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Your weekly community newspaper covering Mornington, Mount Martha and Mount Eliza For all advertising and editorial needs, call 03 A TRAILER equipped with CCTV cameras is helping Mornington police watch out for crime. The solar powered trailer can be parked anywhere, making it especially valuable during the warmer months while keeping an eye on schoolies and during police operation Summersafe. “It provides a great deterrent to would-be criminals and also assists us in detecting and preventing crime,” Senior Sergeant Paul Edwards said. “We have access to the footage in both real time and stored. The footage remains inside the equipment for four weeks before being overwritten.” Senior Sergeant Edwards can look through the camera while sitting at his office computer. It also streams footage from the police Air Wing. “Given its mobility and ability to stand alone it also gives us greater capability and agility in areas where, traditionally, we do not have any monitoring capacity,” he said. Senior Sergeant Edwards said the mobile camera complemented the Community CCTV locations register introduced across the peninsula earlier this year. “We are still keen to hear from residents wanting to participate in the program,” he said, referring to his call for residents to volunteer their CCTV footage to police to help identify those involved in neighbourhood crime.” Stephen Taylor
Tuesday 28 September 2021
5974 9000 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au
Police watch through solar-powered eye in the sky
Senior Sergeant Paul Edwards operates the CCTV camera from his office at Mornington Police Station. Picture: Gary Sissons
Council denies rules ‘unlawful’ Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au A FORMER councillor has questioned the legality of rules under which Mornington Peninsula Shire Council now operates. The Governance Rules adopted by councillors at their 24 August meeting included last minute amendments introduced by Cr Sarah Race. Officers were provided with the amendments just before the meeting, but councillors were not sent a copy of what was proposed and only found out
during the meeting when Cr Race introduced her proposed changes. The argument over the legality of the new rules revolves around whether the changes were significant or “one or two minor changes”, as described by in-house lawyer Amanda Sapolu. Former councillor Hugh Fraser, a barrister, says the amendments - which include increasing the powers of the shire’s CEO and restrictions on notices of motion - were so significant that they should have been exhibited for public comment. The mayor Cr Despi O’Connor says they were “not significant”.
The shire did not respond when asked by The News if it had sought further legal advice. “The amendment was unlawful, and councillors ought to have been, but were not, advised by management that it was unlawful and that the mayor ought to have exercised her powers and disallowed that amendment,” Mr Fraser told The News. “By proceeding in this unlawful way in adopting the additional clauses, it has denied the community its democratic right to be consulted and have its views brought to the attention of council before it adopted these additional clauses.
“The simple fact is that council ought to have been advised by management that it cannot proceed contrary to the specific requirements of the Local Government Act. If so advised, the task of the mayor as chairperson ought to have been to reject the amendment putting forward the additional clauses.” The mayor Cr Despi O’Connor said that council “fully complied with the Act by exhibiting draft Governance Rules to the public for four weeks”. “If council were compelled to reexhibit every time a document was amended due to exhibition, it would create a theoretically never ending cy-
cle,” she said. “Council considered the amendments and considered whether re-exhibition was necessary. In doing so, council considered the community interest in the substantive Governance Rules, as well as the impact of the proposed changes and their significance in the context of the full Governance Rules. “Having considered all that, council determined it had followed a process of community engagement, considered the feedback - or lack thereof - and made changes that were not significant to the exhibited rules.” Continued Page 7
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