Stop the Silliness

An interesting item on Page 11 of today's paper.  It seems the Ombudsman is sick of petty council infighting. He has been urging Councils  and Councillors to think twice before laying complaints. This is despite the fact that the current legislation makes it unlawful for us to not notify them if we feel that something dodgy has happened. He suggests a  local tribunal to resolve the issues and a lowering of the threshold as described in the Local Government Act. Most of the story revolves around the way Councillors behave to each other. I have heard of some  name calling at a recent Adelaide City Council meeting. It's a long time since Unley has reverted to this type of behaviour. At our recent team building exercise we spent a lot of time talking about how we should deal with each other. I've also done some 'how to have the difficult conversation' training this year. Number one rule is to talk to the person who has allegedly said or done something not everyone else. In a recent meeting with the Mayor I raised this after an issue had arisen where he failed to do this. This matter remains unresolved. Yet better dealt with this way than raising a Code of Conduct complaint when a conversation would have achieved the same end.