Council consulting under fire

By Toby Walker 

CALOUNDRA councillor Dick Newman believes council has failed the public with its recently completed consultation on the issue of reducing councillor numbers.

Part of the consultation – the electoral boundaries review – was necessary and is done by every council in the lead up to local government elections.

But the decision to spend $12,000 on an independent facilitator tasked to ask the public how many councillors they wanted only came after the outcry that followed an unsuccessful attempt by six councillors to reduce their numbers in the chamber last December.

It may have only lasted 15 days but council’s public consultation on the reduction issue (which finished on February 5) was fiercely criticised throughout by people like the Caloundra Ratepayers Association and sections of the Maleny community who claimed it was a cosmetic exercise that had failed to provide the information they wanted.

Those critics didn’t want to be forced to choose from a range of options, they wanted to hear council justify its case for reducing numbers.

Mr Newman laid part of the blame for the lacklustre consultation at the feet of council CEO Garry Storch.

“It’s all very well for the politicians to tell the staff to undertake consultation with the community, but if the CEO fails to allow his professional staff the opportunity to do the job in a professional manner, then we have failed the public,” he said.

“Another example was the Maleny Community Precinct when the CEO bypassed normal council processes and undertook a consultation program that was designed to get only one result.”