Category Archives: Council Watch

Council Watch

Councillor spending stays secret

April 6, 2016
DETAILS of each councillor’s spending on allowances will not be released until Mornington Peninsula Shire’s annual report, possibly as late as October. Elections to determine who will fill the 11 pla...

Sustainable lingo rewarded

March 21, 2016
IT WAS a small gallery that gathered at the shire’s Rosebud bunker for the council meeting of Tuesday evening, 15 March. And a diminished roll call of councillors: Anne Shaw and Andrew Dixon had been...

New figures confirm overspending

March 15, 2016
SHIRE staff have given councillors revised details of their spending on seminars and conferences during the current council term that began in late 2012, as directed at a meeting last month. The new ...

Switching chairs and voting for something concrete

February 15, 2016
THE first thing the alert observer noticed at the Monday 8 February meeting of Mornington Peninsula Shire Council was the changed seating arrangements for councillors. David Gibb was not sitting besi...

Council nod to lift expenses

February 8, 2016
TWO Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors have overspent their seminars and conferences allowance, one by more than 92 per cent. Figures up to the end of January included in a councillor briefing sh...

Hopes for peace lost to landfill

February 1, 2016
CAN it be the coming council election? A series of malignant New Year resolutions? Whatever it was, hopes were dashed early at last Wednesday’s first Mornington Peninsula Shire meeting of the year, a...

Govt rules in councils

December 22, 2015
ANALYSIS THE state government’s recent move to tighten rules to control councillors and council staff raises some interesting issues, the basic one being: how much control should one level of governm...

The blow-up in the chamber we had to have

November 30, 2015
AFFABLE new shire mayor Graham Pittock was given a damned good tryout at his first council meeting of 2015-16. He remained affable almost throughout the four and a half hours the meeting ran. Close t...

Shire puts out call for budget suggestions

November 9, 2015
RESIDENTS wanting to help shape the way the shire council spends its income can have a say about the 2016-17 annual budget. Mornington Peninsula Shire is again inviting input from ratepayers as it de...