Forum –
The astonishing thing about the Council fiasco is that not a single councillor is responsible for it.
Our temporarily-ex-Mayor and councillors don’t seem to have the faintest suspicion that anything they have done could have led to the debacle.
The fact that they are the officers of the Council and are supposed to be responsible doesn’t appear to register.
What did they imagine their job was when they took their seats after the election?
Now, their only concern is, first, to blame the Council staff and, secondly, to point the finger at every other councillor for failure of duty.
The staff members are Council servants, and their job is to act under the direction of the officers: if the councillors were not up to their responsibilities, they shouldn’t have run for office.
In the final analysis, the main responsibility lies with the ratepayers.
They elected the councillors to office, and the resulting government is what they deserve.
There were people of talent on the ballot paper, but none of them was elected, because electors were too lazy to examine candidates’ qualifications properly or to ask questions about the candidates’ intentions in power.
Then, of course, the internecine squabbling between councillors absorbed most of the energy that should have been spent on absorbing the intricacies of Council affairs and maintaining control over the programs and budgets.
It is obvious that, with the possible exception of Councillor Best, they behaved as though they were running a Saturday afternoon tennis club, instead of a multi-million-dollar corporation.
Thank heavens, we citizens, at least, have the protection of the Minister in these crises.
Can anybody imagine the chaos, if these incompetents had been allowed to continue their ways for another year?
When the first thought of the Mayor is to run up another $100M in debt, as the solution to the deficit problem, it seems that common sense has gone out the window.
All we can do now is wait and see what the Administrator can salvage from the shambles, so it is to be hoped that we shall get regular updates on his findings.
If the Mayor worried a little less about protecting local democratic rights (although some would say that wasn’t outstandingly handled by the Council in office, anyway) and a little more about carrying out the full-time job she was paid for, her credibility wouldn’t be in the basement.
Email, Nov 7
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy.