Administration is a tantalising option for a Liberal State Government – Central Coast Community News

Four things happened at the October 12 Central Coast Council meeting, but leadership with open and honest transparency, wasnt one of them.

The meeting went from 6.30pm until 12.46am more than six hours of politics basically.

The Coast has a Council with six Labor councillors (Vincent, Hogan, Matthews, MacGregor, Mehrtens, Sundstrom) holding the balance of power, versus an Opposition of two Independents (Best, McLachlan) and the four Liberals (Pilon, Burke, Marquart, Gale).

Of the three other Independents (Greenaway, Holstein, Smith), two often side with Labor (Greenaway, Smith); although Cr Greenaway did vote with the Opposition at this meeting on the confidential item.

The lengthy October 12 meeting showed that no matter the extent of the crisis, the ability for the members of the two opposing groups to put aside their political point scoring and concentrate on working together is nil.

The problem for the community is that we have a Labor group in power saying one thing, the Liberal-dominated Opposition saying another, and the community doesnt have enough information yet to know who is telling the truth.

What we do know is that Council is facing a huge financial deficit, the size of which is hotly debated, but the publicly acknowledged figure is $89M for last financial year.

It also has an immediate cash flow problem and it has found an issue with its processes and accounting practices.

The Labor group is saying this cost blow-out is new information.

Independent Chris Holstein says he can no longer trust the staff to give the councillors correct information.

The Opposition is saying Council has been spending like drunken sailors from the beginning and havent listened to their warnings about this for three years and that this new information only adds to the problem.

The public has no detail yet of hinted new information, but it is bad, whatever it is.

A Mayoral Minute was given to councillors during the first few minutes of the meeting and it contained explosive information that the Mayor wanted dealt with, there and then, in camera, behind closed doors.

The councillors said that they had spent two hours together in briefings before the meeting and it wasnt fair that this information had not been given to them at that time.

The Mayor said that she had kept it secret because she didnt want it leaked to the media.

However, her move backfired, because the majority of councillors agreed with Cr Greg Best to defer the item and to deal with it next Monday night, October 19, when an extraordinary meeting will be held to deal with the backlog of items that were deferred from the October 12 meeting.

So, now, that information is with the 15 councillors for one week before they debate it.

We dont know what that information is about, but councillors said enough in open forum for us to believe that it will have a significant impact on the business.

The mind boggles with the possibilities of what this could be, but the councillors were well aware of legal restraints in talking about it in open debate, so Im not going to speculate.

The matter will come out eventually, whatever it is.

Adding to the speculation was the fact that the CEO Gary Murphy was not at the meeting.

No explanation was given on the night as to why he wasnt there, but the agenda included a Notice of Motion calling on councillors for a vote of no confidence in him. (See separate article)

Was he sick, as one councillor said?

The official press release issued said that he was on leave.

That left the Director of Water and Sewerage, Jamie Loader, in the role of acting CEO and acting chief financial officer (CFO) at the meeting.

The council is currently recruiting for a new CFO.

The Motion of no confidence failed.

Then, finally; some decisions.

Council made some decisions aimed at addressing the financial situation.

Those decisions are outlined in a press release from Council (see separate article).

The major new decision was to either borrow money from internal restricted funds or to get a $100M loan, or maybe both.

The Opposition did not agree with more spending, but they did not put forward alternate solutions.

The list of decisions is really about planning to make decisions to rein in the costs.

Councillors were invited to be part of the committees making the plans.

Cr Troy Marquart said Council couldnt plan to spend money that they didnt have.

The Minister for Local Government, Shelley Hancock, who will have to give permission for the internal borrowing, is also the Minister to call Council into Administration if she thought that was a better way forward.

Going on last nights performance, surely Administration is a tantalising option for a Liberal State Government which finds its Liberal councillors at Central Coast Council in Opposition and without the numbers to have any real power?

Merilyn Vale

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Administration is a tantalising option for a Liberal State Government - Central Coast Community News