Mel Yuan for Brunswick

A representative from the residents of Rolland Street reached out. See the details of their annual party and issues below.

Will protecting local community events like this be important to you?

I have first-hand experience with these kinds of community events from running “pop-up play” activities when my kids were little and the street events we do for Brunswick Communities for Nature. Vibrant and community-led activities are what make our community so special.

Will you help us to simplify the Merri-bek community event process by replacing some red tape with common sense?

Having the minimum number of rules, regulations, and policies to govern health and safety and ensure fair use of public facilities is crucial. I think what’s important is streamlining, simplifying and automating how this actually happens. We had a few glitches in getting the right Public Liability Insurance to run a community stall at the Sydney Road Street Party. Every year we had different regulations to adhere to and you couldn’t tell from one year to the next what would be required. Council needs to work hard to make things simple. A suitable community insurance framework to remove the financial burden, is also crucial.

Each year we hold a Street Christmas party obtaining insurance and council approval to close our street to traffic for a few hours, we collect the dusty old signs from council ourselves, create a traffic management plan and tick all the other council boxes. It’s a great community event, kids on the street with bikes and balls, music, food, fun and community reminding us all how lucky we are to live in Coburg together.

We have been doing this for about 10 years but each year the council is making it harder and harder to obtain permission. This year we have now been told we will require External Traffic Managing Crew, 1 person at the end of each street, for the duration of the event.  Council will pay for this ridiculous requirement this year (no thoroughfare is impacted by the street closure)  however we are very worried that we will need to fund this ourselves in future putting this celebration out of our financial reach.