The recommendations of this exhaustive inquiry are essentially that the people in charge of the council should be competent in their abilities to perform their duties and be focused on delivering the services to ratepayers that ratepayers pay for.
Political point scoring and snout-in-trough is not the function of councillors and the staff.
Excerpt (page 70): 260. The analysis of key audit findings for 2019-20 showed that Central Coast Council (CCC) was the only NSW Council to be subject to an extreme risk finding (in relation to spending of restricted funds for unrestricted purposes).
CCC was also subject to seven high risk findings in five of the nine categories of findings (governance, financial reporting, financial accounting, asset management and information technology), more than any other NSW Council.
This is the most damning comment in the report about the management of CCC.
It would seem we have the worst managed council in the state (and so) it is not in the interest of the rate payers of the CCC to ever have the same people running the council again.
Email, March 20
Charles Hemmings, Woy Woy
I am so glad I left the overdeveloped central coast 10 years ago. Way too much curruption! Forbes, NSW is way better. ➡️
I think it was more a case of “pass the parcel” than one group of councillors being responsible. The situation had been building for some time, the State government seems happy to deflect any blame away from state responsibilities, so the last lot of councillors are “it”. Shameful politicking, with the ratepayers paying the tab for an astounding level of incompetence from the watchdog, the state government.