It turns out, many of our councillors couldn't care less.
In December, I tried to get a look at the Minutes of the November Council meeting. They were not available either at the Shire office, or on the website. I checked the Local Law on this, which said the minutes must be made available no later than 10 working days after the meeting. Since 12 working days had passed when I went looking and because this is not an isolated incident of late publication of the minutes, I decided to inform the officers and the councillors who represent us.
I lodged a complaint with the attendant at the Council reception desk, and I emailed most of the councillors (except Pratico and Quinby, who I have given up on).
Dear councillor,
Standing Orders (Local Law) says that copies of the
unconfirmed minutes of Council meetings must be available for perusal at the
Shire office customer service area and Library within ten working days
of the meeting.
I have today checked the website and been over to the Shire
office and the minutes for the meeting held on November 28 are not
available. It is now 12 working days since the meeting.
This is not an isolated occurrence. The publication on
the website and availability of the minutes rarely occurs within the
time prescribed. It is usually a day or two late.
I would like to know why this local law is so often breached,
and also, why it takes so long to carry out this relatively simple
administrative task.
This may seem a trivial matter, but I think it is revealing
of the Council’s attitude to the issues of openness and accountability.
The response was instructive. The council staff decided that my complaint was not a complaint, but a "service request", and a few hours after my email went out, they put the minutes up on the website, backdating the date of publication to fit the 10-day deadline.
Only one councillor, Cr Moore responded to my email, saying she would ask CEO Tim Clynch for an explanation. When she got the explanation from Mr Clynch she emailed me to say she had received an explanation and if I wanted to know what it was I would have to ask Mr Clynch myself.
I emailed the other councillors who had not responded and indicated that I thought it was rude of them not to bother responding to an email from a ratepayer reporting a breach of the Council rules.
Cr Scallan then responded to simply acknowledge receipt of my email. Cr Nicholls said he had been away, but would look into it. Cr Wilson responded angrily...
Dear Michael
You astonish me. You’re the only person I know who can turn a
simple request into a critique of administrative tasks and at the same time
question the integrity of the Council. Now, that’s what I call rude.
Tim Clynch later responded to my "service request", saying...
I
investigated the matter and confirmed that the minutes from the November
Council meeting were not uploaded onto the Shire website by the due date.
This has led to a review of our internal procedures and I am confident that
this was a “once-off” mistake and won’t occur again. I am not aware of
this ever occurring in the past so I have deemed it to be an isolated event
however the officer responsible for uploading the minutes to the website has
been counselled on the importance of complying to the deadlines
The description of the publishing date as being “12 December”
was not an attempt to disguise the failure to upload the minutes by the due
date. Instead this was the subject name given to the document when the
file was created on the website prior to uploading. The file was actually
created prior to the 12 December and the intention of the officer was that the
website was to be programmed to automatically upload the document on 12
December. This however failed to occur and when your customer service
request was received on Monday 16 December the officer simply uploaded the
document without looking at its specific subject name (publishing date).
It was only when a councillor (Cr Moore) forwarded me your follow up email
later that day on Monday that this matter was identified and I instructed the
officer to amend the subject name (publishing date) of the file to “16 December”.
Cr Wilson should note that Mr Clynch did not share his view that I was simply being a rude and annoying trouble-maker, as he added...
Which leaves us with Crs Boyle, Mackman and Hodson who chose to ignore the emails completely, treating my legitimate complaint with contempt and ignoring their duty as publicly elected officials to communicate respectfully with ratepayers and electors.
How quickly they forget the solemn platitudes about "listening to the community" which are always trotted out in election material.
Boyle, Mackman and Hodson, I have a message for you; you do not represent only those members of the community you like personally -- you represent us all and if you don't want to do it, stop taking our money and resign.
