By Alesha Capone
Wyndham council has launched a draft plan aimed at helping the municipality prepare for future “shocks and stresses”, including extreme weather, population growth and terrorist attacks.
A report into the proposed Resilient Wyndham 2021-2025 strategy, presented at last week’s council meeting, reads: “Given the wide scale and significant impact of COVID-19, it is imperative council positions itself to be in an optimum state of preparedness to repair, recover and offer new directions in the event of future shocks and stresses”.
Examples of shock events cited in the draft strategy include heatwaves, floods, disease outbreaks, climate change and cyber-attacks.
Cr Jennie Barrera said the draft strategy had been developed through a community consultation process.
“We live in uncertain times and Resilient Wyndham enables us to better prepare for, to respond to, and recover from any disruptive event that we may have to face into the future,” she said.
Cr Barrera also put forward a separate notice of motion during the meeting, asking for council officers to prepare a report into Wyndham’s tree canopy and actions to help increase the canopy.
Cr Barrera’s notice comes after a report from RMIT University and Greener Spaces Better Places, released in November last year, ranked Wyndham as having the lowest green canopy in the nation, with just 5.4 per cent of the municipality covered by trees and shrubs.
The Resilient Wyndham strategy proposes to combat this by increasing Wyndham’s tree canopy by at least 25 per cent by 2030, which is a decade earlier than the council’s present aim of 2040.
The draft strategy also said that by 2030, all Wyndham residents should have access to fresh food within their neighbourhood, either through growing or purchasing produce.
Another goal of the draft strategy is to have 5000 residents participate in ‘Get Prepared Wyndham’, a disaster preparedness program which the council will develop in partnership with Red Cross Australia.
The council also aims to have 50 businesses take part in workshops on disaster planning.
A further goal of the draft strategy is to triple the number of walking and cycling trips undertaken in the municipality.
The draft Resilient Wyndham strategy will be open for public feedback until May 26, see theloop.wyndham.vic.gov.au/wyndham-resilience-strategy for details.
