Item 9.15 of last week’s meeting contains council’s response to the Municipal Inspector’s recommendations. Many of the points made relate to ‘accuracy of minutes’. It is thus astounding that the minutes which were published on Friday contain two glaring errors –

  • There is no mention of Cr. Penhalluriack’s dissent. He unequivocally stated that he wished this to be recorded in the minutes
  • The failure to include part of a question to Cr. Lipshutz which asked him whether he was the author of the email

 The failure to include both of these events in the minutes is the result of either incompetence, or a deliberate attempt to keep the wider community ill informed of what happens at council meetings. Since these minutes thereby become the ‘public record’ held for posterity, it represents a complete rewriting of history and is nothing short of a major ‘cover up’ if allowed to stand.

If these omissions are the result of incompetence, then the individual responsible should be called to account. We find it difficult to accept this notion however, since we believe that prior to material being disseminated it would have been checked by fairly ‘high level’ individuals.

Once again, we can only conclude that the inspector’s report, and council’s response to these recommendations remain shallow words, rather than real commitment to openness and transparency. Finally, we also point out that council is spending further money to hire a so-called ‘independent note-taker’!!! We now have ratepayers funds being used for ‘note-taking’ and ‘retraining’. How much is this costing councillors?