Carol Altmann – The Terrier

What the heck is happening at Lyndoch?

It’s behaving more and more like a private corporation than a community owned home for our elderly and infirm.

Its unadvertised, annual general meeting held earlier this week was, by all accounts, one big self-congratulatory, PR exercise rather than a critical analysis of the last 12 months.

While it’s terrific to celebrate the good stuff, we also want to know the nitty gritty behind the growing “brand”, because Lyndoch is now very much a brand.

So where are the financials?

How are the Lyndoch board and CEO Doreen Power spending our money, be it via residents’ fees, taxpayer dollars or donations?

Was there a surplus or a deficit like the $1.77 million loss of last year?

How many staff have come and gone?

How much is being spent on food for the residents? On medical and health items? How are the public donations going?

And – I ask, one more time with feeling – where is the $100 million coming from for the eight-year masterplan?

The annual report released this week answers none of these questions, in fact, it deliberately avoids them.

The financial statements have been reduced to three, very basic graphs and about 125 words of text – that’s it – for a multi-million-dollar, publicly funded, not-for-profit organisation that is fully accountable to the public.

Well, it used to be.

Things have changed dramatically since Lyndoch changed its corporate structure late last year.

Now, trying to get any detailed information is like prising open the jaws of Barry the Bull Terrier.

I am still trying to get a copy of Lyndoch’s constitution, which it is zealously guarding like a first-edition copy of Harry Potter.

Even old annual reports that were posted on the Lyndoch website were pulled down yesterday.

Maybe this is because I actually read them and crunched the numbers and found a rather large skeleton lurking in the closest: Lyndoch last year recorded its largest deficit in recent years at $1.77m.

Thankfully I took notes and kept copies of the annual reports that could be downloaded, and took screenshots of those that couldn’t.

Good grief, when did it get this hard to find out basic information about our much-loved aged care home?

What on earth is there to hide?

Perhaps it’s because, as I believe, Lyndoch recorded another deficit in 2019, which would be its fourth deficit in the past five years.

I am not an accountant by any stretch, but using the scant details released this week, and my earlier notes, I think Lyndoch Living recorded another operating deficit, this time of around $750,000 and that’s before any other unusual items – if there were any – are added.

Please, Lyndoch, correct me if I am wrong.

Using my same, very high-tech accounting methods, I believe its net assets also dropped by a whopping $11 million in the past year from $62.7 million down to $51.2 million.

Hmm, could that be because Lyndoch just borrowed $11 million from the bank to pay for the first stage of the masterplan?

Please, please, Lyndoch, correct me if I am wrong.

There is no question that Lyndoch needed to freshen up some spaces, try different things, move with the times, but surely when big decisions are made and millions are being spent, it must all be open to rigorous scrutiny?

As it sits, to get even close to the full story, we will have to wait until early next year for the full financial reports and all of the gritty details to be released via a government website that oversees charities.

In the meantime, this Terrier is just going to keep digging. More soon.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I want you to meet Foxy. I will tell you more about her at the end of this piece, but we need Foxy, because speaking up is now a crime.

If you raise your voice and shout at a Warrnambool City Council meeting, you face an $825 fine, or, to put it into council currency, one Pickled Pig dinner, six bottles of shiraz and two creme brûlées.

This is a local law that was designed to protect councillors and staff from aggression or violence toward each other, or from the public. It is now being used to shut people up.

Not all people, mind you, just the Neanderthals, as Cr Michael Neoh likes to call them.

These “Neanderthals” include the everyday people of Warrnambool who don’t wear suits and who have callouses on their hands from physical work, or tired faces from holding down two jobs while raising three kids.

According to Cr Neoh and Cr Kylie Gaston and our CEO Peter Schneider, these people now need to be shut down for shouting, like they did at last Monday night’s fiery meeting.

If police need to be called, Cr Gaston is happy to use speed dial.

And yet no police have been called by the WCC for the almost $4000 in ratepayers’ funds that were mis-spent by a former senior manager.

This man was an actual Neanderthal, but he wore a suit and was regarded as a “good bloke” by our Mayor and others while he ripped off ratepayers and bullied a string of council staff mercilessly.

Not a word was raised last Monday night about that Neanderthal’s bullying behaviour.

Instead, within hours, the finger was pointed back on the people who have had a gut full of years of waste and not being heard.

The main agitator, ratepayer Ben Blain, who was facing a fine, was loud, no doubt about it, but he was not abusive, or threatening. In fact he was pleading.

Here’s a theatrical but accurate transcript of the full exchange. Warning: contains foul language like “sack ’em” and “cheat” and “you have not got your house in order”.

——-

Lights up. Agenda Item 5.4: Council decides to increase its carbon footprint by flying 31,000km to and from Mariestad, Sweden, to learn how to reduce its carbon footprint.

Ratepayer Ben leaves his seat, walks to the front of the public gallery, his pants trembling with nerves:

(Cue loud voice….aaaaaaand action!):

“Peter Schneider was the council aware of anyone’s involvement? We have sat here and listened to the council try and hide every single cover up that has happened in this place and we are not going to take it anymore.

We are the ratepayers, we are the ones that have voted you in, and you think it is alright to sit here and lie, cheat and steal. Listen to the ratepayers.

What we want is transparency. That is what we want.

How do you think we are going to put up with this?

(Mayor Herbert: Ben, Ben, I have asked you to leave.)

How do you think we are going to put up with this?

(Mayor Herbert: Ben, I have asked you to leave.)

Have you? I am not leaving.

(Ratepayer chorus: No! No!)

Sack ’em! Sack em’!

(Ratepayer chrous: Sack ’em! Sack ’em! Sack’ em! Sack ’em!)

It is absolutely disgusting. We can’t afford to run the city with the rates we’ve got and then you want more to go to Sweden.

You have not got your house in order. How do you think the ratepayers….

(Mayor Herbert: I have asked you to leave.)

(Ratepayer chorus: Nooooo! Nooooo! Noooooo!)

(Mayor Herbert: Right, councillors, we will adjourn the meeting please.)

(Ratepayer chorus: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.)

Meeting adjourned for 10 minutes while CEO Schneider spoke quietly with ratepayer who had returned to his seat.

Councillors re-emerge.

Meeting resumes and picks up again at item 5.4.

Meeting rolls on for almost another hour with a few jeers and moans and groans.

Subdued crowd reignited fully by Cr Gaston’s speech about The Terrier (aka Fox Terrier News), during which Cr Gaston reveals her preference for media that behaves like a toothless tiger, rather than a blog that bites.

Lights down. We all go home.

This is democracy in action and I am determined to keep fighting for it.

As part of that, and because Cr Gaston said she would like my fact checking to be public, I have hired Foxy the Fact Checker. She works 7.6 hours a week alongside Barry the Bullshite detector and she will have her first outing shortly.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

JUST IN: This is a shock – the W’bool City Council has voted 4/3 tonight to ask the Local Government Minister to look at ALL aspects of the council’s financial performance and governance for the seven years up to 31.12.2018.

Cr Peter Hulin’s motion was supported by Mayor Tony Herbert, Cr Sue Cassidy, and Cr Robert Anderson.

Such a review, if the Minister agrees to it, would be at no cost to council.

Wow. This a true win for people power. An absolute win.

Meanwhile, Cr Kylie Gaston – who voted against this move – was ropable that The Terrier was exposing all sorts of things and made sure that we knew it. My hair was on fire by the end of that blast!

In particular, my reporting on the business links between the council’s economic development manager Shaun Miller and private businessman Ravin Merchandani really grated Cr Gaston’s wick. Why?

I must be on to something, so you know what that means, don’t you? On. We. Go.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here is a story of two lavish Warrnambool dinners, held two months apart, costing more than $2000 and paid for via another Warrnambool City Council corporate credit card.

“It’s just one credit card,” Mayor Tony Herbert keeps repeating, “just one”.

No, not one. Not two. Now three, and it’s not over yet.

I have to keep rolling these out, because two months’ after the first bombshell hit, the WCC still refuses to accept it has a deep-seated culture of entitlement and secrecy that has seen questionable spending of public money for years (#notallstaff).

This time it’s a dinner at the Myrtle Bar and Kitchen last July for perhaps three or four people, including a current councillor, who between them spent almost $700 on servings of eye fillet, five bottles of shiraz (@$79 each) and more wine by the glass before things wrapped up a few minutes before midnight.

The guests, I am guessing, must have had a decent old hangover the next day.

But wait, there’s more. There always is.

Another dinner, costing an eye-watering $1476, but for more people – maybe 10 – was held at Pippies By the Bay restaurant in late May last year and included dishes of eye fillet with crayfish tail, abalone entrees, yellowtail kingfish, duck breast, fresh oysters and desserts.

The food was washed down with five bottles of wine and six glasses of champagne, with several more wines bought by the glass before everyone piled out the door and into the night.

Both of these dinners were paid for by a senior council manager using a WCC credit card and were held less than two months apart.

I don’t know what these dinners were for and perhaps they were of enormous benefit to Warrnambool, so on Monday I asked the senior manager and the councillor three simple questions:

i) the purpose of each dinner?

ii) the demonstrable outcome for Warrnambool as a result of each dinner?

iii) who signed off on the cost of each dinner?

I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but you can read the response today from the WCC media adviser in full here.

I don’t want to incite a riot and this is a truth I hoped I wouldn’t have to expose, because I trusted the council would be in full blown action mode by now, but it just doesn’t get it.

All the council hopes to do is tweak a few internal policies and pray the whole thing goes away: it won’t.

Because this is not about catching people breaking the law – which is what Cr Herbert fails to grasp – but exposing the steaming pile of inappropriate and unjustifiable spending that gives so little return to the ratepayer.

It’s this unjustifiable spending – via poor governance – that people want independently audited, cleaned up and cleaned out.

There was the perfect chance for the Mayor, CEO Peter Schneider and the councillors to stand before the public at at last Thursday’s emergency meeting and say we are so sorry for allowing your money to be wasted. We are on to it. We are taking it very seriously and we are doing all we can to flush it right out.

Instead, they all – bar one in Cr Hulin – behaved like kids dragged before the headmaster, twitchy and testy, as if they didn’t want to be there, because they didn’t.

Local MP Roma Britnell recently confirmed to a resident that both she and the Local Government Minister were poised to intervene: “The opportunity was provided to the city council, by both myself and the Minister, to conduct an independent review, they have chosen a certain way to proceed,” she wrote.

So the council was dragged kicking and screaming to the table and it showed.

Cr Herbert stuck to his mantra. Cr Anderson sat there and said nothing. Cr Neoh – briefly – lost his temper, while Cr Gaston stood up and announced she was “very confident” all was well.

No, Cr Gaston, all is not well.

Let’s not forget that this council first talked about breaking the rate cap in 2017, yet throughout 2018, the unbridled spending on food, drinks and alcohol rolled on.

Nothing changed.

And because nothing changed, we are now picking up the bill through higher rates.

It is outrageous and yet we know it is just one part of a much bigger picture where so much waste was and is allowed to happen.

There was nothing illegal about a senior manager buying a shed for $100,000 and the council selling it for $2000. There was nothing illegal about throwing $3 million of taxpayers’ money into Flagstaff Hill and it now costing ratepayers $750,000 a year to prop up. There is nothing illegal about building an unnecessary roundabout outside the Warrnambool Bowls’ Club where Cr Anderson is a member.

And there was nothing illegal about council staff spending hundreds of dollars on food and wine, because it was happening in plain sight and approved by those in charge.

I have now reported on three council credit card holders who have indulged in questionable spending, and there are more (#notallstaff).

If our councillors don’t know about all of this by now, then our CEO is not doing his job for his $320,000-a-year package.

I know Mr Schneider is a busy man, but he did find time to email me last week, not with any answers or insights, but asking me to refrain from naming council staff.

As a journalist, I never publish a name without it being relevant, but I will wait and see – in this case – if the senior manager and councillor involved will step out and name themselves.

In the meantime, those of us outside the tent will continue to dive deep, down to the very bottom of this culture of entitlement and waste, and use every muscle we can to turn it around.

We still have some way to go.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

These were my questions about the two dinners:

i) the purpose of each dinner?

ii) the demonstrable outcome for Warrnambool as a result of each dinner?

iii) who signed off on the cost of each dinner?]

I will let the Warrnambool City Council response speak for itself. Here is it in full:

“We are aware you recently emailed questions relating to credit card expenditure to a councillor and Council officer.

This is Council’s response to those inquiries.

As we have previously advised, Council is fully aware of its reporting obligations to referral authorities and any actions that are required.  Those obligations are taken very seriously. The regulations around reporting responsibilities mean that Council cannot confirm whether a referral has been made and nor can Council provide publicity or commentary on the process.

The constraints on Council around the referral process have been made known to the media on several occasions in recent weeks.

The questions you have asked are also part of a current FOI inquiry initiated by you. Given these matters are yet to be finalised, it would be inappropriate to provide further detail at this time.

In addition to the above, at the recent Special Council meeting the following resolution was passed:

1a)       That Council, via the Audit & Risk Committee, immediately (Audit & Risk Committee Meeting of the 27 August 2019) engage an External Auditor to undertake an audit to review and assess the adequacy of:-

• Existing policies, governance, reporting and investigation processes/procedures in the handling of the current credit card misuse issue that was identified in September 2018.

1b)       The scope of the audit to include:-

            SCOPE

Review the adequacy of Council policies, procedures and processes in relation to:-

• Dealing with expenditure authorisation and delegation;
• Trigger points for reporting (unusual transactions and/or misuse and/or fraud) to the Audit & Risk Committee (via confidentiality reports or meetings);
• Trigger points when an auditor should be brought in (i.e. the period after unusual/misuse has been identified to when possible fraud is suspected);
• Guidelines on “taking face value explanations” vs “appropriate inquiry”;
• Guidelines to ensure there are procedures to mitigate and prevent the acceptance of face value assumptions;
• Adding another layer of probity and transparency by providing trigger points for the use of an auditor.

1c)       Should the External Auditor require clarification of the scope of the audit, as outlined in 1b) then the Auditor shall communicate directly with Cr Neoh and Cr Cassidy and the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee.

1d)       Once appointed, the External Auditor to meet, in camera with Cr Neoh, Cr Cassidy and the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee, to outline the scope (in accordance with 1b).

1e)       That the External Auditor report directly to the subsequent (post 27 August 2019) Audit & Risk Committee Meeting or early if called by the Audit & Risk Committee Chairman.