Concerning decisions
With local council elections due on September 9, unelected administrators are making decisions that a newly elected council should make.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Despite being promised that there would be no forced council mergers, the communities of the Snowy Monaro have had a range of changes imposed on them. Whilst I understand that some decisions have to be made to keep Council running, there are questions about why millions of dollars’ worth of new commitments have to be rushed through before the September elections.
The importance of quarantining ongoing Council commitments was emphasised by the NSW Office of Local Government when they issued the ‘Guidelines for Council decision-making during merger periods’. It was clearly the intent of the Guidelines to restrict unelected representatives from committing councils to hefty new contracts, even though technically the Administrator can push these decisions through.
So based on this technicality, a range of significant decisions are being made for communities such as Bombala and Cooma by appointees who were not elected by local residents. An important point in case is the recent awarding of a lucrative waste management contract to the multi-national company Remondis.
Despite Council saying it was grateful for the ‘exceptional delivery services’ provided by our local operators, it went ahead and awarded the multi-million dollar contract to an international conglomerate. The new provider is not local and any contract of such significant impact on jobs should have been rolled over until after the new Council was elected. In fact the caretaker period, which prohibits such decisions, is due to commence on Friday 11 August 2017.
This will certainly be an important election for the ‘Snowy Monaro Regional Council’, it has already been lumbered with a number of decisions that residents are telling me they are unhappy with. And it is worth noting again that the Council of Bombala fought against this the whole way and is now starting to feel the consequences.