By Violet Li
Community members say they are unhappy with the “indirect”, “unhelpful”, and “irrelevant” answers to their submitted questions at Tuesday’s Casey Council Meeting, calling for a better communication format between the council and the residents.
Resident Anthony Tassone, who was present at the meeting and also ran for the Casey Council Election last year, said that even though the council staff read his question and their answer, his question was, in essence, not answered.
“It was a simple and direct question asking whether the newly elected councilors would undertake advocacy to the Victorian Planning Minister as other councils had done with waste facilities in their municipalities,” he said.
“And it was not answered.”
Resident Garry Page, who attended the meeting and also ran for the Casey Council Election last year, also said the answer was unrelated to his question.
“That is a problem,” he said.
“My question has a simple yes or no answer. If I resubmit the question, it will just be dismissed as an answer has already been given.”
Anthony said he witnessed frustration amongst attendees that questions weren’t being directly responded to.
“I was standing at the back of the room, and people around me were getting increasingly annoyed,” he noted.
“The people that were surrounding me were not the verbal interjectors and hecklers. They were simply muttering under their breath and shaking their heads.”
Tuesday’s Casey Council Meeting on 18 February was met with chaos and disruption. It was adjourned after hundreds of residents shouted and heckled, prompting a police call-out.
Tensions were high from the beginning, but escalating anger and frustration were observed after the public question time. After the council officers read through 60 submitted questions, quite a few residents demanded the councillors, and the council officers, answer their questions on-site.
Other residents in the front row, where the question submitters were seated, stood up after 60 questions being read and questioned where their questions and answers were. They claimed that they had submitted the questions, but their questions were not read and answered.
Mayor Koomen then said in the meeting that all questions received that met the governance rules were responded to at the meeting. He said that three questions that were not responded to would receive an email.
Garry said he was not surprised when the whole room erupted to protest the failure to answer all public questions and ensure the meeting conformed to governance requirements.
Anthony said many attendees thought they could ask questions from the floor as an open forum, and when they found out they couldn’t, that angered some people.
He also said many residents assumed these were answers that were coming from the newly elected councillors, but it was from council officers who had prepared them.
Resident Ray Dalli, who attended the meeting, also noticed that the format of the meeting was unfamiliar to many attendees.
“They were expecting that to be the meeting where they could turn up, ask questions, and get some answers, and they didn’t understand the format of council meetings about pre-registering questions,” he noted.
Ray, who didn’t get a satisfactory answer either, said the council needed to make the public question time informal.
He said the current format of public questions was just a matter of getting everything on the record, and people never really got the answers they wanted.
“Council officers run the responses through all their legal advisers to make sure they don’t incriminate themselves when they respond,” he said.
“That’s why it has to be an unrecorded meeting for them to answer the questions in an informal manner.
“I think they need to be able to answer the questions. They’re easy questions to answer because the bylaws are pretty clear on private land use permits.
“They just need to put it in a way of communication or a terminology that the resident will understand.”
When asked if they would consider an informal public question format to facilitate the residents’ understanding of local policies and issues, City of Casey Manager Communications and Corporate Governance Chloe Casey said: “The public question time process is outlined under section 65 of the City of Casey’s Governance Rules. The process requiring questions to be submitted ahead of the meeting is standard across many councils.
“If a resident is seeking further information around a specific topic, they are encouraged to speak directly to their ward councillor or contact council to discuss further with a council officer.
“Council will be sharing information with the community in the coming weeks to provide clarity around the process for submitting a public question and to explain how Council Meetings are run.”
