughty resident asked during PQT if councillors were there to represent residents of Beverley ‘or their mate’.  Council responded that it was ‘quite offended’ by the question, and anyway four of the eight councillors present didn’t know Mr Smith, so there.

Another question came from a tenant of one of the Shire’s ‘independent living units’ located diagonally across the street from the proposed development.  The questioner wanted to know how Council could ‘even consider the construction of a noisy muscle car repair business’ when her tenancy contract guaranteed quiet enjoyment of the unit.

(As any lawyer will tell you, a tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment restricts the landlord’s right to enter the property and has nothing to do with noise, but let that pass.)

Council’s response was illuminating.  The Shire, it said, ‘takes the application on face value and trust from the information provided by the applicant and is informed and guided by the recommendations of the Shire Planner’, i.e. Jacky/Jacqui Jurmann. 

Even more illuminating was the response to a second question from the same resident pointing out that Council planning policy recommends that ‘a generic 200 meter buffer be provided between motor body works or service stations and sensitive land uses, such as residential where site specific investigation[s] have not been undertaken’. 

In this instance, the distance between the proposed development and sensitive residential land use was ‘considerably less than 200 meters’, and more residential units were on the way, so had councillors previously met to decide on the suitability of this application and if so, where were the minutes and what was the vote?

Illuminating response no. 2:  ‘…the Shire Planner has delegated authority to assess planning applications on behalf of Council’. 

Deconstruct that, suckers.  The question was about decision, not assessment, and the important 200-meter element of the question was simply brushed aside.  To York readers, that kind of response will have a familiar ring, like the sound of a dud coin flicked at a muscle car door.

Social ecology in action

If it means anything in relation to municipal planning, social ecology must imply evaluating a proposed development against a variety of factors concerning where and how people live, why they live there, how they are likely to be affected if the development is allowed to go through, and how their lives are governed and directed by local hierarchies (Bookchin’s word, not mine) wielding power and influence over them.

So let’s take a look at some facts about Beverley, its population and its local government, Beverley Shire Council.  After that, we’ll have a digression on muscle cars, followed by a closer examination of the application itself, written objections from residents, and the applicant’s response to those objections.

The Shire of Beverley

Beverley is a small town located at a distance of 131 kms from Perth and 34 kms south of York along the Great Southern Highway.  While systems of local government have operated in Beverley since 1843, the Shire Council (motto: ‘Progress by Perseverance’) dates from 1960 and the Shire’s present administrative structure from 1995, when the Local Government Act, exemplifying the neo-conservative spirit of those days, replaced Shire Clerks with a corporate set-up headed by CEOs.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, as the old saying goes, but in this case they did fix it, good and proper.

According to the Shire’s website, the population of Beverley stands at 1755.  Of that number, 1294 qualify as electors, which means that roughly 74% of the population is old enough to vote.  By comparison, the corresponding percentage (rounded) for York is 70.6%, for Merredin 61% and for Moora 62%.

On the basis of those figures, I tentatively conclude that Beverley may have a more elderly population than those other Wheatbelt towns, a conclusion reinforced by the information that the Shire flag was flown at half-mast eleven times in the brief period from Christmas Eve 2016 to 9 February 2017 (I'm assuming that most if not all of those deaths were from age-related natural causes).

From a ‘social ecological’ point of view, such a preponderance of older people in Beverley should surely have some bearing on the kind of enterprise permitted in or close to a residential area—more particularly, within 200 meters of ‘independent living units’ occupied for the most part by elderly folk. 

Moreover, one might think that members of the local decision-making ‘hierarchy’, i.e. the Shire Council, some of whom may themselves match the description ‘no spring chicken’, would listen respectfully to the relatively youthful new shire planner, and then vote to reject her recommendation to allow the development. 

That isn’t what happened in Beverley on 21 February 2017, when Jacky/Jacqui’s recommendation was adopted and Mr Smith’s application unanimously approved—subject, of course, to conditions and ‘advice notes’, of which more later.

Beverley has nine councillors.  One of them, Cr Darryl Brown, missed the meeting because he was in hospital following a brutal assault.  So don’t blame him. 

Why all the fuss about muscle cars?

It occurs to me that not everybody knows what ‘muscle cars’ are or much about them.  The term is American, dates from the 1950s and referred originally to sports cars fitted with powerful, high performance V8 engines making them capable of high speed and extremely rapid acceleration.

The first such car was probably the ‘supercar’ Oldsmobile Rocket 88 (1949), but the heyday of the muscle car was the 1960s and 1970s, when high performance versions of standard vehicles were introduced first to the US market and later in Australia.  Famous US examples of muscle cars include the Pontiac GTO (1964), the Chevrolet Malibu SS (1965), and the Ford Mustang (1964-73).

In Australia, Ford introduced the Falcon GT in1968 and the Falcon Cobra in 1978.  Holden introduced the Monaro in 1968 and the Torana in 1974.  Chrysler’s contribution included the Valiant Hardtop (1969) and Charger RT (1971).

The market for muscle cars waned during the 1980s, probably because they cost so much to run and maintain.  Many of them are now collector’s items, only rarely seen on the road.

What’s the attraction of muscle cars?  It’s the enticing combination of fast acceleration and power, which as your mechanic will tell you can generate a whole lot of noise. 

In fact, when you read comments on sites frequented by muscle car enthusiasts, it’s easy to form the impression that lots of noise is what muscle cars are really all about.  One owner boasts about the ability of his modified Ford Corvette to produce more than 130 decibels, which is roughly equivalent to the noise made by a packed footy stadium in full cry.  I very much doubt it can, but you get my point.

Back in the day when muscle cars thronged the roads, I had the impression that the typical muscle car aficionado was the kind of young fellow who considered that the ability to produce, at will, for public consumption, al fresco or in confined spaces, a gigantic, asphyxiating, eye-watering, ear-popping, throat-closing, teeth-rattling, bone-shaking, barbecue-stopping expulsion of intestinal gases, with appropriate aromatic accompaniment, was the surest measure of masculine prowess in every sphere of social life—especially the romantic.

But the world has changed since then.  The image now in my mind is that of a middle-aged, cashed up collector free of youth’s illusions, especially those relating to romance.

In Australia, the noise capability of newly manufactured vehicles is regulated under Section 71 of the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989.  Noise emissions from vehicles capable of producing 320 kilowatts of power or more are restricted to 83 decibels. 

Noise from vehicles on the road is governed by road traffic law.   In WA, control of excessive noise emissions from business premises falls to the lot of local government environmental health inspectors—a position currently held by Beverley’s shire planner.

Muscle car advocates like to remind their detractors that some household appliances and home handyman power tools push out much more noise than 83 decibels.  For example, a food processor may produce 95 decibels and a handyman’s drill as many as 100. 

However, the use of such tools and appliances is usually limited to short bursts of activity in and around the home, constituting a minor domestic irritation rather than a major public disturbance.  We don’t tend to run them day after day for six days every week from early morning to late afternoon.

1970s Holden Monaro GTS (the young lady is now a grandma, maybe yours)

So what did Mr Smith apply to do?

Mr Smith sought Shire approval to build a motor vehicle repair shop where he can house and restore his muscle car collection.  At the same time, his son James will run his own business, RHE Performance, from the premises.

According to Mr Smith, his son’s business ‘specialises in high end engine building, transplantation of late model engines into older cars and the testing and tuning of those cars’.

I believe ‘tuning and testing’ of muscle cars would normally involve a particularly noisy and expensive process known as ‘dyno-tuning’.  

Sensibly, the Shire Council has prohibited dyno-tuning on site pending the installation of soundproofing by way of ‘a purposely designed acoustic enclosure’ to be approved by the Shire ‘in consultation with the Department of Environmental Regulation’.

Mr Smith’s plans as presented to Council (if I’ve understood them correctly) include the construction of a two-storey edifice comprising office, workshop and space for storing vehicles with upstairs accommodation for a caretaker.  A floor area covering 384 sq. m. is to be set aside ‘for…storage of completed vehicles’—which he says ‘are for the owner’s enjoyment and are not being restored as a commercial venture’—and for his son’s business, RHE Performance, which presumably is run as a commercial venture. 

So what Mr Smith proposed is a combination of space for his collection of classic muscle cars and for a functioning ‘high end’ engine building, testing and tuning workshop equipped for various aspects of vehicle restoration and repair.

Mr. Smith’s plans also include two disabled parking spaces fronting Dawson Street and additional parking and vehicle entry elsewhere on the premises.

His application proposes opening hours from 8 am to 6 pm Monday to Saturday.  Council cut back the Saturday hours to 4 pm.

As a potential benefit to the community at large, Mr Smith foresees the possibility of ‘an influx of cashed up car enthusiasts who may spend a considerable amount of money in local business establishments’.   In a later submission, he added that he would be creating ‘another new business for the town which could have economic benefit by way of bring[ing] car clubs on their cruises…’ (Does he intend to charge an entrance fee?)

None of that would be music to the ears of elderly folk, craving peace and quiet, inhabiting  ‘independent living units’ across the road.  But who cares about the elderly these days, even in towns like Beverley where flags are flown at half-mast almost every week to farewell residents taking off for a better world where every councillor is incorruptible, an angel or a saint?

Objections

The Shire received 16 notices of objection to the development, eight from residents of Dawson Street and one from the owner of a property in Dawson Street currently living in Queensland.  The rest appear to have come from concerned citizens living elsewhere in Beverley, including the secretary of the local CWA.

Overwhelmingly, the objectors were worried about noise and air pollution.  One wrote tersely:  ‘ I know the so-called work on muscle cars better than anyone in Beverley and I don’t want it in my street ever’. 

Others said that this kind of business belongs in an industrial area, not a residential street; that the proposed hours of operation were too long; that there might be problems associated with the disposal of toxic wastes from degreasers; that the Shire would not be able to enforce permitted hours of operation; that a fire danger would be posed by proximity to the Beverley Tyre Service, and that property values would decline.

One objector alluded to the possibility that customers of such a business might engage in anti-social behaviour.  In her view, ‘…people, mostly males, have muscle cars because they [the cars] are loud, fast, visually appealing and exciting.  Not opposed to their existence but do not want to see them on my street.  Will we see the occasional street drag up Dawson Street or the highway?’

The applicant responds to his critics

Summarised alongside those objections are Mr Smith’s responses to them.  He disputes them in almost every particular, especially regarding noise and toxic waste, going so far as to suggest in poetic vein that the ‘presence of beautifully restored road-going automotive art would only enhance the amenity of the area, with many residents fondly remembering their younger days spent driving and doing what young people did in that era’.

I can’t speak for everybody, but driving is the least thing I remember from ‘my salad days, when I was green in judgment’, and much of what I do remember from those days I’ve spent half a lifetime trying desperately to forget and hoping nobody will ever find out.

A more expanded version of Mr Smith’s responses appears in the later (handwritten) submission mentioned earlier.  He gets a bit tetchy at times, the result, I think, of a genuine inability to understand why any honest person would want to stomp on his dreams. 

He accuses an unnamed person who had circulated a flyer opposing his proposed development of being ‘well meaning but totally uninformed’, and of making a ‘ludicrous’ statement about muscle car noise and ‘scurrulous [sic] accusations’ regarding the toxicity of degreasers. 

He concludes: ‘I urge Council to see these objections for what they are, which is a person with a lot of time on their hands, with very little information who has decieved [sic] other people into objecting based on false and misleading information…’

Where have I seen that kind of prose before?  Ah yes, in York, in the good old days of the Hooper-Boyle-Hooper ascendancy.  In a strange way I’m glad that sentiments like those expressed continue to influence the recommendations of local government planners.  Why should polite and rational discourse have all the best tunes?

What the planner recommended (and Council decided)

Which brings us back to Shire Planner and social ecologist Jacky/Jacqui Jurmann, whose recommendation to Beverley’s Shire Council was accepted with only one tiny amendment regarding dyno-tuning.

Not being a qualified planner, and mindful of her alleged contemptuous treatment of Mike Fitz Gerald, I’m not going to undertake a detailed critique of Shire Planner Jurmann’s recommendation to Council.   A few stray comments will suffice.

She points out that the proposed land use as ‘a motor vehicle repair station’ is discretionary, meaning Council may allow the application after giving due notice of it to the public. 

It must therefore also mean that Council may refuse the application, though she doesn’t say so.  I suppose it’s just a matter of emphasis.  Perhaps she had the impression that Council had already made up its mind; anyway, there appears to have been no significant debate on the application, and approval was unanimous.

On the subject of environmental protection, she notes that EPA policy ‘does not specifically provide guidance for mechanical workshops’, but ‘does recommend a generic 200 metre buffer be provided between motor body works or stations and sensitive land uses, such as residential…The site is considerably less than 200 metres from residences and therefore further investigations may be required regarding the management of potential emissions, such as noise and odour’.

I can’t help feeling a tad uneasy about this.  How much less is ‘considerably less’?  Why no actual measurement?  Who will carry out further investigations if required, and at whose instigation?  Will the burden of forcing change fall on the weary shoulders of elderly residents living nearby, and how good a chance will they have of convincing their local authority to impose further restrictions on a business in full swing?

It is more likely they will be reviled as ‘nimbys’ and ‘troublemakers’ whose opinions and interests are of paltry account compared with those of a wealthy and well-connected man of business.  I think we get a foretaste of that in the gentleman’s response to his critics, discussed above.

All that said, I must admit to admiring the Shire Planner’s tone of breezy optimism.  Environmental impacts like noise, odour, air and wastes ‘can be managed through the use of acoustic enclosures, ventilation, hours of operation and waste management practices…’

Hours of operation?  The Shire Planner’s recommendation is for the business to operate from 8 am to 6 pm from Monday to Friday and 8 am to 4 pm on Saturday.  The applicant wanted to stay open until 6 pm on Saturday.

This reduction is small comfort for the elderly residents of ‘independent living units’ across the road, but surely a spark of recognition on the Shire Planner’s (and Council’s) part that the installation of a mechanical workshop ‘considerably less’ than 200 meters from where they live will not bring those residents peace in the time that remains to them.

In fairness, it must be acknowledged that Council has attached a slew of conditions and advice notes to their approval that on the face of it transforms the proposed business from a muscle car operation to something resembling a standard mechanical workshop.

But I think they have missed the point, which is that a development of the kind proposed—even just an ordinary mechanical workshop—simply doesn’t belong in a predominantly residential street, let alone a lot closer than 200 meters to a group of independent living units designed and built for the elderly.

And if the applicant is correct in envisaging hordes of eager muscle car enthusiasts converging on Dawson Street, driving muscle cars of their own, what effect will that have on the character and amenity of the area?

The Shire Planner, in her advice to Council, mentions a new general industrial area planned for south of the Beverley townsite.

Surely it is in such an area that Mr Smith’s proposed development properly belongs. 

APPENDIX Psychology 101: Some observations on Muscle Car Syndrome  

Marking territory

Freaking out the girlfriend

Feeling the burn on the way to the crematorium

Who needs a 6-pack if you've got a V8?

A guide to social interaction

Dying for a smoke

A smoke to die for