In our last post we listed the ‘requests for reports’ which were still outstanding. One of these was the Lipshutz/Whiteside motion –
“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 (16th October, 2007)”.
Not only has no report ever made an appearance, but the depot still stands in the middle of Caulfield Park! Worse still is found in the minutes of 7th April 2010 – that is, just on 2 and a half years later, when Mr. Jack Campbell, OBE asked the following public question –
“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 read: “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.”
We wish to note several things here:
- As per usual, parts of Mr. Campbell’s question remain unanswered.
- The depot has not been moved, no report has been tabled (as admitted by this response) and like the mulch site ‘searches’ seem to take forever until they evaporate from the public consciousness!
When one actually goes to page 52 of the 2008/9 Annual Report we find this:
|
Strategy |
Action |
Measure |
|
Investigate the relocation of the |
Conduct Investigation |
Investigation completed |
“Comment: Investigation covered the need for some permanent park maintenance facilities; the inclusion during 2009 of 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”.
QUESTIONS
- Where is the report? Why hasn’t it been tabled?
- Why four years on is the depot still at Caulfield Park?
- Why wasn’t Mr Campbell’s question answered fully?
- Why shouldn’t residents believe that such inaction and responses are not in the interests of full transparency, accountability and/or good governance?
Glen Eira Debates 
October 27, 2011 at 5:19 PM
Listen you knuckle heads, its all about power and who gets what.
Macabee got what they wanted in Caulfield Park, served up by their councilors [independents of course]
In return, Newton get his pay-back, no reports and no boat rocking
Simple
October 27, 2011 at 6:42 PM
They also got what they wanted at Princes Park and will get what they want at Booran Reserve.
October 28, 2011 at 8:56 AM
I think in this post you could replace the word depot with frisbee and the four outstanding questions will still be the same, looks like a trend.
October 27, 2011 at 5:35 PM
Newton can spruik all he likes about how transparent this council is and how wonderfully well it’s doing under his management. The truth is that it’s all a con. Half of his time is probably spent hiding away all the stuff that he doesn’t want people to find out about and the other half of his time is spent watching out for potential thorns in his side such as Penhalluriack and alleging that they’re bullying him.
What a sicko place when honest questions can’t even be answered properly without trying to hide stuff. Deplorable!
October 27, 2011 at 5:57 PM
I think several points are worth making over this particular request for a report. In the first place the called for report (or “investigation”) did not confine itself to only available spots in Glen Eira. The Lipshutz/Whiteside request contained the phrase “in or out of the city”. It is extremely difficult to believe that no site might have been found in Bayside, Kingston, Port Phillip or elsewhere in 3 years or so. This of course begs of the question of how hard officers actually looked!
Next, the purported answer to this question which is contained in the Annual Report clearly suggests that the “investigation” all of a sudden involved many other matters than what Lipshutz requested. I’m again left wondering whether officers have the right to alter a request for a report to suit their own ends? I would have thought that if I asked for (a), then that should have been the focus of the report/investigation. I can’t see how officers can alter something off their own bat.
The section that’s quoted from this Annual Report is actually quite laughable. No organisation worth a cracker would report that a “measure” is simply to have something done as in this case the measure listed is “investigation completed”. This is the common performance measure in much of the recent Annual Report as well. I can instigate and conduct a thousand investigations. Simply because these are completed does not tell the people who have paid for this how thorough, and satissfactory any of my reports were. It doesn’t even reveal anything about the findings or outcomes of my investigation. Such measures are worthless and self serving. The public gets to know nothing, and in this case, nor do they see the benefits of the money that’s been spent via the removal of the depot.
Last but not least I want to make some comment on the response to Mr. Campbell’s question. It is demeaning and insulting and doesn’t really address what he’s asked – that is, what “actions” council will undertake to resolve the depot question. It is demeaning in tone in that it implies “we’ve already answered your query if you had bothered to look”. To then force residents to go off and check other documents that they may or may not have in their possession is unacceptable, especially when a simple quotation from this Annual report could quite easily have been included with the answer. To do this though would probably have been incriminating and a dead giveaway, so it’s left out. Whatever the motive behind such answers, I just think that it is another example of how this administration treats its residents.
What I am starting to resent the most however is the NON action of councillors when we have had innumerable outbursts by Lipshutz, Hyams against individuals. Overall, the general tenor of responses to public questions belongs in the gutter and not in the hallowed halls of a democratically elected council. Others have said it before – that silence is agreement and complicity. Unless councillors put an end to this type of behaviour and this consistent evasiveness, if not secrecy, then it will clearly go on unchecked. I applaud the owners of this blog. Residents need to be made fully aware of exactly what is going on.
October 27, 2011 at 7:33 PM
I want to add my voice to what Mr. Evans has written. Until the c60 came up and my sister found herself literally fighting to save her lifestyle and amenity, I had no real interest in local government. Sure, I complained and whinged whever rates went up, but that was about it. Now I’m very interested in what happens and how it happens and how it happens in this council is the pits. I’ve bored everyone stupid in the last few months telling them what a lousy council this is and I’ll continue doing it. I want Newton out as well as the gang of four and I want their (MODERATORS: word deleted) and deceit exposed. Keep plugging away Glen Eira Debates. You’re getting the message out loud and clear.
October 27, 2011 at 8:33 PM
If an annual report similar to that of Glen Eira. including the matrix with strategy, action, measure was published in a corporate report and sent to shareholders the stocks of the company would fall. Futhermore, shareholders would turn up at the AGM and want either answers or heads on the board. We have public servants being paid as much as people in the real corporate world and behaving like public servants the world over. Newton is a career public servant. He would get eaten in the corporate world. Check out the staff carpark. I bet the CEO’s car spot is empty by 6.00 pm every night. Check out the car spot of an excutive in a public company on $300+ and I reckon the car spot would still in use well after 8 on most nights. The reason corporate executives get paid plenty is because they must remain competive. Love to see some competition in Local Government.
The directors up at the town hall must look in the mirror and say to themselves, How lucky am I to be on this perk, hope it lasts.
October 27, 2011 at 10:05 PM
You’ve provided the answer to the problem I think. Life is too easy for these people. They owe their jobs to Newton and he’s clinging for all his might to this one. You’ve got to wonder though what the hell he is doing in local government after being a self proclaimed big fish in federal and then in state public service. What happened? It’s a heck of a come down you’d have to say to end up in little old Glen Eira in 1998 as a mere finance officer amongst other things. After being such a big shot in premier’s departments and hob nobbing it with the rich and powerful why end up here? Unless of course – but I’ll leave that to people’s imaginations………
October 27, 2011 at 10:19 PM
I wont leave it to peoples imagination, he is stuck in Glen Eira for good, as he could get a job anywhere else. He is out-dated in manner, style and education.
His latest effort is to surround himself with young female council officers to write the multitude of wiz-bang PR docs we have seen in the last year, desperately trying to put a modern face on Glen Eira. He believe none of it. Fail, Fail, Fail,
October 27, 2011 at 10:23 PM
I’ve been honing up on the Local Government Act. It basically says that a ceo has to carry out council decisions/resolutions “without undue delay”. It also says that his job includes “providing timely advice”. I grant that these phrases aren’t bullet proof and that there could be some argument as to what “undue delay” really means. But, and this is a huge but, I don’t think it means years and years before Newton decides to do what council has really ordered him to do. The same goes for “timely advice”. A report could be also seen as timely advice. As far as I’m concerned he hasn’t fulfilled these clauses of the act and some of the claims from the Whelan report that he is “obstructionist” is pretty well on the mark in my view. When dozens of reports don’t show up and others like the flood ones take months and months to get done that that is either ignoring what council has ordered or sheer incompetence of him and his staff. The third possibility is that it’s politics and he’s stalling. Again not proper governance.