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Tuesday 22 November 2016
5973 6424 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au
Smelly start to working week UP through a bathroom overflow pipe it came: a stinky mess that made life hell for Mornington Community Information & Support Centre staff when they arrived at work on Tuesday morning. The discharge flooded their Main St office with sewage – a sight manager Lisa Elliott described as “a wave of dirty water drifting across the carpet”. “It was being pumped up through the drain in the bathroom like a fountain and swamped the centre in half an hour.” Workmen on Thursday were knocking down walls, lifting carpets and preparing the walls for painting, with damage estimated to be in the “thousands and thousands” of dollars. The office stank “but it’s not nearly as bad as two days ago,” Ms Elliott said. ‘Crisis staff carry on despite stinky wave’ Page 10 Out of office: Mornington Community Information & Support Centre manager Lisa Elliott took on clean-up duties after a sewer pipe burst in the centre’s Mornington office. Picture: Yanni
Four-month delay on costs Neil Walker neil@mpnews.com.au THE full extent of Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors’ expenses during their 2012-16 term has finally been officially disclosed after months of stalling. The shire’s 11 former councillors, including three re-elected last month, racked up $616,712 on ratepayer-funded expenses over four years.
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Neighbouring Frankston and Kingston councils – with nine councillors apiece - spent $205,329 and $101,807 respectively over the same period. Those two councils, unlike the shire, published a breakdown of councillors’ expenses in annual reports in each year of the previous four-year council term. The expenses are separate to councillors’ $28,907 yearly remuneration plus 9.5 per cent superan-
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Shire media communications manager Mark Kestigian subsequently said council governance manager Joe Spiteri decided expenses figures could not be provided during a 20 September-22 October caretaker period before council elections. Last week it was revealed about $480,000 worth of expenses figures spent over three years were listed in documents marked “confidential” given to councillors in March, four
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nuation; $92,333 for the mayor over a 12-month mayoral term. The shire only began publishing councillors’ expenses in its annual report in 2014-15, the first financial year it was forced to make expenses public after a legislative change by the state government. The News repeatedly asked council for the 2012-16 expenses figures in the lead up to council elections. The first request was made in July.
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months before The News first asked for the expenses figures (“Shire’s councillors are costly”, The News 15/11/16). At last Monday evening’s first public meeting of the new council term, one of the three re-elected councillors – Cr Hugh Fraser - proposed a review of the councillors’ expenses policy by February next year. All councillors – including eight newly elected councillors – backed the motion. Continued Page 11
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