Clarence Valley News
Community group fears attack
Community group fears attack
By Tim Howard
A Clarence Valley community group, already the target of Clarence Valley Council legal action, has concerns another attack is coming.
The Yamba Community Action Network said a notice of motion from Cr Karen Toms in the business paper of this month’s meeting, claiming the group flooded council staff with emails, could be seen as a further attempt to muzzle them.
The group’s secretary, Lynne Cairns, said the Notice of Motion (NOM), following the threat of defamation action the council launched last year, was a concern.
“Is it appropriate to request council to use needless time and resources, targeting a local community group, by requesting council provide a report about the allocation of resources to respond to Yamba CAN Inc’s GIPAs and RFI requests,” Ms Cairns said.
Ms Cairns said it was ironic Cr Toms was concerned about council staff spending time on these requests, when her NOM would require significant time and effort.
“Cr Toms, please explain the purpose of expending needless time and resources to obtain such a report,” she said.
Cr Toms’ NOM, a question with notice was: “councillors receive a large volume of email from Yamba CAN executive members in excess of any other individual correspondent, much of which has related to the Yamba Community Centre Precinct project. Noting that staff introduced the Yamba Community Precinct to the current council on January 5, 2022.
“To better understand the volume, my question with notice relates to a report about the council resources applied to managing the expectations of Yamba CAN members.”
Cr Toms’ NOM read:
That the general manager advise, by way of a report the:
- allocation of resources required to respond to GIPAs submitted by YambaCan since January 2022.
- allocation of resources required to respond to RFI (Request for Information) submitted by YambaCan since January 2022.
- any cost implications of delays to delivering the Yamba Community Precinct project since January 2022.
Ms Cairns also pointed out Yamba CAN was only formed in October 2022, well after the January 2022 date Cr Toms stipulated in her NOM.
In the report the council’s general manager, Laura Black, in a supplementary comment said a member of the executive support team would collate the information sought.
She said both GIPAs and RFIs have resource allocations documented, and therefore this information would need to be collated.
She said cost implications for delays to the Yamba Community Precinct could be included in the assessment including items such as: “designs costs, materials and contract increase, time allocation to meetings, report writing etc. Some matters will be estimate only.”
Yamba CAN secretary Lynne Cairns and president Col Shephard.
“I anticipate it will take a couple of months to gather the information and present it in a way that is meaningful, and therefore the report would likely not be before council until May 2024, if resolved,” Ms Black’s comment read.
However, Yamba CAN, which is questioning the council in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week, suspects the council might be attempting to muzzle it.
Ms Cairns said the information Yamba CAN sought should be publicly available and the community had a democratic right to have access to it.
She also said having a single group requesting access rather than a number of ratepayers would actually ease staff workloads.
“When Yamba CAN Inc formed on October 2, 2022 it became a voice for its members and the community,“ Ms Cairns said.
“More time and resources would be expended if each resident submitted their requests for documents individually.”
Ms Cairns said Yamba CAN was proud of its record of getting the council to reveal information it was initially reluctant to provide.
She said, if Cr Toms NOM is successful the report should include:
- the number of times the Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) has supported Yamba CAN Inc when council refused or only partially provided documents.
- the number of times council has incorrectly redacted documents.
- the number of searches council undertook and the time it took Council to locate documents.
- how many times council could not locate documents at all.
- how much council has charged Yamba CAN Inc for the documents in GIPA requests ($30 each) and when council overcharged for processing, as IPC previously informed Council and Yamba CAN Inc.
Ms Cairns provided a couple of examples about Council’s processing of GIPAs and RFIs, one where Council undertook three searches and couldn’t locate an email and then after eight months the email was provided accidentally in another GIPA request.
Another is when lodging an RFI, Council informed due to the large volume of RFIs it will take some time to process Yamba CAN’s RFI, as there were 290 RFI’s in front of Yamba CANs.
The Northern Rivers Times print deadline does not allow a report from Tuesday’s ordinary council meeting to be printed. It will appear in next week’s paper.
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