Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Shrugs, a smirk and a question: when can we go home?

A sworn affidavit by Warrnambool Mayor Tony Herbert sets out what allegedly happened behind closed doors on the night former council CEO Peter Schneider was sacked just 18 months into his job.

And it is not pretty.

In fact, it’s brutal.

The 22-page affidavit was lodged in the Supreme Court on Monday in support of Mr Schneider’s civil action against the Warrnambool City Council, scheduled for a hearing on 1 February next year.

Cr Herbert’s sworn evidence, obtained from the court today, paints a damning picture of how Crs Kylie Gaston, Michael Neoh, David Owen and Sue Cassidy allegedly behaved during the confidential council meeting on 13 July, which saw Mr Schneider lose his head.

According to Cr Herbert, all four councillors point blank refused to discuss the reasons why they wanted Mr Schneider gone and stayed mute during a list of questions put to them by Crs Herbert, Peter Sycopoulis and Robert Anderson.

“Each time (we put a question) we were met with silence.

“That is, Cr Gaston stared back at me, said nothing, shrugged, shook her head and raised her hands in the air with her palms outstretched,” the affidavit says.

“On one occasion, Cr Cassidy simply smirked.

“After about half an hour, Cr Owen asked when the meeting would be finished, as he wanted to go home.

“I, and Crs Anderson and Sycopoulis were appalled and shocked at Councillor Owen’s attitude.”

Cr Herbert said after the motion was passed to sack Mr Schneider, Cr Gaston put forward a motion written on a piece of paper that would see Director of Community Development, Vikki King, appointed as Acting CEO.

“Prior to the meeting, neither I nor Crs Anderson and Sycopoulis had any knowledge of the proposal to appoint Ms King.

“(The four councillors) gave no reasons for, or justification, for selecting Ms King, requiring her to perform two roles, or increasing her remuneration.”

Cr Herbert said after the meeting, when he told Ms King she had been appointed as acting CEO, she “showed no surprise about the decision and did not ask for any details of her role or her remuneration”.

This reaction led him to conclude that Ms King had already been in discussions with at least one of the other four councillors.

The affidavit also claims Cr Gaston attempted to put forward a motion at this 13 July meeting which would have seen the public pay for legal advice received by the four councillors who voted to remove the CEO.

An invoice for this legal advice from Maddocks arrived at the council in June, with no indication of who had asked for the advice.

Cr Herbert’s statement says separate legal advice found the councillors had acted unlawfully in seeking this advice without the approval of the full council.

Cr Gaston’s motion did not eventuate because, Cr Herbert claims, the councillors were advised that they could not retrospectively approve the payment.

This invoice, according to the council, has since been withdrawn.

While Cr Herbert sworn evidence is yet to be tested in court, it underscores a growing sense that Mr Schneider’s management style was met with disapproval by some councillors very early into his contract.

Cr Herbert claims that Mr Schneider had in fact lost the support of Cr Gaston just three months into his job due to his approach in securing funding for the new library project.

“From my observations, Crs Gaston and Neoh were less comfortable working with Mr Schneider than they were with (former CEO Bruce) Anson.

“Because Mr Schneider sought to treat all councillors equally, Crs Gaston and Neoh had less influence than they had previously enjoyed, even after they had ceased being Mayors.”

According to Cr Herbert, he had a conversation with Cr Gaston in June 2019 – just four months after Mr Schneider started as CEO – where Cr Gaston allegedly said she wanted to remove Mr Schneider and replace him with a former CEO from another council.

“(Cr Gaston) suggested that ‘we could get (name removed by The Terrier) in the role for 12 months, settle everything down and then go again, possibly with a woman’.

I told Cr Gaston that I was not interested in her proposal.”

From that point on, according to Cr Herbert’s evidence, there was a series of events aimed at undermining or embarrassing Mr Schneider, who is now suing the council for a lack of natural justice and is seeking to be re-hired.

More tomorrow night.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

If everything that dumped Warrnambool City Council CEO Peter Schneider says in his affidavit is true, our council has gone bad.

Mr Schneider’s allegations – which will be put to the Supreme Court on Thursday for a directions hearing – paints a picture of a toxic council, broken by old rivalries and unhealthy, cosy relationships that must end.

And they can only end by a metaphorical deep clean at the next election.

I am hopeful that the full affidavit can be published after Thursday, under the protection of the court, but many of the allegations are out there and they are ugly.

They include the decade-old hate fest between Crs Mike Neoh and Kylie Gaston and their nemesis Peter Hulin which just rolls on.

It includes concerns about the “close relationships” of some councillors to senior council staff, including the Director of Community Development Vikki King, now acting CEO, and former governance manager Anne-Maree Neal.

And it also raises claims that three councillors – Neoh, Gaston and Cr David Owen – allegedly rated Mr Schneider so poorly in a review in May that the consultant, Peter Berry, who was running the review said it could only have been motivated by “vindictiveness” and “spite”.

These are strong words.

And then there is my personal favourite: Cr Neoh allegedly laying the heavy on Mr Schneider for his handling of the credit card saga.

We all know, from the council’s own statements, that it was former CEO Bruce Anson who allowed David McMahon to repay money, to keep his job as a senior manager, and who kept the whole thing under wraps.

Just a blip.

No wonder ratepayers are starting to wonder if Mr Schneider was dumped because he wasn’t up to the job, or dumped because he wasn’t Mr Anson, or dumped because he got along with Cr Hulin.

One thing is certain, the push to get rid of Mr Schneider became dirty, very early.

Here is something you don’t know:

You may recall that Cr Gaston, in a string of questions to Mayor Tony Herbert at this month’s council meeting, asked why he and Cr Sue Cassidy had met at Mr Schneider’s private home for two hours’ on a Sunday in February.

Cr Gaston told the council a number of “red flags” were raised at this gathering.

What I have since learned is that Cr Cassidy had, by that time, received highly confidential documents, anonymously, in the mail, about Mr Schneider’s job application.

From what I understand, these documents related to personality and psychological testing that formed part of the job application.

This is highly personal stuff, and so very few people connected to the council had access to these documents.

Yet they were mailed – anonymously – to Cr Cassidy, and for a reason. Who was behind that move?

No wonder Cr Cassidy was keen to talk to Mr Schneider, face-to-face, in February.

Interestingly, Cr Cassidy was not among the councillors named in Mr Schneider’s affidavit as having acted with “spite” or “vindictiveness” in his May review.

Perhaps, in May, Cr Cassidy still thought he was doing a good job.

Cr Cassidy has declined to comment on this leaked document and Cr Herbert would only say “there were some concerns about confidential information that was sent to Sue.”

On top of all this, Mr Schneider’s affidavit also refers to a particular email written by Cr Gaston.

This email, written in July,Gas allegedly confirms Cr Gaston was seeking legal advice back in February about Mr Schneider’s contract.

In other words, several councillors were starting to seek legal advice on how to get rid of him and how much it would cost.

Who did these councillors expect to pay for this advice? Remind me again?

The Local Government Inspectorate is looking into all this and its findings can’t come soon enough.

Neither, in my view, can the election when ratepayers and residents will decide whether this is the sort of council we want to serve us, or whether it is time for a generational change.

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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