A late urgent item was added to Tuesday night’s agenda, an item that could at least, unlike the CEO’s contract extension from the previous meeting, live up to the appellation of `urgent` given it was framed as a reaction to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.
You can read the motion and report here (776kb) but essentially the proposed motion was to immediately pass all delegated authority that had not already been delegated to the CEO, to the CEO… with the surreal condition, and this is the autocratic bit, requiring the Mayor’s approval before acting on any of the new powers.
The Local Government Act allows delegation of some of Councils powers to the CEO who can then on-delegate that to staff members recorded in the Delegated Authority Register.
It is irrelevant whether the Mayor is your cup of tea or not, the Mayor, had this motion passed, would alone wield the power of the whole Council on matters previously considered not suitable by this Council of being decided by the unelected administration, a Mayor that you may or may not have voted for.
To somewhat confuse the matter it should be noted that this is potentially a revolving autocracy, the Local Government Act allows for the Deputy Mayor to take over Mayoral duties if the Mayor is unavailable so it is conceivable that a Town Planner would have the final say in major development decisions – no potential conflicts there then….
The motion itself notes the need in the days ahead for fast urgent decisions to be made and clearly having no faith in its Councillors knee-jerks autocracy as panacea.
The motion also notes that the CEO should have powers in regard to major Stimulus projects – says who – under what authority – has State Government indicated that this is the job of Local Government?
The CoS is, I think, and please correct me, a 3 billion dollar enterprise yet appears incapable of providing remote video meeting facilities to allow for important decisions during this time of crisis.
This all on its own is unacceptable – the much smaller City of Melville has managed it – we are not talking about MyGovs 55,000 concurrent users… we are talking about perhaps 25-30 users including staff.
The majority of Councillors who turned up to this meeting were content to give up their powers, only Councillor Re, Councillor Thornton and Councillor Lagan voted against, and if it were not for 5 missing Councillors would probably have passed (assuming 2 for 2 against and 1 maybe of the absent Councillors) **
Luckily this motion required an Absolute majority, which at Stirling is 8, and failed.
Whatever you think of the current Federal or State Government response to the current crisis they at least are stepping up to the plate and have to date not abrogated their duties to an unelected bureaucracy*
If you voted in the last local government election and your Ward Councillor voted for this motion… you might want to ask them why, and how they intend to vote in the return match.
Should this motion pass in its current format the next time it is brought before Council it will be a failure of not only democracy but a failure of leadership.
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*When I note an `unelected` bureaucracy or administration this is not meant in the pejorative or as a broadside against Council staff , it means only what it says on the tin, your elected members have a responsibility under the Local Government Act to act in the best interests of the ratepayers of the district (that’s you) , the administration has no such constraint, the administrations only responsibility is to act within the legislation that enables it, it has no obligation to do what is in the best interest of ratepayers rather to implement the will of the Council – or in Stirling Newspeak , the Mayor.
**Whilst there were early encouraging signs that voting bloc’s would be a thing of the past under Mayor Irwin … I could name the 2 other Councillors who would most certainly have voted for this motion, for various reasons, procedural fairness perhaps?, I will not.
Wow! Now, more than ever, we need our ‘leaders’ to be open and transparent.
Where is the governance officer right now?…if they are short of anything to do I suggest that perhaps they could help empty the bins at Yokine Reserve, which, of late, have been overflowing with dog effluent.
Perhaps they could be joined (should this debacle of a motion get passed) by any councillors who vote themselves out of their jobs?
By the way, we Lawley Ward residents have for years been regularly under-represented at council meetings, so we’re sort of getting used to having no voice.
A haiku for our council…perhaps a new branding for the city…
The City of Choice
We will listen to your voice.
Ha ha ha ha ha.