Carol Altmann – The Terrier

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Sacked Warrnambool City Council chief Peter Schneider has launched legal action in the Supreme Court to get his job back.

Lawyers for Mr Schneider today lodged an “originating motion” against the council in the Supreme Court of Victoria, arguing that Mr Schneider be reinstated.

The action argues that the council failed to provide Mr Schneider with procedural fairness and natural justice.

As a result, they argue, Mr Schneider should be reinstated.

There you have it: as predicted, Mr Schneider was never going to just take this lying down, having been unceremoniously dumped on 13 July on the vote of four councillors: Crs Gaston, Cassidy, Owen and Neoh.

A judge will now ultimately decide whether Mr Schneider should return to his post, but many people of Warrnambool have already decided that this sacking has been a public relations disaster for our city.

It is also costing us money.

What a mess: just weeks before an election and in the middle of a global pandemic that is squeezing us all.

We are about to be squeezed even further.

I doubt the council lawyers, Maddocks, will be providing their advice “free” this time around, so you can set the clock on the legal bill that will be funded by ratepayers – your time starts now.

And all of this has been brought upon Warrnambool by four councillors who thought they knew best and could act on behalf of the next council, whoever that might be.

As it sits, we still don’t know what the four councillors considered so awful, so terrible and so unfixable that it warranted the former CEO being dumped after just 18 months and despite passing his performance reviews and saving the council money on its bloated staffing bill.

At least part of those savings will now be gobbled up in payouts and expensive legal bills.

The four councillors involved seemingly want to wish this mess away and “move forward”, but it won’t go away because we have been swept up in a power play that was not of our choosing, or making, but for which we are paying dearly.

“No reason” just doesn’t cut it.

Mr Schneider’s lawyers obviously agree.

I will continue to write more on the back story to this dismissal in coming weeks.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

For those who missed my post stream during the final meeting of the Warrnambool City Council, here is the string of revelations regarding the dumping of the CEO:

Good god – this is getting interesting! Cr Kylie Gaston has asked a number of punchy questions to the Mayor about the whole sacking of the CEO saga.

We are now learning:

1. Nine applications during the recruitment of the previous CEO went missing. The recruitment agency had an IT problem. (I hope we got a refund from that recruitment agency).

2. The council and CEO Schneider met on 21 February to discuss issues with the CEO’s performance.

3. Crs Cassidy and Herbert went to Peter Schneider’s private house on a Sunday morning on February 23 to discuss issues that Cr Cassidy had with the CEO. Cr Herbert set up this meeting. Cr Cassidy says she now considers it was unprofessional to have this meeting at Mr Schneider’s house.

4. Cr Gaston says councillors didn’t realise what they signed up for with the CEO’s contract that would allow such a big payout of around $364,000.

5. Another big allegation – that the former CEO signed up long-term contracts of several senior managers knowing that he was leaving. I wonder who these people were? (Ms King – the new acting CEO – was not among them.)

6. Cr Sycopoulis is raising whether the CEO payout is the end of the matter or if extra legal fees may be coming, if there is legal action by Peter Schneider.

7. Cr Gaston says a performance review of the former CEO in May was not favourable and that, in effect, his sacking was not “out of the blue”.

8. It sounds like the WCC didn’t know what it signed up for with the former CEO’s contract. (Good grief). The size of the payout came as a surprise. Not good enough councillors.

9. Bring on the election – there are no winners here.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

And so it comes to a close.

Four years after the current Warrnambool City councillors were elected promising unity, transparency, positivity – and a bunch of other things that end in ‘y’ – they will hold their final public meeting tomorrow night (Monday 7/9) as a divided mess that has failed dismally to live up to that promise.

Ratepayers have not been told the truth about many things over these past four years – but the sudden dumping of the former CEO, Peter Schneider, is the Godzilla of the piece.

It is the mother-of-all finales to what has been four years of secrets and spin and it has split the council, because there is only so much bullshite one council can absorb, even when still smiling for Zoom.

As we limp toward the October election, we must demand the truth on this whole Schneider affair, because we are paying for it.

We want evidence of the claim, for example, that the CEO was failing to deliver on the council’s 2040 plan.

As it happens, tomorrow night’s hefty agenda contains a little coloured graph that shows an update on council “activities and initiatives” between April and June this year (see above).

Of the 145 things listed:

118 of them were finished;

21 are progressing;

5 are on hold;

and only one is not progressing.

This, of course, is at a time when Covid-19 had thrown the world into chaos.

Those figures don’t look like a failure to me, but more like council staff getting stuff done.

So what is the truth? Was the CEO making progress or not?

And, as I wrote on Friday, we have the wobbly story around the thousands of dollars in legal fees that were racked up by the four councillors who plotted the CEO’s demise.

Ratepayers were expected to pay for this legal bill, before it was torn up and the advice was suddenly pro bono (free).

Why was it free?

Cr Mike Neoh told the Standard on Friday that he believed there was a problem with the invoice.

A council spokesman told me on Friday that the council didn’t ask why.

How does Cr Neoh know what happened if the council officers don’t?

What is the truth of the matter?

Is the root of it, as MP Bev McArthur told Parliament last week, that the councillors had no authority to hire the lawyers in the first place?

Lastly, we’ve been told that Mr Schneider was also dumped because of the terrible community survey results and terrible staff survey results.

But planning for this coup started in February: Crs Gaston, Neoh and Owen were already making their moves.

They had begun to talk to people. Phone calls were being made. They just needed one more councillor to come on board.

That was in February – well before the results of the surveys were known.

On top of this, once Cr Cassidy signed on and the axe could be swung on 13 July, dozens of WCC staff swamped councillors with emails of support for the CEO.

So what is the truth?

Was the former CEO a friend or foe of the staff who hoped to see a better council than the one he inherited, which was wracked for years with allegations of bullying, ignoring staff surveys, favouritism, and a “mates club” mentality?

It’s a sweet irony that the council’s final meeting contains the annual report which opens with this:

“WCC is committed to transparent reporting and accountability to the community.”

Given the state of play, we can only take this as humour as the lights fade on this sorry chapter and we prepare to write a new one.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

The story behind the axing of the Warrnambool City Council CEO is becoming murkier, with news that the very expensive lawyers involved didn’t charge a cent.

I can tell you the lawyers did in fact charge the council, but then they pulled the bill.

But let’s go back a step.

In one of the most staggering revelations of this whole messy affair, Cr Sue Cassidy told the Standard on Thursday that, “no legal fees were charged by our solicitors” for advice around the dumping of CEO Peter Schneider.

Cough! Splutter! Choke!

When, in the long history of the esteemed legal profession, have you ever heard of top-class lawyers from Melbourne working for free?

Why would any lawyer knock back a lazy $650 to $800 an hour to provide advice on how to sack a CEO?

We now know the four councillors involved sought legal advice and didn’t just Google “how to dump a CEO and still get re-elected”.

This was a very serious matter, given they were about to toss the CEO out the door and hand the cost to ratepayers . That cost, so far, is hundreds of thousands of dollars – around $400,000 in fact.

Yet Cr Cassidy tells us the lawyers never charged a cent for what must have been considerable, specialist advice.

Well of course they charged the council – they sent a bill – but there’s a twist.

They later tore it up.

“Council received a bill that was later withdrawn,” a council spokesman told me today via email.

What? Withdrawn?

Righto, we are in seriously weird territory.

Why would a law firm invoice the council for legal services, and then withdraw that bill?

I asked that question back to the council.

The council didn’t ask why, the spokesman replied.

Oh come on. Seriously?

A top law firm wipes off a bill for what must have been thousands of dollars worth of work and the council just shrugged?

Nothing makes sense and we are – still – not being told the full story by the council, or the four councillors involved: Crs Neoh, Cassidy, Gaston and Owen.

Instead the story drips out in little dark droplets of detail that we all have to try and piece together.

The former CEO has been gone almost two months and we still don’t have the full picture.

As was revealed here, the Local Government Inspectorate is now investigating to see if there were any breaches of the Local Government Act.

Regardless of why the CEO was dumped (“no reason” is the official reason), this whole thing has been handled appallingly on behalf of the people of Warrnambool who, from my reading, are justifiably angry and embarrassed.

Western Victoria Upper House MP Bev McArthur this week raised the whole mess in Parliament, and pulled no punches:

“My question is to the Minister for Local Government and concerns the recent turmoil at Warrnambool City Council and the choice facing voters at the forthcoming October elections.

As the minister knows, the chief municipal inspector has announced an investigation into the sacking of the council’s CEO.

This shoddy backstairs intrigue saw four councillors conspire to seek legal advice behind the backs of their colleagues without spending authorisation and spring the sacking on an otherwise well-regarded CEO whilst simultaneously appointing an existing director to the job.

I welcome this review and thank the minister for his assistance in securing it. On top of this, last December the Victorian Ombudsman began investigating potential credit card fraud at Warrnambool City Council.

The question I have for the minister is: can he ensure that all relevant information from both reports will be released prior to the upcoming local government elections?”

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Questions upon questions – and they will keep coming until we get all the answers.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Big news is filtering out of the EPA today which could see Wannon Water forced to lift its game so these “dirty decants” into the ocean off Thunder Point are soon a thing of the past.

The push is to produce only what is called “Class A” water which is not piped into the ocean but – wait for it – reused and recycled.

The fabulous news is that the independent consultant hired by the EPA to look at the public response to the $40m WW plant upgrade agrees!