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.]
Giant trees saved for now, but what happens next?
By Carol Altmann
Phew, that was close. Two of Warrnambool’s oldest street trees have been temporarily spared from being chopped down by the Warrnambool City Council this weekend, but the fight is far from over.
The two, 115-year-old Australian banyan trees on the corner of, yes, Banyan St and Raglan Parade are not yet saved, but thanks to people power, the pause button has been pressed.
Let’s look at what just happened and what happens next.
What happened was the council falsely and arrogantly believed that it could destroy these two magnificent trees that have been alive longer than any person on the planet and nobody would really care.
It also believed that consulting the public meant putting a media release on its website, sending this to the local paper, and contacting a few nearby property owners – all just 10 days before the chainsaws moved in.
Lastly, it hoped that we would blindly accept that these trees had to be chopped down because they were causing car accidents, that they were bubbling up the footpath and that the whole avenue of trees would actually look better if these two trees were gone.
To say the council was wrong on every single count is an understatement.
More than 2000 people signed an online petition within four days to stop this massacre. The petition, started by local Scarlett Patrick, is still going strong.
People were furious. They were furious because their heritage was about to be ripped out (again), that our precious old trees were being treated with contempt, that nobody had a chance to offer an opinion or an alternative, that not one single elected councillor was jumping up and down in outrage, and that the justifications being rolled out just didn’t make sense.
The trees, as we all know, are not causing car accidents at a big intersection that has traffic lights. They are not causing drivers to rear-end each other, or to turn too soon, or too late.
VicRoads knows this and I asked them, just to be sure, if they had expressed concerns to the council about the old trees.
They hadn’t.
What VicRoads did do, however, was offer to pay for a new footpath if the council decided to pull out the trees:
“VicRoads (Regional Roads Victoria) is responsible for the maintenance of the footpath in the Princes Highway median, and has, as a result of the Council’s plans to remove the trees, agreed to fix any damage to the footpath,” a spokeswoman said via email.
The footpath under the big trees is getting rough, just like those at the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens, but there are many ways to improve this and, just to be on the safe side, there is another, perfectly flat footpath just 2o metres away on the other side of the road.
Locals know this, they can see it for themselves.
(They can also see the broken stump of a traffic and pedestrian light that has been sitting there for weeks, wrapped in orange safety tape, waiting to be replaced.)
Picking up on the angry mood, the council has now switched tack.
You’ve got it all wrong folks! The priority was not about traffic accidents and footpaths, but actually improving the full avenue of Australian banyans/Moreton Bay figs along Raglan Parade.
The original media release has been taken down from the council website (see above), but this is the opening line of a statement sent to me this week:
“Council’s intention in proposing to remove these trees was to address issues associated with aesthetics of the boulevard which had been impacted by heavy pruning of the two trees as part of power line and signal clearance works, other considerations included pedestrian access and visibility at the intersection.”
So you prune the trees so harshly that they look ugly, then you get rid of them because, hey, they look ugly.
Oh boy, we are back in George Orwell territory again.
Self-confessed tree hugger with the 115-year-old banyan tree.
The good news is that the council says it will now consult more broadly. When and how, we still don’t know, but it has decided to bundle the issue into its response to another petition, received in April this year.
That petition, signed by 19 residents, asked to have some native trees planted on the median strip in the southern end of Banyan St, between Timor and Merri streets.
Thanks to Scarlett Patrick, you, and more than 2000 other people, these 19 residents now have a whole lot more clout and the two Australian Banyan trees have a second chance.
More broadly, the council has been given a wake up notice that people are watching, that they do care, and that we need a better policy on how we manage our precious urban forest.
Thanks to a couple of tip-offs, I can firstly pass on a local newspaper article from 1998 that stressed the importance of retaining these trees when the new police station was being designed.
I can also tell you that the bulk of the timber from these two towering specimens has ended up in Melbourne and will be turned into furniture.
But first to the newspaper article.
It confirms that the project designers, L. U. Simon Pty Ltd, went out of their way to make sure that trees were preserved because of their historical connection to the neighbouring Church of England complex, of which they were once a part, and their “valuable” contribution to Warrnambool’s heritage.
According to the article, written as part of a special promotion for the opening of the new police station, an arborist was bought in to ensure the trees were protected as the new station was built.
Site manager Matthew Wood was quoted as saying: “Part of our contract was to look after the trees. We had to design and build around (them).”
Yet despite this, as we now know, the trees were removed last year because they were apparently causing flooding to the police building.
Based on the documents we received in a Freedom of Information application, the removal was approved by the Warrnambool City Council without the need for any arborist’s report, or any detailed assessment whatsoever, but rather the word of the police officer who made the request.
This, as I have said before, is not just about two trees. It is about due process, and how what was once considered precious to our city is so easily done away with.
Timber from the two Norfolk pines is now in storage at Mark Tuckey furniture, in Melbourne. Image: Mark Tuckey Furniture.
At least the trees didn’t end up as landfill or mulch.
Again, thanks to a tip-off, I learned the bulk of the timber has been taken to Melbourne to high-end furniture making firm, Mark Tuckey.
A spokesman for the company said it was in storage, drying out, but didn’t respond when I asked who had given it to them.
The Silver Ball inspired table at the Warrnambool Art Gallery made from a piece of the historic Norfolk pine removed from the Warrnambool Police Station last year. Image: Tomoya & Co.
One piece of the pine has already been turned into a giant table now in use in the revamped foyer of the Warrnambool Art Gallery.
Inspired by Fletcher Jones’ silver ball water tower, the piece was made by Melbourne interior designer Chris Tomoya (Tomoya & Co) as part of the foyer refurbishment.
There is no doubt that this timber makes for beautiful furniture, but I still can’t help feeling its a bit like having a deer’s head above the fireplace: the living thing is so much better.
Did you miss this story?