There is an old saying; “You can’t be a little bit pregnant”.
In the
same way, when it comes to management of public assets and public funds, things can only be proper or improper, legal or illegal.
I know we live in the country, but the days of “special” arrangements
for certain people are supposed to be over, no matter how good and
well-intentioned those people are, or how long they’ve been around.
What I’m saying is that any arrangement the Shire Council
makes in relation to property belonging to ratepayers can’t be just sort-of ok, not really an issue,
near-enough is good-enough. All the
Shire’s arrangements concerning public assets and public money should be absolutely
scrupulous and legal.
Over the past five years, I have repeatedly and consistently
complained to the CEO and councillors
that arrangements in regard to the management and hiring out of the Yornup Hall
are 1. Improper , 2. Possibly illegal and 3. In breach of basic standards of good
governance. I’ve even written letters to the newspaper about it!
Unlike all the other halls and public assets in the Shire,
the Yornup hall has its own Management Committee which has full delegated
powers of the Shire Council. That, in itself, would be unusual, but not
improper. The problem is that for many years this Yornup Hall Management
Committee did nothing and rarely met. It
was simply a front for another committee of ordinary citizens with no legal
authority or powers which called itself the Yornup Hall Committee. The properly constituted committee simply
allowed/s the private committee to have a free run of the hall and, incredibly,
to lease the hall out to others for profit. What the committee did/does with
this money was entirely its own business. It has its own bank account. None of
the money raised from the hiring of the hall went/goes back to the Yornup Hall
Management Committee (which has no bank account) or the Shire, yet the Shire
continued/s to take responsibility for maintenance and upgrades to the hall.
What happened was a sneaky, unofficial “privatisation” of
the hall to a few insiders, with the ratepayers still picking up the bills.
All of my protests were dismissed by the CEO and several attempts
I made to redress the situation by
moving to abolish the Yornup Hall Management Committee were rejected by a
majority of councillors. My efforts to bring proper governance to the situation
were deeply resented by the members of the Yornup Hall Committee, including
Deputy Shire President Tony Pratico. These people will tell you I am a wicked
person with no redeeming qualities.
Last year, I wrote to the Department of Local Government and
suggested that the arrangements regarding the hall were in breach of Section 3.58
of the Local Government Act.
This week I received a letter from the Department which vindicated
my stand.
“The Department… has
identified that the Shire may have failed to comply with its requirements in
relation to delegations to committees under the Local Government Act,” it said.
“It is the Department’s
view that a number of functions delegated to the Management Committee are being
undertaken by the Yornup Hall Committee.”
The letter thanked me for bringing my concerns to their
attention and promised they would raise the matter with the CEO.
I trust they will get a better hearing than I did.
