Tensions are running high at Tweed Shire Council (TSC) as the upcoming September election pushes some councillors into overdrive in their desire to look like they are personally achieving outcomes for the community.
The significant increase in the number of Council Requests and Customer Service Requests has seen Tweed Council staff bring to the recent council meeting a ‘Council Requests and Customer Service Requests’ report that highlights this sudden increase in requests from some councillors.
With one councillor having placed 192 email requests/questions through to staff in a single week the report states ‘It has become evident over the last several months that the currently adopted resources to service Councillor Requests is not meeting the demand generated by Councillors.’
Mayor Chris Cherry highlighted the impact this is having on staff being able to do other aspects of their roles other than answering emails as well as the staff feeling their job security and mental health is being impacted by the ramping up of some councillor activities and staff councillor engagements.
Cr Cherry put a motion that councillor requests be limited to 20 a month.
During the debate both Liberal councillor James Owen and his partner and fellow Liberal councillor Rhiannon Brinsmead’s questions made it clear that they believed they were two of the councillors who had been asking a significant number of increased questions. They proposed an amended motion ‘to immediately respond to the increase workload and job demand, approve additional funding of up to 3 additional positions to deal with the high volume of requests now coming through the system’ and ‘That Council re-allocates $312,500 from the Sustainable Communities and Environment budget/s towards the increase in service levels for councillor requests’. This motion was lost.
Electioneering
Speaking to the original motion councillor Dr Nola Firth, who seconded the motion, said ‘I really am concerned about what is happening in terms of staff health. As the mayor said, we have a responsibility to do something about it. It [the increase in customer requests] has only begun happening this year. For the rest of the term, and my first term, there was no problem like this whatsoever. I have to note that it is an election year.’
During the debate Deputy Mayor Meredith Dennis reprimanded Cr Owen who decided to stand up while she was talking about the fact some councillors were attempting to drive their agenda through putting out material through social media. [Cr Owen had at a previous meeting he zoomed into removed his t-shirt while on camera].
‘James [Cr Owen], can you sit down? I listen to you. Can you just sit down? Okay, we’ll stop talking while you’re talking. It’s actually really rude,’ said Cr Dennis.
Cr Dennis highlighted the fact that Crs Owen and Brinsmead had put up a motion for a 50m olympic pool ‘in the northern part of Tweed Shire’ yet there was already a proposal for an indoor aquatic centre that they both knew about and that a meeting had been held about in February which they had attended.
While Cr Owen implied that the Aquatic Centre proposal had only come onto the agenda for this meeting following his motion for an olympic swimming pool he was also taken to task by conservative councillor Warren Polglse.
Cr Polglase pointed out that a pool costs ‘millions and millions of dollars’ not only to build but for the upkeep. He then went on to highlight that on the Facebook page where this had been raised by Cr Owen, where he talked about ‘the amount of support he got, I know people that put some comments on there and they were scrubbed. I don’t know how – but it did, it happened several times,’ said Cr Polglase.
Labor goes for Greens
Labor Councillor Reece Byrnes, who is also employed by Federal Richmond member Justine Elliot, had entered the political fray earlier in the meeting when he sought to ban ‘political candidates from ratepayer funded events’. This was seconded by Cr Brinsmead.
This was in relation to Greens Candidate Mandy Nolan, who ran against Justinen Elliot at the last election, MCing the opening ceremony of the Tweed Seniors Festival.
‘The issue being there is a political candidate that is officially endorsed, where does the separation become between the pursuit of their political agenda or their day job? In this case, it was Mandy Nolan, who is a local comedian,’ said Cr Byrnes.
Independent Cr and Mayor Cherry pointed out that the council report had highlighted that ‘we are going very, very close to discriminating against people because of their political activity. And that’s not not permitted in our role as a council.’
‘The person who hosted the event has demonstrated her work for seniors over many years. She created the stand up for dementia programme which she ran for ten years [and went on] to create several bespoke seniors programmes, including shooting from the hip replacement in the Northern Rivers and on the Sunshine Coast. She hosted our event in previous years and was and was very, very popular and asked back. Actually she was not paid for this event.’
The motion was lost with councillors Brinsmead, Byrnes, and James Owen voting in favour and councillors Cherry (Mayor), Meredith Dennis (Deputy Mayor), Dr Nola Firth, and Warren Polglase voting against.
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