Byron Shire councillors and staff will be in a confidential session to presumably thrash out the implications of ‘legal options and likely impediments to the implementation of planned retreat, so as to identify the processes and the challenges.’
Planned retreat is currently being overturned by the majority councillors in an effort to give legal passage to unnamed and an unknown number of Belongil landowners, many of whom bought on that erosion hotspot in the knowledge they could not rely on the council to protect their property.
Additionally, staff and the council’s insurers will table options for a pre-court settlement with 16 Belongil landowners.
Class action
The class action is being brought against the council in October.
Cr Dey told The Echo, ‘It will be one of the biggest decisions councillors will make, but we can’t share.’
The Echo seems not to understand the difference between the words ‘secret’ and ‘confidential’. If Councillors were meeting in secret, then the notification of a confidential session would not have been made public, and this article would not have been written. Council is not having a ‘secret meeting’. The Local Government Act regulates the holding of closed meetings for specific grounds. Councillors must first debate whether those grounds have been met, and vote on whether to hold an open or closed session. The ‘confidentiality’ of tomorrow’s meeting is based on firm legal advice in the best interests of the Council.