CONCERNS have been raised over a marathon nine-hour Redland City Council meeting last week, turning off ratepayers and frustrating councillors.
The meeting, which began at 9.30am and stretched into the early evening, saw several lengthy debates.
One prominent anonymous community member, who watched the meeting online, said they had to turn it off.
“I had to turn it off as it went past a reasonable time.”
The first Mayoral Minute, which was carried unanimously, urged the Queensland Government to fund the upgrade of community facilities to serve as cyclone-rated disaster coordination centres and evacuation points.
A second Mayoral Minute, which took nearly three hours before narrowly passing 6-5, called for an external review of all council operations, a move that sparked concerns about the scope and cost of such a wide-ranging task.
Councillor Rowanne McKenzie said councillors had only received the Mayoral Minutes the afternoon before last Wednesday’s General Meeting, leaving them little time to ask questions or seek clarification from Mayor Jos Mitchell, especially the second one.
“A Mayoral Minute of that scope, scale, and cost to conduct an external review of every aspect of an entity with a $3 billion asset base, a $400 million/year budget, and 1200 employees should have been afforded the opportunity to understand and refine,” Cr McKenzie said.
“Instead, due to a lack of collaboration, it had to be worked on the floor of the General Meeting at a cost of $2500 an hour to ratepayers.
“If the Mayor wants to create efficiencies within the organisation, she could perhaps start with the process on which she brings Mayoral Minutes.”
During the meeting, Cr Shane Rendalls expressed dissatisfaction with the first Mayoral Minute.
“The challenge with this motion is it’s not thought out and that’s reflected in the number of lines through it now trying to carve it out on the run,” he said.
“Eight of us were here yesterday (Tuesday) at the time of the scheduled Mayor/Councillor meeting.
“But that meeting was cancelled by you (Mayor).”
Cr Paul Golle labelled last week’s nine-hour Council meeting as “highly inefficient”.
“While I supported most motions and worked through them diligently, much of this could have been streamlined if the Mayor had met with councillors beforehand,” he said.
Cr Jason Colley apologised to the community for the messy way the Council was doing business, saying it was “highly embarrassing”.
Cr Peter Mitchell said the community should expect that Council’s General Meetings function at a high level of efficiency and professionalism, with the March meeting falling 50 per cent below the standard he expected.
“Key contributing factors of note were confused and imprecise motions by three separate councillors, Cr Wendy Boglary, Cr Paul Bishop and Mayor Jos Mitchell,” he said. “These asked councillors to discuss weighty and complex matters but were presented late, without the courtesy of prior discussion with colleagues.
“This triggered perhaps four hours of embarrassing wordsmithing on the floor.”
Mayor Mitchell said that under Standing Orders, she could introduce a Mayoral Minute at any time during the meeting.
“The proposition that was put to councillors was a simple one – do you agree that there should be a comprehensive review of Redland City Council to make sure we are delivering in the best possible way for our community?” she said.
“I wouldn’t have thought that councillors would need very long to consider that proposition.
“It is essential that these issues are decided in view of the public and not behind closed doors.”
