Council expenses: Mornington Peninsula budgets $100,000 for meals
Virtual meetings have taken council dinners off the table for Mornington Peninsula Shire. But that hasn’t stopped thousands being set aside to pay for them.
South East
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Up to $100,000 has been set aside to pay for meals that may never be served to Mornington Peninsula councillors and staff.
The decision followed a plea by Cr David Gill to cut all catering from the 2020/21 budget in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Cr Gill wanted the council to use the money to immediately help struggling communities across the region.
He has been advocating for the council to slash its catering costs all year.
“Do councillors realise we are in a crisis?” he said.
“We need action now, not action later when it’s too late.”
The 2020/2021 budget was adopted on August 18 and included $140,000 for catering.
Corporate services director Mark Brady said about $100,000 would be spent on catering for council meeting dinners and $40,000 on special events.
Mr Brady said the catering budget had been cut by $70,000 compared to 2019/2020.
Cr Gill said Stage 4 restrictions meant meetings were being held online and meals for councillors were not needed.
Special events requiring catering such as the annual council meeting and citizens of the year celebrations were also in doubt.
Cr Bryan Payne said any changes to the budget should have been made when it was debated at a special meeting in August.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he said.
“We just passed the budget. We shouldn’t be making changes willy nilly.”
Chief executive John Baker warned against making decisions without “a full picture” of the council’s financial position.
He said it would be more prudent to wait until the next quarterly review when all savings and additional expenses could be considered.
The next quarterly review was due in late November and would be conducted by a new council following the local government elections in October, Mr Baker said.
Councillors voted 6-4 to give further consideration to catering expenses at the November review taking into account the impact of COVID-19, the introduction of a single use plastic policy and the council’s health and wellbeing plan.
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