Deane Rohrlach

2014 candidate for Light Regional Council.
Heritage survey responses.

1. What do you think Council's role is in protecting and conserving heritage?
   Council has a significant role in protecting heritage but it's actions need to be focused on protecting important heritage and not so broad that it prevents the creation of tomorrow's heritage.

2. What measures and incentives do you support to protect and conserve local heritage?
   Council heritage grants for owners of heritage listed properties for assistance in the maintenance of these properties. Flexible planning rules that encourage creative use of heritage properties to maintain their viability. Council working with the owners of heritage properties to conserve heritage, not considering then the enemy.

3. What is the most important heritage protection issue in your local government area?
   Council's historic conservation policy areas are drawn too widely and include areas containing many modern houses and only a few older houses. The requirements for building a new house on these areas have been unfairly pedantic and restrictive, and considered unfair by many victims of the policy. This has tended to give all heritage a bad name and has done nothing to improve historical character in areas which have diverse character. Council has recognised this problem and set up a working party to address the issues. The result of this is that Council has adopted a clear direction to address these issues. Another issue is the difficulty of changeling the use of a heritage building to make it more economically viable and thus more likely to be maintained in good condition . Many of these requirements are government imposed building requirements that are so expensive to satisfy in a heritage building that they are economically impossible to do, so the building deteriorates.

4. What policies and programs will you advocate to protect and conserve heritage in your local area?
   Maintain heritage grants to owners of heritage listed properties ( council has recently reinstated these) Address the inequities in Council's historic conservation policy areas requirements and the areas covered. (I initiated this process and chaired the working party addressing it). See this through to completion. Push for more flexibility in planning rules for heritage properties to help make them economically sustainable.

5. Do you support local Councils retaining development approval powers for projects over $3m in value?
   Absolutely. Council has local knowledge and commitment and will achieve better outcomes than another faceless bureaucratic process.

6. Do you have any other thoughts about the protection of heritage in your Council area?
   Heritage is important in our Council area. We must conserve, and use heritage to tell stories from the past but we need quality new development too, to create tomorrow's nheritage.