I recently attended the August meeting of Wollongong City Council. Actually, it wasn’t really a "Council meeting" in anything but the most loose sense of those words.

The twelve chairs normally occupied by our elected representatives sat empty. In place of the Lord Mayor, two Administrators, with the WCC General Manager.

The situation – where the unelected WCC general Manager fed the reports to the unelected State appointed Administrators – reminded me of the scene in a science-fiction short story where two robots communicate with each other about who is the most intelligent person in the known universe. They decide that it is one of themselves, and then set about wiping out the competition provided by those difficult creatures – real people.

Real involvement of real people in Council’s decision-making process is what is missing from our present form of local governance.

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WCC Media release – TUESDAY, 26 AUGUST 2008

Wollongong City Council will appoint independent members to two new governance committees to improve organisational transparency.

Administrators tonight (Tuesday 26 Aug) endorsed the creation of an Audit Committee and Corporate Governance Committee and will call for expressions of interest for independent committee members for the two newly created Governance Committees.

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For an example of how to establish a real and working committee, with an eye to doing the same for Ward based Precinct Committees, see:

Ordinary Meeting of Council
26 August 2008

ITEM 8 Governance of Wollongong City Council (CM133/08)………………………………………….101

Download pdf file (264kbytes.)

If you could kindly circulate this to your members it would be greatly appreciated.”

Joanne Gould

Communications and Strategy

Wollongong City Council

4227 7096

See http://www.wollongong.nsw.gov.au/discussionpaper.asp

Having attended the LAM3 meeting in Thirroul last night to listen to the WCC Council officers present their discussion paper on community consultation, I have had to reassess my opinion of what was being proposed by WCC to replace the former WCC Neighbourhood Committees and, more recently, Local Area Meetings (LAMS).

My earlier assessment was that the proposed Neighbourhood Forums were Toothless Tigers – and fitting forms of council- community organisation in a city where White Elephants abound.

Perhaps the Wollongong menagerie of weird and fantastic ‘animals’ could be promoted as part of that equally absurdly named project of the “Grand Pacific Drive”.

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“City crumbling around us …” says Wollongong City Council General Manager David Farmer on ABC Radio 97.3FM (7 August 08).

Faced with the need to raise $10 million dollars WCC is looking to ‘natural attrition’ in order to save the salaries on 60 positions. This loss of personnel may have real impacts on the quality of services WCC can deliver to residents and ratepayers. It will also greatly increase the stress levels for remaining staff.

What kind of mismanagement is it that gets us into this kind of position?

The kind that results from obsolete 20^th century forms of organisation, of which Wollongong City Council is a typical example.

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The Ward-based Neighbourhood Forums being proposed by Wollongong City Council are not an appropriate substitute for our elected Councillors. Council has got it back to front.

Instead of having a single Ward-based Neighbourhood Forum to replace the existing Local Area Meetings, we need a fair-dinkum Ward Committee as part of Council’s official organisational structure.

We need a much more heavy duty form of community organisation in order to do our community business during the absence of elected Councillors.

Firstly, it has to be part of the committee structure of Council, not some other form of body lacking any legal corporate reality and lacking any legitimacy in terms of representing the wider constituency of people in the Ward.

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Part of the acid test for assessing the WCC proposals for a new Engagement Framework is to ask:

1. “How does what is being proposed stack up against having elected Ward Councillors?”
2. “Who, exactly, is being empowered by the redirected $600,000 per annum of our money which will not be spent on elected Councillors and a Lord Mayor?”
3. “How does what is being proposed compare with best practice elsewhere?”

My assessment is:

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