By Ruza Zivkusic
ST ALBANS Uniting Church remains heritage-listed.
Its fate was sealed, temporarily, last week when Brimbank City councillors voted to keep the church protected from destruction.
The decision follows recent controversy as Cr Ken Capar last month moved a rescission motion to have the agenda discussed again after the proposal to have the heritage overlay removed from the 95-year-old church was lost during the second-last council meeting.
The church is one of almost 100 other individual properties and precincts throughout the municipality that are heritage listed and will be before an independent panel for review.
Mayor Margaret Giudice said the conservation of historic buildings and features helped to preserve a neighbourhood’s charm and appeal and reinforces community pride.
The church’s Reverend Andy Tiver expressed his disappointed over the decision but added that he and another 60 members of the congregation who turned up at the meeting expected such a result.
“There seems to be internal conflicts on the council and we seem to have been caught up in those conflicts,” Rev Tiver said.
“We’ve learned that it’s very difficult to work with the councillors and that there’s other agendas happening in the council that we think we have been caught up in,” he added.
Last week’s three-and-a-half-hour meeting started off with some councillors reading out letters of correspondence from the congregation’s members objecting to the heritage overlay. This was followed by an alternative rescission motion being put forward by Cr Natalie Suleyman, which was later lost.
Cr Kathryn Eriksson also read a letter from the St Albans branch of the Labor Party, congratulating council on keeping the church heritage-listed.
Cr Eriksson then presented the some of council’s minutes dating back in 2005 during Cr Suleyman’s mayorship, showing that the heritage amendment was carried unanimously.
“Her (Cr Suleyman’s) position on this was entirely contradictory to the one that had been put forward earlier,” Cr Eriksson said.
In a press release, Cr Suleyman called for council’s “controversial” heritage overlay amendment to be abandoned, saying that “no one really knows what’s going on” and that the process was “flawed and would not stand up to an external scrutiny”.
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During the meeting she attacked Cr Sam David, who earlier had deleted some buildings from the overlay, and said he did not justify the deletion.
“Cr David apparently went for a drive in his car and picked the sites he wanted to take off,” Cr Suleyman said.
“There was no method, no consultation, criteria and definitely no evidence provided,” she added.
But Cr Eriksson said the purpose of the overlay was to identify sites that have history.
“It puts in an extra step to protect those structures,” Cr Eriksson said.
“You can’t save everything forever but it would be in justice to that church because it’s the second-oldest structure in St Albans surviving,” she added.
Rev Tiver said he would appeal to the independent panel to have the church excluded from the heritage list and, if needed, would take the matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Council will make a final decision regarding the amendment following the release of the panel report.
Any amendment would require the approval of the Minister for Planning.
