Wingello candidate for Wingecarribee Shire Council Jesse Fitzpatrick responds to the state government imposed Performance Improvement Order.
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00:00Jesse can you give me your thoughts on the performance improvement order that
00:03has been proposed and that is about to be put forward at the soon to be held
00:10extraordinary meeting of Council this afternoon. It's unfortunate that it's the
00:15timing of this is right before an election and I don't think I and
00:19certainly not many people are very happy with having a bit of a caretaker mode
00:23being imposed on us. I think it's possible it'll get pushed through and
00:28then I believe we should make representations on the other side of the
00:31election to have it reversed whether that comes to be we'll see. If you had
00:37known that this is on the cards would it have would it have impacted your choice
00:41to run? No not at all I mean the if we can find a silver lining to it if it's
00:46imposed and there's nothing we can do at least it's a year for us to showcase our
00:51commitment to running and build relationships to get our feet under the
00:55table there's gonna be a lot of fresh people in there so yeah to find a silver
00:59lining would be use it as a period to really come together as a group and be
01:03ready for some bigger decisions on the other side. Do you think it's going to tie your hands at all?
01:08So look there's some people that think that it's a mechanism to tie our hands
01:12that it does read in a way that says that we can still make rational
01:15decisions and if they are rational we can pass them on to the Secretary under
01:19the Minister and they can say yes so it doesn't mean that everything's tied up
01:23but it does but there is an idea that if we that it could be used to sort of
01:28hamstrings. Okay and so it's not all doom and gloom I'm hearing from you. Oh look it's the state have a lot of control over us and they can impose whatever they like and it is very hard for us to remove that but like I said if we if we're going to move forward we're going to find the silver linings.
01:46And we're not the only council I believe we're one of three? No so this is generic
01:50there's also another idea out there that it's purely us and there's some
01:53nefarious things going on it's our council which is not the case it's
01:56generic across other councils coming out of administration and from the state's
02:00point of view they're putting it in place just so that I guess they're worried
02:05there's going to be some fresh council come in and throw it all throw the baby
02:08out the bathwater I guess so from their point of view they're protecting that.
02:11And I think you said earlier that if decisions are made it's not it just
02:17means an application it's not an outright motion. Yes so essentially if we push a motion
02:20through for a financial change which is one of the elements that then has to be
02:24delegated to the general manager to send a letter to the to the secretary and
02:27then they have the ultimate approval there's no reason that if it's not a
02:31rational sound decision that they won't give us that approval. Thank you Jesse thank you for your time.