Whilst hundreds of thousands of dollars are expended on current legal battles over GESAC, we have to ask how professional, how vigilant, how qualified, and how effective the Pools Steering Committee was in actually overseeing the whole project.
The committee was supposed to meet on a monthly basis. Not until the change in the Local Government Act when ‘assemblies’ had to be reported upon were any minutes tabled at council meetings. The first such set of minutes were dated the 29th September 2010. Since then, only 13 sets of minutes have been made public and several of these monthly meetings appear to have disappeared or simply did not take place. Hardly satisfactory when you are dealing with a $50 to $60 million dollar project. 13 meetings in 2 years on the biggest project ever undertaken is simply astounding. Yet, Lipshutz kept assuring residents how ‘on top’ of things Council was. With the current ongoing legal wrangles we can only raise an eyebrow and ask if being ‘on top’ of things should have involved heaps of more meetings and good management.
Even worse is that the Council designated Senior Project Engineer (Raj Gopalakrishnan) has never been listed as an attendee at these meetings. The supposedly regular attendees should have been – councillors (Lipshutz, Esakoff, Magee); Mark Judge (General Manager, Major Projects); Martin Snell (Major Projects Manager) and council directors such as Peter Waite and Andrew Newton.
Below is the attendance record for all of these published minutes. Hardly a convincing performance we would say, especially from Magee. Of the 13 meetings Magee was absent for 6 and didn’t make it to one site inspection. Snell also covered himself in glory by missing 5, and Judge was a no show on 3 occasions. Hardly surprising we say that Council is now in court and haggling over what went wrong with GESAC.
9th February 2012 – Magee absent
1st December 2011 – all present
3rd November 2011 – Snell absent
5th October 2011 – Snell absent
8th September 2011 – all present
8th August 2011 – Magee absent
7th July 2011 – Magee, Newton, Waite all absent
2nd June 2011 – Waite absent
24th March 2011 – “Magee did not attend site inspection”
25th January 2011 – Magee, Judge, Snell absent
20th December 2010 – Magee, Judge absent
27th October 2010 – Newton, Judge, Snell absent
29th September 2010 – Magee, Snell absent
Glen Eira Debates 
October 23, 2013 at 2:22 PM
The CEO’s job was advertised in yesterdays Age
October 23, 2013 at 5:26 PM
Missing half of the meetings is not on. The dates should have been changed to accommodate everyone or Magee should have resigned and not been on the committee for years on end. Slack is my view.
October 23, 2013 at 8:58 PM
This appalling meeting record shows a lot. Through out residents were complaining of inadequate oversight. The Steering Committee Meeting Minutes show the Steering Committee met 13 times during the final, and perhaps most important, 2 years of the projects life. No wonder they remained silent on the opening delay – they couldn’t say anything because they didn’t have a clue.
Perhaps next election Cr. Lipshutz should be asked to define what constitutes “on top of it”
October 23, 2013 at 10:52 PM
Have a look at the gesac facebook pages and every second day something else is closed down for maintenance. The place is barely a year old and it’s already falling to bits. Great job done Newton, Lipshutz, Magee and the other hangers on.