Is it fair?

A Drouin resident calls me a bully and expresses concern that Mayor Gauci did not get a fair run in the July 4 issue (Gaz 11/7).

The article was about policy, not the mayor. My contributions via letters are certainly not personal, but questions of policy and process.

When is the mayor not the mayor? If you are mayor and making public comment as a councillor, the very first sentence should state that. Otherwise most people would expect the mayor to be speaking on behalf of council.

It has to be back to the drawing board with the media policy – what we want is common sense and to hear what individual councillors have to say, real debate.

Councillors meet in secret on council meeting days, come along to meetings and then go through a choreographed charade and call it a meeting.

Take a look at last week’s Gazette – all singing from the same hymn sheet, other than a quote from Cr Danny Goss when speaking on councils’ four year plan – “We heard from a lot of people that they aren’t all that excited about our service delivery.” Give me more of the honesty of Cr Goss. He went on to say “We need to have clear, open and two-way communication. That is extremely important.” This will never happen with council’s current secret decision making process.

The local law states that the meeting procedures be reviewed on July 1, 2017 – I have not seen anything that council has complied with this requirement. There are gender specific words that should be removed and what a great opportunity to introduce a committee system to let the community see council at work.

And council might look at agenda item 8.2 in the review – Submissions – what is the point of listening to submissions on business at the meeting when council has already decided the result before they walk into the chamber.

If councillors don’t want us to hear the behind closed doors secret discussions don’t stand for council.

If the mayor wants to be in everything like pepper and salt, change the system – have open committee meetings with different councillors chairing committees and recommendations going forward to a council meeting.

We can only hope the new chief executive will see what is wrong. On paper Alison Leighton looks like she has what it takes. Needs to go through the place like a dose of salts – get the rates we pay down from one of the highest in the state and service levels up from one of the lowest in the state.

To anyone feeling bullied, that is not the intention of this letter.

Don McLean, Warragu