Council: Someone has to be held to account
There are elephants in some rooms in the Central Coast Council house that need to be identified and dealt with.
The first is that the current council situation was caused by either incompetence or corruption, or complicity in either or both.
Someone has to be responsible, and someone has to be held to account.
Next is the inadequate public service system.
It requires the Administrator to use people and processes that were part of the problem, to come up with solutions to the problems they created.
That just does not work.
And then there's the usual public service tactics of obfuscation, and divide and conquer, to deter accountability and protect their jobs.
These destructive work practices are making the situation worse.
Council is still pushing out impractical and unworkable plans and proposals.
Staff can no longer blame the (suspended) councillors.
The final elephant is that, ultimately, the NSW Government is responsible.
That's why there is an Office of Local Government with a Minister in charge - aided by (very) highly paid bureaucrats and staff.
They are employed to oversee provision of effective local government. They have failed - which brings us back to the first elephant.
While it was not the residents who caused the council failures, the residents are being penalised for them.
But it was Central Coast residents who did help to get the Government elected.
The residents won't forget.
SOURCE:
Email, 9 May 2021
Ian Weekley, Umina Beach