Before a noisy, full public gallery, the Blue Mountains City Council on Tuesday night endorsed a submission to Local Government Minister Gabrielle Upton addressing a second notice of intention to suspend the elected councillors for three months and appoint an interim administrator.
The minister last week moved to suspend the council for a second time in two months following questions about a conflict of interest in council’s independent investigation into asbestos management.
Ms Upton had said “an independent investigator [Michael Tooma] engaged to oversee the investigation appears to have had links to one of the council’s senior staff members [Mark Mulligan] subject to investigation.”
But Mayor Mark Greenhill was adamant there was no grounds for suspension.
“The specific, proper and formal conflict of interest process was followed and the engagement of Mr Tooma proceeded specifically on that basis,” he said.
“A further review of this issue was undertaken by Maddocks solicitors at the direction of the general manager with my support. Maddocks has confirmed the appropriateness of the steps taken.”
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The mayor said he had no knowledge of the friendship between Mr Tooma and Mr Mulligan, the acting Director of Service Delivery, who was let go by general manager Rosemary Dillon on February 13. But he said Mr Tooma believed no conflict existed.
“We are being punished for something that wasn't told to us, even though we had a robust process in place. How can we be responsible for an answer we never received?” Cr Greenhill said.
“There needs to be a pause before this action is taken and we make the appropriate inquiries. I don’t believe this community will be safer by removing the people it elected.”
Liberal Cr Kevin Schreiber asked the submission to be modified to include information about council’s efforts to protect the health and safety of current, past and future workers and their families, in the response to the minister, and this was adopted in the final motion.
Labor Cr Romola Hollywood said the council had been “subject to a campaign in the media around how we have been handling asbestos and how we have been responding to that”.
She said the pro-development lobby and a small minority were trying to undermine local democracy to allow other agendas to take place, to which some members of the public gallery yelled out “cheap shot”.
Labor Cr Mick Fell echoed some of Cr Hollywood’s sentiments which drew loud applause from the gallery.
“The victim in the saga now is local democracy. I wonder why this is being done and why we have this agitation before we have even got the reports,” Cr Fell said.
The mayor acknowledged at the meeting that there had been organisational failures in relation to matters of asbestos management, but said council has acted diligently, and continued to act, to address all identified issues on behalf of workers and the community.
Councillors will be briefed on Wednesday night on Mr Tooma’s interim report about asbestos management at Lawson carpark, the Lawson Mechanics Institute and the Lawson depot.
Greens Councillor Kerry Brown asked for an amendment to the mayoral minute, clarifying the scope of the investigation by Mr Tooma, among other matters.
Cr Brown said she did not support the Mayoral Minute and had proposed amendments because "I thought the draft submission to the Minister weakened the arguments against our suspension by suggesting that the asbestos issues were operational and therefore not the councillors' responsibility.
"We must own our governance failures if we are to fix them, and this is what the Minister has repeatedly warned,” she said.
Cr Brown’s amendment was defeated and Cr Greenhill’s original motion passed, with Crs Brown, Kevin Schreiber and Brendan Christie voting against.