The murky dealings over the Warnervale airport show that, elected Council or administrator, the first response of our “representatives” in any situation is to keep as much as possible secret from the public.
The municipality doesn’t belong to the Council, it belongs to the people of the Central Coast, and every resident is entitled to know what is being done by our officers and our servants in our name. One might have hoped that the Administrator, who is not required to court votes, would have taken a bold view on fundamental actions that need to be taken, and on the desirability of coopting the community into the effort that is going to be required to put the Central Coast on a sustainable track to the future. Instead, we have had timidity, seat-warming, and a continuation of the practice of minimising any chance of community reaction to what is going on.
After nearly 10 months under an Administrator, we still don’t even have an integrated, functioning administration (which should have been the Administrator’s first responsibility), so it is little wonder that everything else is drifting rudderless towards an obscure horizon. I never thought that I’d welcome back an elected council, but, as John Maynard Keynes said, “when the facts change, my opinion changes”.
Email, Feb 7, 2017 Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy