Mayor Herbert backs CEO before crucial Monday meeting
Warrnambool City Council Mayor Tony Herbert
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Update: W’bool Mayor Tony Herbert has released a statement to The Standard which has (finally) twigged there is something significant brewing.
I haven’t received a copy of the statement, so I can’t repeat it in full here due to copyright, but it endorses CEO Peter Schneider and makes this point: “In summary, all of the resolutions regarding his performance have been passed unanimously by the council at six months and again at 12 months.”
You will have to visit the paper’s website for the full statement. In the meantime, if ratepayers are left carrying the can for an unfair dismissal, we will know where the responsibility lies.
Just as I posted this, Mayor Herbert emailed me his response to my earlier question on whether he supported the CEO. His reply:
“He does. He has many challenges, a number historical. He is working on them, but surely, I believe if he is to make a difference, he needs support of the council.”
Coup against W’bool City Council CEO gathers pace
The advert in The Warrnambool Standard classifieds.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Update:
Well, it’s on.
After the deathly quiet of yesterday, following Monday night’s W’bool City council meeting, this special – and confidential – meeting next Monday is being called for just one reason:
the CEO Peter Schneider’s head is on the chopping block.
Crs Neoh, Gaston, Owen and Cassidy have decided that 18 months is long enough for him to work out the train wreck he inherited after a decade of non-action on bullying, falling staff morale and a string of financial screw ups.
Whatever you think of the new CEO’s performance, he is about to become the fall guy in a big power play. He will take the rap.
When I first wrote about this looming coup in February, I gave the CEO six months.
Bing! Time’s up. Oh my, this is going to be ugly, expensive and a true shit fight.
What a pity it will also happen entirely behind the scenes: some things never change.
Power plays in full force as WCC chief under threat
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Livestream from WCC Meeting: well the meeting appears to be over but they forgot to tell us about it. Tonight is a big night.
If, as suspected, the discussion behind closed doors was about the future of the CEO, then we can expect to hear much more on this very soon.
If, as suspected, 4/7 councillors plan to tell Peter Schneider that he has lost their confidence, then the CEO will pretty much have no choice but to resign.
This, if true, is an act of pure arrogance by four councillors who are just three months out from an election. It is a blatant power grab.
It is not about the competence of the CEO – he has only been there 18 months to clean up a mess that has been years in the making – it’s about keeping control.
How dare they decide who should be the CEO for the next council to work under? If anyone is to be judge and jury, that should be the NEXT set of councillors.
But of course, come the next election, the two power brokers behind this move – Crs Neoh and Gaston – may not have the numbers.
They may not – gasp – even get reelected. Imagine that! (If Cr Neoh wins again, he can notch up 20 years. Nothing like some fresh faces.)
They could scrounge up four because – I have been told – one of the four hopes to be the next Mayor after the next council elections. Side with us, we will give you the crown.
Oh my god, the assumptions! The dirty politics. The game playing.
Bring on October – we need a fresh start with people who care first and foremost about our city, not their personal ambitions.
Good night. Thanks for sticking around.
WCC confidential item raises spectre of CEO demise
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Oohh, there’s nothing like a confidential item on the W’bool City Council meeting agenda to get the terrier nose sniffing the wind.
This juicy little confidential “personnel matter” is right at the end of the thumping agenda for tomorrow night’s meeting which has almost as many pages as “War and Peace“.
Personnel matter? Hmm, who could that person be?
My guess is it’s the CEO.
The worst kept secret in Warrnambool right now is the attempted coup against the CEO earlier this year – aborted just before Covid 19 hit – is being reignited by the two councillor power brokers, Crs Neoh and Gaston.
Cr Neoh has been lighting the fuse on the gelignite via his chest-puffing pieces in the local paper about transparency and accountability – all of which is about 12 years too late.
Both Crs Neoh and Gaston want the CEO out. (He is not Bruce, dammit).
They began working the numbers earlier this year and now, as the election approaches and everyone wants to buddy up, I would not be surprised if they have them.
Our CEO has had 18 months to turn around a legacy of 11 years – a legacy, may I add, that Crs Neoh and Gaston were part of.
Why are they in such a rush to get rid of him? Hmmm.
Politics, even at a local level, can be a dirty game of power and intrigue, and both are on full display at 25 Liebig St right now.
“War and Peace” it is.
[The meeting will be live-streamed on the WCC website from 5.45pm.]
Veteran W’bool City Councillor Neoh falls foul of local laws
An aerial shot of Warrnambool City Councillor Michael Neoh’s family business, Penang Alley, shortly before it opened last December. Image via Penang Alley Facebook Page.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
You would think after a whopping 16 years as a Warrnambool City councillor that Cr Michael Neoh would know local rules and regulations inside and out, but it seems he has had something of a brain fade around his own family business.
That business is the Penang Alley restaurant at the back of Cr Neoh’s property on lower Liebig St, which opened on Boxing Day and has since operated without a mandatory grease trap, and an illegal back deck that fails to meet building standards.
Whoops!
How did that happen?
Well, part of it seems to be that Penang Alley mysteriously morphed from a ‘pop up’ to ‘permanent’.
When the fake grass and house brick pillars were being installed for the ‘pop up’ last November, I was contacted by competitors who were mightily miffed that a city councillor would set up a temporary cafe to catch the summer trade, when they had slogged it out all winter.
Would Cr Neoh need to install an expensive Wannon Water compliant grease trap like the rest of them, they asked?
And did all of the furnishings meet safety standards?
And how about the wooden deck tacked on to the back? Was it legal?
So many questions and, at the time, so few answers, in fact Cr Neoh – at that time – was also mightily miffed…at being asked to explain:
“The business will meet all the necessary requirements for the classified business,” was his only comment to me, via email.
That was in November.
Penang Alley is still there and, as it turns out, it has not met “all the necessary requirements”.
Finding this out has not been easy and has taken months of questions to the council by myself and the Warrnambool Ratepayers’ Association who, I discovered earlier this year, was also on the case.
The WRA finally got some answers, where I got none.
After two months of waiting, I was pretty much told by the council to contact the WRA and ask them for the responses.
(Around and around we go…)
The upshot to all of this pesky persistence, however, is that it was finally confirmed that a 600mm grease trap to catch all the crap was compulsory – there wasn’t one – and the timber back deck – used by the public all summer – didn’t meet building standards.
In a word, it was illegal.
(Furnishings, surprisingly, don’t have to meet any health guidelines, other than being clean.)
The council told the WRA that these issues are being fixed.
But how did Cr Neoh, who has been on council since George W Bush was President of the United States, not know he was cutting corners?
And more the point, how did he get away with it?
Warrnambool City Councillor Mike Neoh’s blog page on Facebook: he was first elected in 2004.
Penang Alley is within a shoe toss of the council headquarters and fellow councillors (and most likely council staff) have hung out there.
I wouldn’t get away with it – I get WCC notices in the mail saying that I have 10 days to trim my garden bushes that have crept over the fence or the council will come and do it for me at my expense! Take that, daisy bush!
And you, most likely, wouldn’t get away with it either.
And this, let’s be honest, is what grates the most: the double standards, the two sets of rules, the sense that who you are determines what action is taken, or how fast it happens.
Nobody has an issue with a councillor opening a funky little eatery – go for it – but no wonder it has upset those who were forced to spend time and money doing the right thing from day one.
Yep, that’s enough to give anyone a bad case of entitlement indigestion.
I offered Cr Neoh another right of reply before running this piece. He has not taken it up.
I am tip toeing back into the Tip Jar. If you would like to see The Terrier keep digging, please throw what is affordable into the tip jar below.
