You know you need local government reform when...

Our community has a new leader. The well-known farmer, owner of Çhooks and operator of the ice-cream van, Mr Tony Pratico is now Shire President - an important and influential position.

So I went along to last night's Council meeting and when it came time for questions from the public, I got up and asked him a very simple, but I think pertinent one:  ''What is your vision for the future of Bridgetown-Greenbushes?''

It was met with a stunned silence, and when he recovered his composure the President made this extraordinary statement: "I don't think that is an appropriate question." There was another  pause, until he added: "My vision is to be a part of the decision-making process."

And that was it. That's the guy who is supposed to be charting our course.

Who's running Bridgetown, indeed!

A test for our elected representatives

The Bridgetown-Greenbushes Shire councillors should censure Shire CEO Tim Clynch for his handling of the Yornup Hall issue.

For many years, Mr Clynch condoned and defended a situation in regard to the management of the hall which has now been found by the Department of Local Government to be in breach of the law.

This might be excused as simple mismanagement, but what is worse, Mr Clynch has provided misleading information to Council and others about the arrangements in regard to the hall.

For example, he repeatedly told councillors that the Council’s Yornup Hall Management Committee was collecting revenue from hall hire and expending this on the hall.  We now know that this committee never touched the hall hire revenue. The money was actually being collected and spent (on anything they saw fit) by a group of locals known as the Yornup Hall Committee.

That this group of locals includes members of Mr Clynch’s extended family raises questions around the impartiality of his advice, which must be addressed by Council.

The task for Council of getting to the bottom of this affair will be made harder because its new President, Tony Pratico is deeply involved in the issue.

Mr Pratico is a member of both the Council committee which is supposed to run the hall and the private group which actually runs the hall. Mr Pratico voted several times against motions I put to forward during my term as a councillor which were aimed at ending the curious Yornup hall arrangements. He did not once declare an impartiality interest.

If the other councillors do nothing about this emerging scandal, they will stand accused of a failure to insist on even minimum standards of governance and accountability for the public assets in their care.

Who will defend the indefensible?

The shoddy, makeshift little edifice which is our current Council has begun to crumble.

As outlined here earlier, the Council has devolved into a group of people who do not much more than routinely follow directions, rubber stamping the decisions of Shire CEO Tim Clynch.

But to paraphrase a famous movie, it may turn out he’s not the messiah, but just a naughty boy!

Concerned citizens have long been alarmed by the arrogant and dismissive conduct of both senior staff and councillors towards those they are supposed to represent.

In the past few weeks, councillor Sue Moscarda has quit and left town for personal reasons. Now President Brian Moore has pulled the pin, for no apparent reason.

I wonder whether it has anything to do with the Department of Local Government’s investigation into the  unusual arrangements concerning the Yornup Hall…?

Followers of Council meetings and this blog will know I have tried long and hard inside and outside of Council to convince my former colleagues it is wrong to hand over public assets like this hall to a select group of private citizens.  A majority of councillors didn’t believe me, because Mr Clynch said I was wrong and there was nothing to worry about.  Now the Department has concluded I was correct -- that the arrangements were not legal and I believe some fairly serious slaps on wrists have been delivered.

At the recent annual meeting of electors, I successfully moved that Council consider the following motion: That in order to restore proper and legal governance over the Yornup Hall, remove the appearance of favouritism and provide accountability for funds raised by the renting of this hall, Council removes the authority for and disbands the Yornup Hall Management Committee, and henceforth manages the Yornup hall the same way it manages every other hall in the Shire.

But Council will soon vote on a “face-saving” alternative recommendation from Mr Clynch that the hall be leased to its current “de-facto”owners, a group which includes Mr Clynch’s in-laws and Deputy President Tony Pratico.

Will any councillors be brave enough to stand up to Messers Clynch and Pratico and say enough is enough?  And what, if any, action will councillors take over the fact that they and every other ratepayer and citizen of the Shire has for 10 years been deliberately misled about the arrangements concerning the hall’s use and denied proper accountability for the money raised from its hiring out?

Maybe the answer to that question was just a bit too hard for Mr Moore, since in this case he couldn’t simply handball the question to the CEO, as he did with almost every other query since becoming President.