Shoalhaven City Labor Councillors are concerned that hastily written and ill-conceived motions could force Shoalhaven Council into administration.
A recent amendment to a motion, voted against by all three Labor councillors, to allow public feedback to a proposed special rate variation (SRV) gave the CEO, Robyn Stevens, only 28 days to complete a full, council-wide restructure. As this plan has been presented to Councillors and is available for all elected council to view, it is not clear exactly what is being demanded in this amendment.
The rush to complete a full staff restructure is high risk and will create low levels of effective implementation. It will waste time and money at a time when council is under extreme scrutiny by the Office of Local Government.
On top of that, the spectre of redundancies was again raised by Shoalhaven “Independent” Group Party councillors, despite expert advice that Council cannot afford to pay for them. Any redundancy payouts will have to come from somewhere, probably another loan to council, which would be another big step towards administration.
This is aside from the horrendous yet obvious human cost of such redundancies on the staff members of Shoalhaven Council and their families when everyone is experiencing cost of living pressures.
Labor Councillors, Matthew Norris, Gillian Boyd and Ben Krikstolaitis are calling on all Councillors to gather their facts and listen to the experts when it comes to making decisions that affect the community. If Council continues to rush into ill formed decisions, Shoalhaven Council will lose money that it doesn’t have and could be under administration very quickly.
