December 4, 2011

How Long Is Too Long?

Posted by gleneira under GE Governance, GE Service Performance
[3] Comments 

Change management and succession planning are some of the buzz words found in the corporate world. Those at the top generally recognise that they have time limits on their tenure and for the company to flourish and advance new blood must be continually groomed, sought and introduced. This is also true of local government. In order to attract all the new bright things, people with talent and ambition and who thrive on challenges, the old must make way for the new. With no chance of advancement anyone worth a cracker from within the organisation will seek positions elsewhere whilst attracting outside talent is a forlorn task – especially if they perceive there is no room for advancement.

In Glen Eira, as opposed to numerous other councils, we seem to be stuck with the old. There just isn’t any space at the top. Some might argue this means “stability”. Others may see this as stagnation and a detriment to the organisation. It all depends on results and point of view. Bayside obviously welcomes new blood – in droves. According to their website, the most senior officers have ALL been at the council for less than 3 years – that is, not just in their current positions, but newly arrived at Bayside. They are listed as:

Heather Johnson – Director community services – arrived 2008

Shiran Wickramasinghe – Director City Strategy –  arrived 2010

Guy Wilson-Browne – Director Infrastructure Services –  arrived 2008

Sharon Pearsons – Director Corporate Services – arrived  2008 –

Andrew Robb CEO – 2008

Glen Eira’s story stands in stark contrast. Note that the following years DO NOT NECESSARILY SIGNIFY WHEN THESE INDIVIDUALS FIRST ARRIVED AT COUNCIL – ONLY WHEN THEY ACQUIRED THEIR CURRENT ROLES.

Paul Burke –2001

Peter Jones – 2003

Peter Waite –2006

Jeff Akehurst – 1996

Peter Swabey –2004

Andrew Newton – 2000

Gibbs & McLean (Audit Committee) – at least since 1998!

So we can only ask: How long is too long? – especially when it is the CEO alone who has control over his lieutenants!

 

December 3, 2011

Councillor Courses

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Governance
[9] Comments 

On 28th November 2011 a public question at Bayside City Council asked for information on each councillor’s academic qualifications and the courses each had undertaken since becoming a councillor. Information was also requested on the cost of these courses to Council. We’ve copied the responses and provide them in the public interest. We note specifically the number of councillors who have undertaken Director courses and wonder how many, if any, of our councillors have completed similar courses.

Academic Qualifications

Del Porto – B.A. (Hons) M.A Melb; Post Grad Sec. ACU

Hayes – Adv. Dip App. Sci. (Farm Management)

Long – B.A. (Multidiscipline)

Norris – M.A, M. Sc (Econ)

Frederico – B. Bus. (Mktg) Certificate of Business (Tourism)

Cooper-Shaw – B. Comm, B-Ed. Grad Dip Criminology; M.A. (applied Psych) M. Ed.

Russell – Nil

Councillor Course Year Cost Course Completed Certificate Issued
Del Porto Australian   Institute of Company Directors 2011 $5,900 Completed Yes
Hayes Media   Training

Presentation   Training

Australian   Institute of Company Directors

 2009

 

2009

 

2011

 $1,350

 

$800

 

$5,900

 Completed

 

Completed

 

Completed

 Yes

 

Yes

 

Yes
Long Media   Training

Presentation   Training

 2009

 

2009

 $1,350

 

$800

 Completed

 

Completed

 Yes

 

Yes
Norris Media   Training

Presentation   Training

 2009

 

2009

 $1,350

 

$800

 Completed

 

Completed

 Yes

 

Yes
Frederico Media   Training

Presentation   Training

Australian   Institute of Company Directors

 2009

 

2009

 

2011

 $1,350

 

$800

 

$5,900

 Completed

 

Completed

 

Not   Completed

 Yes

 

Yes

 

No
Cooper-Shaw Australian

Institute of

Company

Directors

 2011 $5,900 Not   Completed No
Russell Nil Nil Nil Nil Nil

 

 

 

December 2, 2011

A New ‘King Maker’ In Town?

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Governance
[25] Comments 

Things are hotting up and becoming really interesting. With the mayoral election just around the corner we can lay bets that the phones have been running hot and little clandestine meetings going on all over the place, with lobbying at its most intensive. Promises are being made left right and centre; favours called in, and all kinds of pressures brought to bear. The way we read the situation, is that the race is well and truly on between Hyams and Magee. Speculating a little further, we believe that the gang will of course vote for Hyams (ie. Lipshutz, Tang, Esakoff and Hyams himself) whilst Magee will possibly have the votes of Forge, Pilling, Penhalluriack and himself. That leaves dear Oscar – the new ‘king maker’.

What a turn around from last year when Lobo nominated himself and got no support. His continual cry of ‘4 plus 1’ fell on deaf ears. Well, this year things are vastly different. Lobo is that pivotal ‘1’! The question of course is: will he succumb to the wiles of Hyams et al or the wiles of Magee et al? How will he vote? Will past animosity against ‘the gang’ suddenly be fresh in his memory, or will his current (inexplicable) embrace of the group remain firm? From last year’s ‘nowhere man’, Lobo is suddenly thrust into the limelight – the real ‘kingmaker’.

 

December 2, 2011

Council Leads The Way – As Most Expensive!

Posted by gleneira under GE Kindergartens/Childcare, GE Service Performance
[6] Comments 

Hefty price rises hit family hard

  • by: Susie O’Brien
  • From: Herald Sun
  • December 02, 2011 12:00AMTudor
Tasman and Brigid Tudor with Jasper, 2, and Maddison, 10 months. Picture: Jason Sammon Source: Herald Sun

DAD Tasman Tudor is furious that Carnegie Childcare Centre is about to become one of the state’s most expensive.

Run by Glen Eira Council, it will charge parents of children under two $116 a day before government subsidies. Mr Tudor’s children Jasper, 2, and Maddison, 1, both attend the centre, which will have two price increases after changes to government regulations.

The daily fee increased in July from $85 to $91 and will go up again next month to $116 for babies and younger children.

“The council is clearly profiteering from this centre and covering costs at head office,” he said. But council director of community relations Paul Burke said it had put in a $100,000 subsidy to keep the centre operating. “The simple fact is that an increase in standards has led to an increase in costs,” he said.

Parents from the two Bayside Council-run centres due to close by the end of 2013 are also angry. “It’s very sad for parents and staff … there’s just shock and disbelief,” Hampton East mother of two Sheri Haby said.

 

December 1, 2011

Once More With Feeling Mr Burke!

Posted by gleneira under GE Service Performance
[4] Comments 

Public Relations 

Service profile:

Public Relations provide a consistent, cohesive, positive and professional image of the Council to the community. It also imparts key messages about Council services and activities to the community.

Review outcomes:

Quality and cost standards

The quality and cost standards identified for Public Relations relate to customer satisfaction, communication effectiveness and responsiveness.

• Internal communications survey revealed that most clients felt the service had improved vastly in the past 12 months in terms of accessibility, approachability and responsiveness.

• Annual customer satisfaction survey indicated a high level of satisfaction.

Other standards met during 20010–11 include:

• Providing an annual report to the Minister for Local Government by 30 September.

• Issuing a minimum of one press release per week.

• Publishing 11 issues of Glen Eira News annually.

• Per hour service provision lower than external suppliers.

• Applying three quote processes to external project work valued at more than $3,000 to ensure best value service.

• Increasing printing on recycled and FSC approved paper stock, which is cost-comparable to non-recycled paper stocks.

Responsive:

Through consultation, the current needs of the community and service users are identified and, where appropriate, we make suggested changes to the service to ensure best ongoing use.

Accessible

The service is accessible to the community by:

• Regular communication including Glen Eira News, website updates, community resource guide and a fortnightly information column in local newspapers.

• Publishing materials in printed format and alternate formats where appropriate and promoting the availability of alternate formats in languages other than English.

• Providing appropriate distribution of communication materials.

• Promoting contact details in Glen Eira News, on the website and on all media releases.

Continuous improvement

Public Relations ensure continuous improvement of its services by:

• Testing the website for accessibility and useability, to ensure it meets community needs.

• Regularly reviewing Glen Eira News and other Council publications to ensure they deliver key messages to the community correctly and on time.

• Increasing the number of publications printed on recycled or FSC approved stock to make Council publications more environmentally friendly.

Regular consultation

Regular consultation includes periodic external stakeholder satisfaction surveys on key communication tools; ongoing internal consultation and formal feedback processes after major projects are completed; regular feedback from the senior management group and through PR staff appraisals; strategy meetings, weekly team meetings and service reviews.

Quality   and Cost Standards Target Performance
High quality Annual Report. An award Gold Australasian  Reporting Award.
Publications delivered to budget. 100% 100%
Glen Eira News produced on time and to budget, 11 editions per year. 100% 100%
 

December 1, 2011

How Good Is ‘Best Value’ Reporting?

Posted by gleneira under GE Service Performance
[11] Comments 

From the Local Government Act: 208B. Best Value Principles

The Best Value Principles are-

(a)  all services provided by a Council must meet the quality and cost standards required by section 208D;

(b)  subject to sections 3C(2)(b) and 3C(2)(e), all services provided by a Council must be responsive to the needs of its community; 

(c)  each service provided by a Council must be accessible to those members of the community for whom the service is intended;

(d)  a Council must achieve continuous improvement in the provision of services for its community;

(e)  a Council must develop a program of regular consultation with its community in relation to the services it provides; 

   (f)  a Council must report regularly to its community on its achievements in relation to the principles set out in paragraphs (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e).

208G. Report on Best Value Principles compliance – At least once every year a Council must report to its community on what it has done to ensure that it has given effect to the Best Value Principles.”

Thus sayeth the law! How Council responds to the law via its compulsory ‘Best Value Report’ is another matter. We’ve uploaded the full document here and note that it is again well hidden on council’s website – so much for ‘reporting to the community’!!!

There are many services included. We’ve decided to highlight the ‘Traffic Management’ section and ask readers to contemplate whether the intent of the Local Government Act is indeed fulfilled via the following –

Service profile:

The Traffic Management Unit manages the Council’s traffic and parking responsibilities. This includes developing policies/strategies on traffic management planning; investigating concerns/issues relating to road safety, traffic efficiency, parking allocation, etc. and managing the capital works program.

Review outcomes:

Quality and cost standards    

The major quality standard set for the service is customer satisfaction, in accordance with the Annual Community Satisfaction Survey conducted by the State Government.

  • The service achieved a rating of 58%. Whilst this result is lower than last year, it is in the top bracket of scores for “all Councils”, which ranged from 53% to 61%.
  • All capital works projects completed improved identified safety issues.
  • The service has met all cost standards except for the amount for the Traffic Engineering contract which was reflective of extra resources being employed for projects such as the C60 Amendment (MRC), and the preparation of Council’s Towards Sustainable Transport Strategy.  

Responsive

The Service has been responsive to community needs by:

  • Meeting with external stakeholders e.g. Municipal Association Victoria, Department of Justice, Department of Transport and Department of Planning and Community Development.
  • Implementing the Road Safety Strategy to achieve safety outcomes.
  • Implementing the capital works program to achieve safety outcomes.
  • Conducting regular meetings with internal and external stakeholders to respond to emerging issues.
  • Reviewing the Annual Community Satisfaction Survey conducted by the State Government to understand community views.
  • Efficiently  responding to complaints and enquiries.
  • Involvement  with Metropolitan Transport Forum to tackle transport issues.
  • Preparing Council’s Towards Sustainable Transport Strategy.

The above measures enhanced service delivery in the following ways:

  • Improved residential amenity and safety in local streets.
  • Educating drivers about speeding, by using the speed advisory trailer.
  • Improved shopping centre safety (Elsternwick).
  • Improved  school safety through the employment of 63 school crossing supervisors assisting approximately 15,000 school children per day.
  • Improved  road safety under the capital works program.
  • Application of Council policy restricting the issue of residential parking permits to residents in new developments in high parking activity locations.
  • Resolving residents’ parking concerns through careful readjustment of the critical balance between parking supply and demand.

Accessible

The service is available Monday to Friday 8.30am–5pm at the Council offices.

Continuous improvement

Capital   projects completed 14
Traffic   & Parking Management customer requests 4255
Traffic   counts and surveys 133
Council   applications for VicRoads funding 8
Council   funded improvements $767,055
Community   consultations 50
Court   prosecutions handled 74
Supervised   school crossings 63

Regular consultation

Consultation during the year included the Annual Community Satisfaction Survey; surveys of interested parties on specific issues; feedback via Council’s Customer Tracking System, highlighting issues and concerns raised by the community; regular meetings with internal and external stakeholders, and meetings with shop owners in local shopping centres.

Quality   and Cost Standards Target Performance
Customer   Satisfaction. 60%   or above in the Annual Community Satisfaction Survey. 58%
Job   requests actioned and completed. 100%   of responses to customer requests completed within five working days. 100%
   90%   of detailed investigations completed within one month.  98%
Cost   of managing job requests. Contract   amount in tender is not exceeded. Contract   amount exceeded by 17.9%*

*In order to deliver the Transport Strategy a three day a week staff member was increased to full time to ensure delivery of all Strategy actions.

 

November 30, 2011

Bigger and Bigger

Posted by gleneira under Miscellaneous
[5] Comments 

With still one hour to go, three more records have been broken on Glen Eira Debates – our monthly, weekly and search engine referrals. 615 searches found us via Google in the past 3 days. The site was visited 4, 641 in the space of one week and the tally for monthly hits currently stands at 18,838.  This literally obliterates our past records and makes it well over 600 hits per day, every day, for the past couple of months.

We thank our readers once more, and ask that you keep spreading the word. Tell people about us – what we do, and why we do it and how residents can voice their views freely and openly on all council matters.

We anticipate well over 160,000 hits for the year, but intend to triple this by the time council elections are due. We need your support, your views, and your comments in order to make this site the one that residents will turn to in order to get the real news as to what is happening in the community.

 

November 30, 2011

Special Council Meeting: Mayoral Race

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Council Meeting(s)
[8] Comments 

Page 17 of today’s Moorabbin Leader and yesterday’s Caulfield Leader contain the notice of a Special Council Meeting set down for December 14th, at 7pm. The business to be transacted is the election of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

 

 

November 30, 2011

‘Please Explain!’

Posted by gleneira under Councillor Performance, GE Governance, GE Service Performance
[9] Comments 

From the flood of comments we’ve received on the Newton reappointment and upcoming Mayoral election there is clearly keen interest out there in the community. We’ve basically summarised the range of comments and present them below as a series of questions – many of which need to be answered by councillors themselves since the Councillor Code of Conduct tells us that the public has a right to hear the reasons and logic behind each councillor’s vote! We therefore welcome their responses and also ask readers to provide their ‘answers’ to the following:

  • Why didn’t the majority of councillors choose to advertise?
  • Why after 12 stormy years with Newton at the helm did the gang choose to reappoint?
  • What really went on behind the closed doors of the Special Committee?
  • Should the public really believe that these councillors are so enamoured with Newton’s performance that the decision to reappoint was inevitable – keeping in mind GESAC; more bullying allegations; more Municipal Inspector investigations; more ombudsman’s investigations; more rate rises; more service charges; more planning objections; more lawyers than you can count; more secrecy and lack of transparency; general discontent in the community, etc. etc. etc.
  • Were any (undue) pressures brought to bear as in 2005?
  • What will be the legacy of another two years of Newton?
  • Will Hyams, if elected Mayor, enhance governance or continue along the same slippery path as Esakoff?
  • Why has Lobo so dramatically aligned himself with the gang?
  • Do any of these 9 councillors deserve re-election if they stand?
  • Will  Liberal party backers/supporters of certain councillors be dismayed at the current turn of events?
  • Will the presumed ongoing Municipal Inspector’s and Ombudsman’s reports be another whitewash?
  • Has this Council reached its lowest point in the eyes of the community?

 

 

November 29, 2011

The Leader: ‘Newton’s Green Light’

Posted by gleneira under GE Governance, GE Service Performance
[18] Comments 

Glen Eira CEO keeps job and pledges to complete sustainable lighting project

Newly reappointed Glen Eira chief Andrew Newton is hoping cost savings will appease residents who wanted him out.

The 54-year-old father of two said he was looking forward to finishing projects he had started, such as creating sustainable street lighting that would save the council $250,000 a year.

A special committee, at a meeting closed to the public, resolved to extend Mr Newton’s contract until April 2014.

Mr. Newton, who has held the top job since 2000, will be paid $271,000pa plus super and has the use of a hybrid Camry.

Residents behind the Glen Eira Debates blog created an online petition in a push for the council to advertise the job and encourage fresh applicants.

But Mr Newton said people criticising his reappointment should understand it was common practice. “Numerous councils have reappointed their CEO,” he said. “The (Local Government) Act gives councils the choice whether to reappoint their CEO or advertise the job.”

Mr Newton said he was looking forward to converting 5000 street lights to new-technology globes. “The project will cut council’s total green house emission by 15 per cent,” he said. “Glen Eira already has the lowest emissions per capita of any metro council and this will cut running costs by $250,000 per annum.”

He said the council had “important work to address in our ageing population, government reforms to kindergarten, increasing public open space, providing extra housing while protecting neighbourhood character.”

Louise Clifton-Evans

 

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