Let’s start with the reluctance to explain why the meeting was shifted to Tuesday instead of the customary Wednesday. There was no mention of the motive in the official email or on Facebook/Social media posts. TWiSK, like everyone except the select few, was left to connect the dots.
[Update 1 September] TWiSK can now confirm that the Council meeting was rescheduled to allow for Mayor Crawford, Deputy Mayor Mears and Cr Libby Buckingham to attend the 2025 Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism on the Gold Coast starting on Wednesday.
Also there are the three confidential items on the agenda—there are no real surprises here—but two of the topics are worth noting.
Heard it on the grapevine
The Council will receive a report on a recently completed EOI process for 71A Acland Street—that’s The Vineyard where plans for an upgrade have been stalled for nearly a decade.
Word on the street is that the EOI has fallen flatter than a stale pint of Guinness. It’s rumoured that a multi-million dollar refit was required—which we already knew—but no one anticipated that the cash might come from the ratepayers. Yikes—if that’s the case, we understand why the Council is motivated to keep it on the QT.
Next on the confidential matters list is CEO Employment Matters. This includes the performance assessment criteria. TWiSK is most interested in the grounds for performance bonuses and other targets. For example, are the community satisfaction results considered? What about staff survey results, staff turnover, head count, or total payroll? How is the CEO’s pay benchmarked against other councils? How does Port Phillip’s below-average performance impact the CEO package? These factors, rather than the dollar amount, can and should be transparent.
FYI, from the Annual Report we know the Mayor receives an allowance of $134,174, the deputy $58,496, and regular councillors $40,510. The remuneration of senior officers is reported in salary ranges. The highest salary reported is $410,000 – $419,999. The Premier receives in excess of $498,031, while the PM gets over $600,000.
Health and safety used to cut participation
Also on the agenda are draft new governance rules that limit the overall duration of meetings, add time limits for councillors, and limit public speaking time to 2 minutes.
The motive given for these changes is to ‘address the CEO’s occupational health and safety obligations, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for both Councillors and officers.’
No one likes a long meeting, but using health and safety as the motivation for significantly tighter limits to participation?
One good change is the automatic recording of voting on all non-unanimous votes. It’s good that all voting is recorded.
White Flag on Triangle
The recommendation by Council officers says it all – stop work on the Live Music Venue proposal until someone else shows interest and ‘investigate’ temporary measures.
Ouch. That’s got to hurt, especially after the St Kilda Marina Project suffered a similar fate last year. And maybe The Vineyard will join the list making it a tricky trifecta.
It’s all part of Tricky Tuesday
The council meeting is Tuesday 2 September from 6.30 pm.
