City of Greater Geelong infighting and inappropriate behaviour put on blast in report by municipal monitors

A new report from City Hall’s monitors has made recommendations to deal with threatening, intimidating, and inappropriate behaviour by councillors and to better manage the city’s financial challenges.

Geelong council’s latest municipal monitors, Mark Davies (left) and Peter Dorling (right), with City Hall.

Geelong’s councillors have been put on notice about their obligations to respect staff amid “problematic” relationships between councillors, a new report has revealed.

Monitors appointed to oversee City Hall noted “the outgoing council certainly had their issues”, with infighting leading to an “unusually high number of complaints” between councillors.

The outgoing municipal monitors were appointed in April 2024 to improve the council’s governance and have put forward multiple recommendations in their final report, which put the previous council and administration on blast.

While monitors Peter Dorling and Mark Davies were optimistic about the future at City Hall, they stressed the importance of relationships between councillors, which “has been problematic in the past” and “a major focus of monitors appointed to Council since 2017”.

The report pointed directly to a Geelong Advertiser article that revealed deputy mayor Anthony Aitken was sanctioned after receiving more than two dozen complaints from staff. Mr Aitken was recently returned to office.

Mayor Stretch Kontelj’s role in keeping the peace between councillors was highlighted, and it’s been revealed the previous local government minister sent each incoming councillor a letter that “could not have been any clearer to councillors about their obligations to staff welfare”.

The monitors said they also “emphasise this important obligation”.

Geelong City Hall. Picture: Mike Dugdale

The newly elected council and fresh executive team were spotlighted as an opportunity to establish “respectful” relationships within council, with much depending on the “working relationship” between Mr Kontelj and chief executive Ali Wastie.

“As monitors we have no reason to believe this is not achievable with the current incumbents,” said Mr Dorling and Mr Davies.

They recommended the state government keep a keen eye on the council, to make sure councillors played nice with each other and with staff, asking the chief executive to provide annual updates to the local government minister.

Ms Wastie said that the council accepted all recommendations of the monitors, and was putting together a plan to address them.

“We can never allow this great work to be undermined by poor councillor behaviour. Under my leadership, there will be a zero-tolerance approach to this,” she said.

“While the findings of this report show great confidence in our culture, I only want to build on this and constantly improve.”

“The mayor has indicated to me that he will also not allow poor councillor behaviour to distract from the work of the council.”

Ali Wastie, the CEO of the City of Greater Geelong. Picture: David Crosling

The monitors were also particularly concerned with City Hall’s long-term financial sustainability, with a number of financial management processes coming under the microscope.

The monitors were concerned by and took aim at City Hall’s approach to funding projects in its development program on ward-by-ward process, rather than “on a planned and prioritised basis” that “aims to meet the infrastructure and asset needs of the community as a whole”.

City Hall has approved $180.2m in capital works funding for the 2024-25 financial year.

“Setting the capital budget based on a ward-by-ward basis is not appropriate,” the report stated.

The report reveals that City Hall had not reviewed and updated its long-term financial plan for 2021-2031 since October 2021, and “until recently” did not have a financial modelling tool “which would allow them to develop financial projects for more than four years”.

The pair said the council would need to “undertake structural reform” and “put in place fiscal constraint” to meet the significant challenges the it faces.

Ms Wastie said City Hall was taking “significant steps” to enhance its financial sustainability and long-term planning.

“While our long-term financial plans in accordance with the Local Government Act 2020 have been in place for some years, we accept the recommendation of the monitors to update our ten-year financial plan annually.”

The report, which councillors received a copy of and discussed following Tuesday night’s council meeting, was published online Friday afternoon.

This came after repeated requests from the Geelong Advertiser for a copy of the seven-page report.

Originally published as City of Greater Geelong infighting and inappropriate behaviour put on blast in report by municipal monitors