Who takes ownership

I do wonder about the best way to pursue the most recent time and money wasting proposal by Bass Coast Shire, which reached the stage of having invitations issued to an event, which I have now been told has been abandoned. 

This involved selected residents and potential politicians being invited to a ratepayer funded breakfast.

Because the Sentinel-Times newspaper reported some unconsulted councillors as describing the proposal as a ‘captain’s call’, I called in at the shire offices to enquire if the proposal was initiated by the CEO or the Mayor.

The message clearly conveyed to me from the shire was that neither the CEO or Mayor take ownership of the proposal as it was initiated by “internal exploration’.

Since no-one has taken ownership of the inappropriate decision, it reminds me of the strategy employed by the State Government, which resulted in the judgement that the hotel quarantine fiasco was due to, “collective decision making’ and ‘creeping assumptions’.

Bass Coast Shire is presiding over several problematic projects at the moment, so I think they should be concentrating on supervising the outcomes of contracts they have entered into rather than wasting ratepayers’ money and administrator’s incomes on issues traditionally left to others. 

Rosemary Hutchinson, Inverloch