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.]
Two years on, Levy’s Beach dunes are still being trashed
The scars of illegal four-wheel drives across the landscape at Levy’s Beach. Picture supplied.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
We call ourselves Australia’s most liveable city, but this is still happening to our coast.
Two years after a long, expensive and detailed plan was put in place to look after the wild terrain of Levy’s Beach, it’s still being trashed.
The illegal four wheel-driving still goes on.
Illegal rubbish dumping still goes on.
The illegal trail bike riding still goes on.
And there is still no answer from the Warrnambool City Council as to whether racehorse training will be allowed, because most councillors are paralysed with fear of making this an issue at the next election and more importantly, pissing off the powerful Warrnambool Racing Club.
Tip: it already is an election issue.
Another tip: with Weir and McLean now pre-occupied preparing their defence for serious charges of animal cruelty against racehorses, the other 99 per cent of the trainers have moved on and are content with Lady Bay.
When it comes to Levy’s beach and our part of the Belfast Coastal Reserve, the council is incapable of making a decision and it is incapable of managing the area.
It has utterly failed and, this time, it cannot claim it didn’t know what was happening “out there”.
They know what is happening and the best they can do is launch yet another bloody survey.
Another survey, for another plan.
Illegal rubbish dumping and illegal four-wheel driving tracks at Levy’s Beach. Image supplied.
Please, not another plan.
We already have a Warrnambool Coastal Management Plan 2013, a Green Warrnambool 2018 plan, a Warrnambool Coastal Vegetation Management Plan 2012, a Management Plan for the Levy’s Point Coastal Reserve from 1998, a Marine and Coastal Policy 2020, and – as mentioned above – the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan from just two years ago.
Now we are being asked to fill out this new survey by 10 July and say what you REALLY, REALLY, think should happen at Levy’s Beach…
Bloody hell. It’s exhausting, particularly when some of us are still putting our eyeballs back in from telling the EPA what we think about the Wannon Water treatment plant upgrade that will pour industrial effluent into this same stretch of coast.
I am starting to think the WCC is secretly developing a form of psychological torture where they survey citizens into submission, call it consultation, ignore the results, do nothing, and then survey us all over again.
It’s called surveyconsultationitis and is designed to cause temporary insanity and physical exhaustion as we scroll through yet another Survey Monkey and click on the multiple choice.
By the end of it all, we will be gibbering like chimpanzees and that, I suspect, is the whole point.
While we are distracted by all of this “busy work” – as musician and activist John Schumann once described it – our coast continues to suffer.
It continues to be raped and pillaged by those who really don’t give a stuff, and they do so with impunity.
They don’t care: it’s all a bit of a laugh to go up there in your Toyota Hilux and shred the dunes for half an hour, because nobody’s watching and nobody is issuing any fines. More people are fined for parking too long in Liebig St.
The Belfast Coastal Reserve is home to myriad bird species including the protected Hooded Plover. Image: Paddy Finnigan Photography.
The Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan promised this would change.
It promised that the council, Parks Victoria and various state bodies would all work together to protect this precious, wild coastline that is a victim of its isolation.
But the only thing that ever captured the immediate attention of all these bodies was the racehorse training: it was a top priority.
The council moved so fast in late 2018, it was almost as if it had a jigger on its arse: special meetings were held, Ministers were called, planning amendments were rushed through to make the illegal racehorse training that had been going on, legal…
Ah, the power of money.
We don’t need to fill out another survey because we have already spoken, many times: protect this area from any more degradation.
