Profile
Cr Chandler was elected Mayor of Stonnington on 8 December 2011. He is an Architect and a Justice of the Peace.
He is a Member of the Australian Building Codes Board and President of the Prahran Mechanics Institute.
What do you look forward to achieving during your Council term and what are the major challenges?
As a Councillor and Mayor, one of the key challenges is to ensure that we continue to provide effective and democratic government and leadership at the local level.
In town planning, we need to campaign for local policy to be given more weight at VCAT, in particular, with regard to our Municipal Strategic Statement that seeks to direct higher density development to nominated main roads in order to protect all other areas from overdevelopment.
Planning is the perennial issue in Stonnington. In my view, we are taking more than our fair share of high density development as State Government planning policies allow developers to target Stonnington because of it's desirability and profitability. How to effectively deal with this to maintain residential amenity and attractive commercial areas is Council's ongoing stand-out issue.
In the year ahead, we will also be grappling with difficult decisions of major importance in regard to the proposed Chadstone expansion and the future of 590 Orrong Road.
The coming Capital Works Program budget is likely to be one of the biggest in Stonnington’s history as we fund the development of the new Surrey Road Park, the completion of Phoenix Park Community Centre, extension works to Council’s Pound and a major push on infrastructure – a lot of this directed toward upgrading roads and drains across the City.
I'm also very committed to getting the re-vegetation, beautification and clean-up of the Yarra River and river environs front stage centre through the Yarra River Biodiversity Project. This will be a major project requiring long-term commitment. Currently Council has allocated $1 million for stage one, which has commenced and I'll be pushing for additional funds in future budgets.
Advocacy is another major role – and I look forward to working with my fellow Councillors to represent our residents on a range of key issues that are of great importance to our community – to ensure the wellbeing of the community, as we face external economic challenges, cost shifting from other levels of government, and policy decisions that affect Stonnington.
There certainly is a big agenda ahead but I look forward to embracing the many opportunities and challenges facing Stonnington and helping to deliver Council’s vision of a place of community, individuality and business where an environment is created that fosters the hopes, wellbeing and aspirations of all people.
What attracted you to Council?
I first became interested by wanting to see things happen in my local neighbourhood and starting a residents group - street trees, traffic management, etc. It all evolved from there and after a few successes with lobbying the next thing people were asking me to run for Council. Becoming a Councillor put me on a steep learning curve and my interest and understanding of the complexity of the matters Local Government deals with has broadened exponentially, but, at heart, I'm still a 'resident's issues' candidate.