CEO grilled over KPI reports

A TOOWOOMBA councillor has dragged the CEO and general managers over the coals for missing performance targets in the latest council operational review.

In what was described later by Deputy Mayor Carol Taylor as an “inquisition”, Cr Nancy Sommerfield yesterday read out a full list of issues she had with different departments in the report.

The 230-page document, compiled for the past financial year by service improvement principal Rosie Bugg, found the TRC was close to or on track with 98 per cent of its “organisational actions”.

The council was also on track or monitoring 83 per cent of its nearly 600 KPIs.

But that didn’t stop Cr Sommerfield from running through the areas that needed addressing, saying she had “a page of questions” for all the general managers.

“I was wondering how we go through it – I’ve actually got a page (of questions),” she said.

“I’m hoping the GMs are in the room, because this is an important part of our agenda.”

Cr Sommerfield paid particular attention to the office of CEO Brian Pidgeon, highlighting at least nine performance shortcomings in his department.

“The adoption of local laws was behind, no risk registers were audited, fraud and corruption allegations (were) 58, 276 complaints were received and (only) 45 per cent concluded,” she said.

Mr Pidgeon offered some explanations to the questions, and Cr Taylor later stood up to argue querying KPIs was normally done outside meetings.

“As councillors we do have access to our general managers to check these things should we need them, so it doesn’t need to be an inquisition in my view,” she said.

Finance chair Cr Mike Williams told councillors they should talk to managers throughout the year.