The Story of MITS

This research is based on going through the records of council meetings of the present term, checking on factual matters with council officers and other officials and interviewing all councillors willing to cooperate. This is only the first version of the report, and it is published to coincide with the beginning of the postal voting period of the 2020 council election. It is based on finite investigation and limited contributions from participants. Some of it is necessarily surmise. Some of it will be wrong. Publishing the first version should encourage more input.

Conclusions are tentative, facts subject to correction and enlargement. It is not the end of the story.

I mean to be objective about facts and objective about opinions but here and there, if you find something that is more opinion (about opinions or facts) than fact, please supply a contrary opinion and we can flag the point as debatable.

Summary

To begin with the conclusions, tentative as they are, the Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy (MITS) project stands out as a notable failure of the present council term. The result is wasted time and money and likely missed opportunities. MITS was misconceived in some ways but not fatally so and even now a satisfactory resolution might be possible though it may not be possible for this council or the next to grasp it. That is how it looks.

The evidence is that ALP councillors torpedoed MITS for their own purposes and Greens councillors bailed out as public opinion turned unfavourable. There is no particular conclusion to be drawn about independent councillors but the MITS was a collective project and a collective failure.

Cr Yildiz has said publically and to me that the MITS project turned into a waste of money. Cr Sue Bolton, at my suggestion of the words, adopted the American expression "train wreck". Cr Kavanagh refused to be interviewed saying that he wanted to keep good relations with his colleagues. The Greens (Natalie Abboud and Mark Riley) on the contrary assert that MITS is still a good thing maybe even with parking reform taken out. When in the May 2020 council meeting the C187 amendment was abandoned (those were the words used) Cr Riley said he was delighted because the thing would be scheduled to resurface sometime into the next council term rather than be killed off altogether.

Acknowledgements

I have attempted to contact most or all councillors (though recently excluding Cr Tapinos).

Thanks to Natalie Abboud for speaking to me for the Greens point of view. The other Green councillors have been hard to get hold of. Thanks to Cr Yildiz for explaining his views and to Cr Kavanagh for explaining why he did not wish to assist. There has not been much help from ALP councillors. In the case of Cr Tapinos, I believe it is more appropriate to have a public discussion. Acknowledgements of the help of some council officers but not others. Council has good resources for those with the time to delve into the public decision-making process, including video recordings of meetings, agendas and minutes over the entire council term.