Council “clears up” mess of its own making

By Tim Howard

An attempt to clear up a two-year-old operation anomaly has created more chaos for Clarence Valley Council and its general manager, Laura Black.

At last week’s ordinary council meeting the council attempted to clear up a two-year-old oversight due to its failure to make clear how much it authority the council should delegate to its general manager.

But after making a decision at its meeting last Tuesday, three days later an extraordinary meeting had been called to rescind the decision.

NSW Local Government regulations require new councils to mandate the level of delegation to the general manager within 12 months of their election.

But due to an oversight of this requirement council had failed to make the necessary delegation until last week.

After the meeting the council received an email from the deputy secretary of the Office of Local Government, warning the council resolution would could make it impossible for the council to operate.

The council acted swiftly with the mayor, Cr Peter Johnstone and Crs Bill Day and Greg Clancy signing a rescission motion to overturn the original resolution.

The council held at extraordinary meeting on Friday which rescinded the original motion.

But it took an extended debate to settle on a replacement.

Cr Day sought to defer the decision until the councillors had held a workshop to get their heads around the intricacies of the delegation of authority to the general manager.

But Cr Karen Toms was sceptical. She pointed to a council information session in 2021 to educate councillors about this issue which revealed just how complicated and technical it was.

“It’s not something that lay councillors can really have expertise on in my opinion,” she said.

She said the problem stemmed from a lack of trust in awarding these delegations and this had resulted in the council getting itself into a mess.

“There were questions and there was motion put forward by the former mayor (Cr Tiley),” Cr Toms said.

“And he assured us he knew what he was doing and he’s done it before.

“Well, that’s clearly not the case because that motion… was a mess.”

Cr Day disagreed council should not question the concept of delegation of authority.

“The delegation of authority bestowed general managers by previous councils have been highly controversial,” he said.

“We need to understand them and consider adjustments.”

The motion to defer was lost 4- with Crs Clancy, Day and Smith against.

Council then voted in favour of a foreshadowed motion from Cr Steve Pickering to restore the existing delegations to the general manager that existed in 2021.

“Council needs to get with its job to do what we’re supposed to be doing for our ratepayers, our business and our communities,” he said.

“It needs to stop focussing on things that are not possibly council’s core business.”