Bass Coast Council challenges residents’ group to meet

BCRRA rejects guilt by association

THE Bass Coast Shire Council, through its CEO Ali Wastie, has publicly challenged the President of the Bass Coast Ratepayers and Residents Association, Kevin Griffin, to “take up an invitation” and meet with council officers to discuss the group's concerns.

The challenge came at the end of an answer to a question from BCRRA Treasurer Graham Jolly, asking why the shire’s administration was diverting emails from the ratepayers’ group, intended for the shire’s nine elected councillors, to a “generic email address” monitored by council officers.

However, while rejecting the claim that the ratepayers’ group has been invited to meet with council officers, they’ve also expressed outrage at the response by council, read by Ms Wastie, that they have done anything to warrant being banned under the council’s ‘Unreasonable Conduct by Customers’ Policy’.

Speaking about the response in question time at last Wednesday’s council meeting, the author of the question to council, BCRRA Treasurer Graham Jolly, rejected claims the group had sent 400 emails to the council in a year, or that there had been any threatening behaviour of the kind referred to by Ms Wastie in the council response.

“There’s no way we would have sent them 400 emails in a year,” Mr Jolly said.

“We’re going to go back and check our records but when you consider council has 270 working days a year, you’re talking almost two separate emails-a-day.

“We send two questions for each council meeting, that’s 22-24-a-year and we make submissions on things like the budget, and policy changes like the Governance Rules Review which we are doing at the moment, things that the council wants the community to respond to.

“But 400 in 12 months? No way.

“And as for the sort of threats and abuse Ms Wastie was talking about, definitely not. Our processes wouldn’t allow it.”

Mr Jolly said council had not sent an invitation for a representative of the BCRRA to meet with officers. They may have sent one to Mr Griffin in his individual capacity sometime ago, but no invitation has been addressed to the BCRRA.

“And we will want to know what it is that we have supposedly done wrong for us to be banned by the Unreasonable Conduct by Customers’ Policy and be put through an email vetting process.

“We’ll want that quantified so that we can take it back to the group and discuss it before we go ahead and meet with council.”

Mr Jolly said it was mischievous for the council to talk about someone sending 400 emails-a-year and threatening staff in a response to a legitimate query from the BCRRA if such claims of bad behaviour didn’t involved the BCRRA.

“We’re going to want to get to the bottom of this,” Mr Jolly said.

“The community is concerned about projects they’ve been campaigning for for years not going ahead and also not being able to get a straight answer from council on anything.

“We’d like to be able to sit down from time to time, over a coffee, with our local councillors and discuss points of interest but councillors can’t talk while they have the media engagement and social engagement policies in place. It's all got to go through the Mayor and CEO.

“The policies are anti-democratic and stop the councillors from engaging in a useful way with their community.”

The incident that has sparked the ratepayers’ group’s outrage is the council’s response to a question, during question time, from Mr Jolly on behalf of the BCRRA.

“It’s about the CEO and administration,” said Mayor Cr Michael Whelan as he prepared to read out the question:

“Refusing to identify themselves, anonymous members of the CEO administration have, and are now targeting BCRRA and selected community members, and are continually intercepting censoring and preventing email communications from being delivered to its intended delivery address, that is the councillors. Does the CEO approve and condone this unacceptable practice?”

Bass Coast CEO Ali Wastie responded on behalf of the council:

“Through the Mayor, a very small number of customers have their correspondence directed to a generic email address that is checked on a regular basis and actioned were required. This practice is in accordance with the organisation's ‘Unreasonable Conduct by Customers’ Policy’. This allows officers to triage emails and provide a timely and appropriate response.

“The vast majority of Victorian councils have Unreasonable Conduct by Customers’ Policies in place that mirror Bass Coast’s. They are designed to protect the health and safety of our people, including councillors, as well as efficiently manage our services whilst upholding the rights of our community to communicate with council.

“Some examples of the need for this practice include excessive numbers of emails and correspondence, in some cases, more than 400 emails per annum from one individual. Court orders that prohibit all forms of contact with our people. Threats to family members of our people. Communications that are highly offensive and derogatory and communications that are designed to or may cause psychological harm.

“There is a long-standing invitation for the current president of the BCRRA to meet with Council offices to discuss his concerns with council. However, this invitation has yet to be taken up.”

Question time review

The lively debate generated by the Bass Coast Ratepayers' latest question may have an impact of how council votes to change the Governance Rules when the issue comes before the next council meeting on Wednesday, June 15.

Among the changes proposed is a rule change whereby council "may" or may not have question time at all at its monthly council meeting as follows:

• 54.1 Public question time may be held at each Council meeting fixed under Rule 9 to
  enable members of the public to submit questions to Council.
• 54.2 The Mayor in consultation with the Chief Executive Officer can determine to not
  hold Public question time at any Council meeting. If it is not held the questions
  and answers will be provided in the minutes of the Council meeting.

Other proposed areas of change include:

• Election of the Mayor – Removal of the provision of lots in determining the election of the Mayor. Election of the Mayor must be by absolute majority, the provision of ‘lots’ is no longer allowed under the Act.
• Electronic/Remote attendance – Additional provisions to support electronic/virtual attendance at meetings where permitted by legislation.
• Notices of Motion – Amended provision to align with Rescission motions. A motion that is lost cannot come before Council for a period of three months.
• Election Period Policy – updated to include provisions for Councillor candidates in State and Federal elections. These are consistent with the Act and reflect 2021 Municipal Association of Victoria Guidelines.
• Public Question Time – to provide clarity that a question that has been disallowed will not be read out at the meeting.
• Administrative changes – small changes have been made to clarify or simplify processes.

If you want to make a submission about the draft governance rules, you can do so by visiting the Bass Coast Shire Council website at https://engage.basscoast.vic.gov.au/govrules