top of page
Screenshot 2023-06-13 180949.png
Writer's pictureThe Beagle

Mayor's wrap up of Council meeting March 14th 2023

Here’s Mathew Hatcher, Mayor of Eurobodalla, putting today’s Council Meeting on the record.

Council’s investments are safe as houses - “Councillors are always looking for trouble on the horizon,” says Mathew.

Grants to support young people following recommendations from our awesome youth committee. Don’t forget you can dunk the Mayor at this Saturday’s Colour Run in Moruya

Agenda papers, and later this week meeting minutes and recording, at www.esc.nsw.gov.au

Editor's Note: The Mayor's feature album this week is Zorba. The album cover brings back memories of Zorba pretending he could tell the future from the lamb shank. If only the last councillors had a lamb shank at ready when they voted to commit $19 million of ratepayers money to a facility that had a thumbnail dipped in tar business case with projected incomes well beyond reality. The Council's General Manager advised on November 11th 2020 that she did not provide councillors with correspondence from the Office of Local Government that indicated their concerns around the perceived demand for the Mackay Park centre and its financial capacity to service the running costs into the future. The OLG letter, received on July 1st 2020, was NOT made available to councillors prior to their July 28th, 2020 vote and only came to light weeks after following a GIPA request that also revealed that Council staff reluctantly provided the Office of Local Government with an out of date business plan, only doing so under the insistence of the OLG in order to comply with regulations. Eurobodalla Council's report to councillors only quoted a single line from the OLG letter saying "OLG's Assessment concluded that Council's review meets the relevant criteria of the Guidelines" that, to a councillor or member of the public, would be construed as approval. Councillors were NOT advised of either of the following additional paragraphs from that same letter: The questions still to asked are: "Should the Councillors have been fully informed of the OLG letter before voting? "Did General Manager and her staff knowingly withhold the contents of the OLG letter from Councillors prior to their voting or was the omission of providing the full correspondence from the OLG to the councillors a simple oversight?" "Would the councillors have voted differently if they were made aware of the letter and also of the fact that council had attempted to withhold from the OLG its readily identified, flawed and outdated business case for the Mackay Park project?" You be the judge. In retrospect, realising that the business case was actually flawed and the cost to the community for the facility is $4m per year with a considerable impact to council function, should they have so naively pressed ahead given that they the Audit Committee was NOT privy to the financials? One Councillor had the temerity to say at the time that "the Pav was the most examined ,and re-examined project he had encountered in more than three decades on the ESC“ This is the closing statement of the debate: Time stamp 1:54:18 Councillors, on July 28th 2020, given only the information they had at hand, voted 6-3 to go ahead with the project. If only they had a lamb shank that could tell the future. Now we can but dance.... with Zorba

“You think too much. That is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.” Zorba

NOTE: Comments were TRIALED - in the end it failed as humans will be humans and it turned into a pile of merde; only contributed to by just a handful who did little to add to the conversation of the issue at hand. Anyone who would like to contribute an opinion are encouraged to send in a Letter to the Editor where it might be considered for publication

buymeacoffee.png
bottom of page