Parramatta Greens Councillor Phil Bradley is calling for the people of Parramatta to get a fair share of the enormous profits made by developers in the Parramatta CBD.
Councillor Bradley said today,
While high rise developers queue for profitable residential development in the Parramatta CBD, our communities are increasingly burdened with insufficient green spaces, high energy prices, unaffordable housing and childcare, and inadequate community services.
Parramatta residents should be outraged when they realise how much they are being cheated out of local service needs, apparently by the NSW government discouraging Council from negotiating a fair share of excessively high CBD developer profits.
The City of Parramatta needs about $1 billion for local infrastructure related to currently proposed CBD development, but the low value sharing policy is estimated to leave about $200m shortfall for ratepayers to pay!
Too often CBD developers receive residential density increases, involving tens of storeys more than the Local Environment Plan allows. For this, only about 10% of the increased value of extra floor area is returned to Council for public infrastructure, whereas in the Australian Capital Territory the public gets 75% of this extra value.
Councillor Bradley added:
At a recent Council meeting, I put an amendment which could have increased the local benefit from medium rise development by up to $400m extra.
Sadly my amendment was not supported by any other Councillor. The community should not be short changed so that property developers can pocket enormous profits.