Cllr Peter Harle JP
Councillor since 2008
Despite the best efforts and arguments of two Independents and a Labor Councillor, the Mayor and his Liberal Team intended that the elections go ahead despite current Councillors being mentioned in the Interim Report as having dealings with development applications and attempting to influence Council Staff.
I argued that while ever there are doubts of integrity around current Councillors, elections should not go ahead while investigations, estimated to take at least 18 months, are underway, anything less doesn’t pass the Pub test.
It may also mean that if any elected Councillor is proven to have been involved in corrupt conduct and dismissed, it could lead to a full election or bi-election costing around $2m.
The legal costs of challenging Minister Hoenigs’ consideration to postpone the elections due in September are estimated to costs around $300k.
Council is also facing a possible multi million dollar legal challenge in the Supreme Court for an unfair dismissal claim brought on by the recently terminated CEO.
Bear in mind that the current legal action is primarily due to the Mayor once again terminating another CEO that doesn’t agree with his autocratic leadership style and interference with operational aspects of Council. In this term alone 2 CEO’s were terminated and an acting CEO resigned. Overall that makes 10 A/CEOs’ in 8 years.
Sadly, this is not just a monetary cost to ratepayers, but also an enormous loss of many competent senior staff that have left Council simply because they cannot work with the Mayor and his demands. The loss of knowledge related to Council operations is unmeasurably and difficult to replace.