For the third time, a municipal investigation into Glen Eira Council has basically revealed itself to be a total whitewash. Over the coming weeks we will dissect each finding made in the report and point out its fallacies, and its loopholes.
We’ll begin with the finding that councillor Requests for Reports are delivered in a ‘timely’ manner and that officers have fulfilled their duty by carrying out council resolutions.
On the 16th October, 2007 the following request for a report was made by Lipshutz and Whiteside –
“That a report be prepared as to the Council depot in Caulfield Park being removed from Caulfield Park to another location in or out of the City”.
The motion was put and CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY.
No such report has ever been tabled at Council Meetings! Timely? – only 3 years late and still counting!
Even more damning is the fact that on April 7th, 2010 a public question by Mr. Campbell asked:
“Could you please report the result of the investigation requested by Cr. Lipshutz into an alternative site for the ‘Works Depot’ currently located in the Crown Land of Caulfield Park and what action is planned to re-locate this Depot and when is it planned that this will occur.”
The response was:
“The outcome of the investigation was reported on page 52 of Council’s 2008/09 Annual Report. A suitable alternative site that meets Council’s requirements has not been found. Councillors remain committed to continuing the search for an appropriate site.”
When we go to page 52 of the 2008/9 Annual Report, this is what is there –
| Action | Measure | |
| Investigate the Relocation of the Parks Depot from Caulfield Park. | Conduct Investigation | Investigation completed |
| Comment: Investigation covered the need for some permanent park maintenance facilities; the inclusion during 2009 of large water tanks and infrastructure to supply recycled water to the park via drip irrigation; and the scarcity of alternative sites within Glen Eira. Options to minimise the area required are being considered further. |
Conclusions:
- No report has ever been tabled at Council
- Three years later NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE
- Public question remains unanswered as to what and when
- Lipshutz, since you moved the motion for a report, what have you done about this?
- The comment seems to indicate that the depot will NOT BE MOVED, only reduced in size! This is not what the request for a report stated, nor what the answer to the public question inferred.
- If this is correct, then when was the decision to ‘downsize’ made, and by whom?
- Doesn’t the Annual Report contradict the answer to the public question?
Like everything else, this council seems to be of the belief ‘out of sight, out of mind’. We’ll bury the detail, keep the residents ignorant, and go on in our merry way! That all this is acceptable to councillors, inspectors, and Ministers is damning in the extreme. It certainly is not acceptable to ratepayers!
Glen Eira Debates 
September 12, 2010 at 12:29 PM
“the more things change, the more they stay the same”. if you go back to year 2000 the same thing was happening. the worst part is that there was never even an attempt by administration (who is responsible for that?) to establish a priority list every six months to manage reports in an orderly fashion. may be that is being done at the briefing meetings, but we the public, plebs, and slaves are not important so we do not have to know. do we?
i say to the councillors and their lousy bureaucrats: “you can fool all people some of the time; you can fool some people all of the time; but you CANNOT fool all people all of the time”.
councillors, including the ceo, your time is up ‘shape up or ship out’. revolt and revolution is coming to glen eira.
September 12, 2010 at 12:42 PM
How many other reports have never seen the light of day? This incident reveals quite clearly the failure of governance on the part of both councillors and administrators. It’s not only that a report is still outstanding three years later, but that decisions appear to be made behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny. It beggars belief to accept that no suitable location could be found in or outside of Glen Eira in three years. Time that the usual mumbo jumbo of answers to public questions was put a stop to. This is the job of councillors. If they fail to represent their ratepayers in an open fashion then they simply are failing to do their jobs – regardless of what the municipal inspector concludes.
I’ve also visited Caulfield Park numerous times and those water tanks are an outrage – an ugly blot on what should be beautiful park vistas.
September 12, 2010 at 3:02 PM
Note the subtle play on words which is so typical of this administration. ‘Report’ suddenly becomes ‘investigation’ and ‘relocation’ magically morphs into ‘drip irrigation’. The question about moving the damn depot is never addressed. Well done Mr. Burke – you’ve really earned your money this time!
September 12, 2010 at 4:23 PM
Someone mentioned somewhere a few weeks back that the Packer Park bowling green report has also not made an appearance yet and that’s exactly one year ago. Progress is sure slow. Maybe they should employ some more people on 200,000 per year.
September 12, 2010 at 10:49 PM
You have got to be joking.You receive an Inspectors Report that slams Councillors and what you are attempting to do is divert attention from the disgraceful behavior of Councillors onto Staff. What about deliberately tampering with Council records.You should be ashamed.
September 13, 2010 at 8:29 AM
Hi Anon or really you are just a Pretender.
Pretender, you must be a lapdog of Newton and Burke. I hear nothing from you but wanting to sack this Council again for nothing that they have done wrong. What’s in it for you? As a suffering resident I do not understand or comprehend what sacking of Councillors achieves. Pretender, can you please explain?
Just to illustrate the point that no sacking of the Council member, including the CEO, is beneficial to the community, let us go back to the Dr Greg Walsh Report. The 1998 Report dealt with Governance issues, but has a section (pages 11 to 18) missing. For some reason, not yet fully revealed, the CEO at the time Ms Margaret Douglas resigned from being a CEO after the publication of Dr Walsh Report. I think she was pushed out i.e. sacked because of what is in this missing section. The consistent allegation holds that she was found to exceed her authority to sign cheques above the limit set in legislation. She should have asked the Council members to approve the expenditure.
The Councillors at the time were (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glen_Eira): Alan Grossbard, Noel Erlich, Barry Neve, Russell Longmuir, Veronica Martens, and Norman Kennedy. The auditor was as he still is Mr David Gibbs. Dr Greg Walsh investigation took place during Cr Neve mayoralty. But the removal of Margaret Douglas was made by Mayor Cr Norman Kennedy after the Report was published. What is in the missing section? Why is it still not made public? Why is it that every time an FoI is being used to find out the contents of this section it is being refused? Who is protecting whom?
What is known of that time is that apparently the Director of Corporate Development Mr Newton has informed Cr Kennedy about the fiduciary problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary). The Mayor Norman Kennedy had no choice but to call a meeting of Councillors to determine the gravity of the situation and decide on what to do. It was the right unanimous decision that Margaret Douglas had to leave. So she did.
However, there is this nagging, nagging feeling that there was another fiduciary moral problem, because there were not just one or two cheques, whose authority to sign Margaret Douglas has exceeded, but there were 16 in all such cheques! Who at that time was in charge of finances? And who was the Auditor that was in charge of the fiduciary obligations? All that is probably in that confidential section that no one can get hold off.
Now enter the new Councillors lead by Cr Lipshutz, who is well versed with the law. He knows that you cannot do much in practice as far as legal things are concerned unless there is proof and in particular documentary evidence to support any allegations against an Officer or government official, who are protected by law from being investigated.
In such situation, I believe Cr Lipshutz has done the best he could to protect Councillors and the working of the Council. Again, I challenge anyone to tell us what would you do if you were on the Council surrounded by Officers that were there for the last 12 years, quite immune from criticisms and investigations!
Over to you.
September 13, 2010 at 10:25 AM
Anonymous, you have obviously failed to comprehend what we have written. In the first place, we stated that we would go through the Inspector’s findings one by one and dissect them. Two of his findings related to requests for reports and timeliness and accuracy. This is what we concentrated on to reveal how the conclusions drawn do not stand up to scrutiny. As far as ‘tampering’ with council records, everything we’ve put up in this post is on the public record! It is cited VERBATIM. The public is free to draw its own conclusions. We simply are asking questions and highlighting information. Our point is that the inspector’s report remains a whitewash and this includes not only councillors, but also administrators.
September 12, 2010 at 10:55 PM
There are countless other ‘requests for reports’ over the past 3 years which have not been tabled at council meetings. Some of these outstanding reports materialise years later as actual policies – such as the Street Tree Policy. Those that have materialised often do not address the parameters asked for in the original request for report. Yet not a whimper from councillors. They simply accept what is placed in front of them and no-one ever asks consistently and in public, ‘where is my report?’! The sham continues unabated!!
As to accuracy, that is another issue altogether. We will highlight numerous distortions and deliberately misleading data in the days to come from a variety of so called ‘reports’.
September 13, 2010 at 10:38 AM
Curious you are stuck in the past and making up stories.Show me one public document about the departure of the CEO in 1998. If it did occur it all would have all been handled confidentially. You are making up stories and I suggest you see someone.I believe that the deliberate covering up of a recording system is a disgrace and the fact that no action was taken a sign of weakness by the Minister. As for sacking a Council I think you can now remove Individual Councillors.
September 13, 2010 at 11:52 AM
Sorry Gleneira but the point I was trying to make is that a Councillor tampering with Councils Reporting System in my opinion is far more important than the 27th Point in the Report which found nothing against Officers. Why didn’t you start with point one?