Buried on page 23 of last week’s Glen Eira Leader is the mandatory public notification of the Special Council Meeting to consider the budget and Council Plan. With typical efficiency, no such announcement features on Council’s website!

We again highlight the following low lights of this budget:

  • Another 6.5% increase in rates plus exorbitant increases to rubbish collections and child care fees
  • More and more staff so that well over 60% of rate revenue goes to paying staff
  • More and more ‘contractors’ so that the staffing bill is astronomical – over $81,000,000 in the coming year
  • The continuing decline in council subsidies for Pensioner Rebates and real expenditure on drains, traffic management and footpaths/roads
  • Millions upon millions spent on pavilions (Duncan McKinnon), regrassing ovals, concrete plinthing, and toilets barely 10 years old. We simply ask whether ‘refurbishing’ or ‘redevelopment’ could not replace the total demolition of some of these pavilions?

At last council meeting Tang spoke of the necessity of ‘prioritising’ and looking at council’s ‘ideology’. We note that Tang has been in council since 2006 as has Lipshutz. Hyams was first elected in 2003, and again in 2008. Esakoff has been a constant since 2003. All the rest have had basically 4 years to figure out and change ‘ideology’ and to do some real ‘prioritising’. Fiddling with the budget as happened last year is like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. It just meant a slight hiccup and delay in the grand plan. The old goals, objectives, and agendas are still in place. The ‘ideology’ that these goals represent (ie more development, more taj mahals, more secrecy, and more extravagances) are the antithesis of the views expressed by residents. These councillors either will not, or cannot change the ‘ideology’. Only the October elections can achieve this.

PS: As an afterthought, the most pertinent question to consider would be: what have these councillors actually achieved in nearly 4 years? Our ‘answer’ has to be ‘not much’. For example:

  • GESAC running over time and losing money hand over fist
  • The failure to carefully supervise Paul Burke in his allocation of the basketball courts to the warriors and then backing him to the hilt and Lipshutz’s claim that councillors should not be ‘hand on’!
  • Booran Rd Reservoir – empty and not resourced for another 4 years at least despite Glen Eira having the lowest open space ratio per capita in the state
  • Centre of the Racecourse – a cave-in and not a word about anything for nearly a year
  • C60 – a total cave in to the MRC by the gang of four
  • Carbon reduction figures – still non-existent after years and years of talking about it
  • Community consultation still only given lip service to
  • Transparency and accountability – non existent
  • Secrecy on the rise with councillors continually gagged
  • A planning scheme that hands carte blanche to developers
  • The reappointment of Newton
  • Categorised as a ‘ high risk’ council for the first time
  • Hocked to the gills for the first time
  • Advisory committees that remain ‘closed shops’ – no published agendas; paltry minutes and bar one committee – no community reps.
  • No Notice of Motion; no recission provision; agenda set completely by CEO
  • Continual doctoring of minutes
  • Expenditure on pavilions that remain commercial failures
  • Failure to adequately address traffic and parking
  • Failure to address flooding potential
  • Scandal after scandal – Municipal inspectors, heritage farce, ombudsman inquiries, lawyers on easy street, etc.