John Bryson “Strategic Planning for Public and nonprofit organisations. A guide to strengthening and sustaining organisational achievement.” (Available in WCC Library)

“STAKEHOLDER

A stakeholder is defined as any person, group or organisation that can place a claim on an organisation’s attention, resources, or output or is affected by that output.

•    the key to success for public and non-profit organisations (and for communities) is the satisfaction of key stakeholders.

Step One: Initiating and agreeing on a strategic planning process.

The purpose of the first step is to negotiate agreement among key internal (and perhaps external) decision makers and opinion leaders about the overall strategic planning effort and the key planning steps.

One of the initiator’s first tasks is to identify exactly who the key decision makers are.

Next task is to identify which persons, groups, units or organisations should be involved in the effort.”

(You tell me- leave a comment or email to brucer@reformwcc.info)

Read the rest of this entry »

WORLD CREDIT SQUEEZE AND INCREASING LOCAL CORRUPTION

One of the local effects of the global financial crisis will be some very desperate people wanting to complete their dodgy developments.

As sources of finance become increasingly more expensive to secure, ‘developers’ faced with limited options will be tempted to find ways of ‘fast-tracking’ their projects.

You don’t have to be a fortune-teller to be able to predict this outcome. A working knowledge of past practice, under more favourable financial conditions, is sufficient.

Given past form, one of the predictable consequences of the global credit drought is the increasing pressure which will be placed on local ‘developers’ to complete their dodgy money-making schemes.

Read the rest of this entry »

There were council elections across New South Wales this month.

In most places, with a few notable exceptions, the results are now decided and new elected and returned councillors are settling down to conducting community business.

The few exceptions are places like Wollongong where the State government, with little regard for the democratic rights of citizens, has dismissed our elected Councillors and appointed unelected technocrats as “Administrators”.

Whatever the shortcomings of local government are – and there are many – the elected Councillors have all had to go through a public process of endorsement. This is one of the best means of ensuring some degree of accountability in our decision makers.

The reality in Wollongong is that we have now entered a four year period in which our citizens and residents have no democratic means of participating in Council’s decision-making.

Read the rest of this entry »

Graham Larcombe

Secretary

Wollongong Against Corruption

wac.group@yahoo.com.au

Hi Graham

In order to promote the process of deepening democracy in our community by way of informed community discussion could you (or another WAC spokesperson) provide some more detail about the Community Democracy Forums as proposed in the draft WAC “Wollongong Charter for Ethics and Good Governance.”?

As with these ten questions, I will post the WAC reply to the website www.reformwcc.info which is a non-aligned site seeking to promote our community conversation on reforming Wollongong City Council.

1. The WAC Charter lacks little detail about how the proposed Community Democracy Forums will be formally and/or informally constituted. Will they be committees of Council, incorporated associations or any other corporate form?

Read the rest of this entry »

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;}

Council administrators and the owner, Vellar Nominees, are invited to explain to the Corrimal neighbourhood:

• How were the mansions built on environmentally protected escarpment land (7a zoning) instead of on the two safer 7b locations specially created after extensive community protests and Council negotiations
• Why should the neighbourhood put up with the increased risk of fire, flood and land slippage
• If the Council has ruled out endorsing past corruption by rezoning the land, will it now order the demolition of the illegal and derelict houses?

Sunday 21 September 2008

2.00 pm Tarrawanna Hall

Meadow St., Tarrawanna. Afternoon tea provided -

bring a plate for a traditional neighbourhood meeting!

Please join us

Authorised: Will Reynolds, 197 Princes Hwy., Corrimal; corrimal@sportspower.com.au

“Matt Brown is the new … minister for the  Illawarra …

Barbara Perry is local government minister, …

Frank Sartor’s planning responsibilities have been given to Kristina Keneally “

full story see:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=627273

Top marks to the Illawarra Greens for taking timely action in holding a public forum on the need to reform Wollongong Council.

It was a pity that there was not enought time to discuss the need to reform the organisational structure of Wollongong City Council (to provide either democratically elected Ward Precinct Committees or democratically elected Community Boards a la Aotearoa/New Zealand) as part of the structural changes we require. Passing mention of Community Democracy Forums was made by WAC spokesperson Graham L.

It was also a pity that this was not the venue to discuss the need for a broad-based coalition of people and groups to actively press for concessions during the reign of the Admin3 (until 2012). This is the key issue at this time – but there appears to be little interest in such a coalition from existing groups and other people.

The next cab off the rank is the Wollongong Against Corruption Rally, in Wollongong at 10 a.m. Saturday 13 September where they will be launching their Wollongong Charter for Ethics and Good Governance.  Top marks to them also for taking timely action.

See http://www.wollongongagainstcorruption.org.au/documents/c/ct1/key.documents/

Interested people need to read this document and assess it carefully vis-a-vis our democratic needs. While the Community Democracy Forums WAC proposes are heading in a good direction it is not clear how they will operate.

Given the history of ‘capture’ of community groups in the Illawarra by an undemocratic few, this aspect needs to be very carefully spelt out.

A new democratic vision for NSW

6 September 2008

Green Left Weekly’s Chris Williams spoke to Graham Larcombe, secretary of Wollongong Against Corruption, about the process underway in Wollongong to develop a new, democratic vision of local democracy.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/766/39524

Illawarra Greens media release 7 Sept 2008.

GONG-GATE – NEVER AGAIN! meeting Saturday 6 September:

“The meeting called for:

• Democratic elections for Wollongong and Shellharbour Councils by March 2009
• Structural reform to Wollongong and Shellharbour Councils voting systems to ensure democratic proportional representation, before the next elections
• Premier Nathan Rees to honour former Premier Morris Iemma’s promise to ban political donations before the next elections
• A Royal Commission into corruption in the Illawarra”

See full  media release:

Read the rest of this entry »