Resident reveals ‘errors’ in Clarence Valley council’s annual report

By Tim Howard

A Yamba resident who feels Clarence Valley Council has unfairly targeted her, her husband and a neighbour, says she has uncovered a mass of errors in the last council annual report.
The 2020-21 annual report was contentious for the council. It was delivered late and sent to the NSW Office of Local Government just inside its November 30 deadline.
After Cr Karen Toms uncovered errors in the report, a corrected version was approved and sent to the OLG without informing the council, which was a breach of procedure.
With another opportunity to send the report further errors were uncovered, and the corrected came to the December 3 extraordinary meeting for approval.
Ironically in an answer to a question from Cr Peter Ellem, if she was sure this document was free of errors, Ms Black replied “100%”.
But Yamba resident Lynne Cairns begs to differ, having scrutinised the document carefully and uncovering a swathe of questionable entries.
Mrs Cairns, her husband Bob and a nearby resident Shane Powell are well known to the council.
Midway through 2021 the council’s acting general manager, Laura Black, placed the trio on the council’s Unreasonable Complainant Category list.
She said the trio had been too persistent in seeking information about a development at 19 Gumnut Rd, Yamba, next door to Mr Powell’s residence.
She said this had exposed staff to unreasonable levels of stress, which could have posed a health risk.
She also turned down a GIPA request for the information.
A report from the NSW Privacy Commissioner found council had erred in not providing the residents with the information they required.
At the same extraordinary meeting on December 3, council met to discuss removing the Cairns and Mr Powell from the UCC and apologising to them. Instead it reaffirmed the staff decision and the council policy.
Mrs Cairns compared last year’s report with the 2019-20 document and found the most recent one appears to have duplicated figures from the previous year.
She has sent an email to Ms Black detailing where the errors occurred on pages 3, 9, 13, 16, 21 and 22 of the report.
“The figures are obviously duplicates,” she said. “It would be extremely unlikely for figures like pool entries or online library visits to be identical year to year.”
In addition to the errors in the reports, Mrs Cairns has already informed the council its minutes from the meeting don’t accord with the video recording of it.
She said at one stage an amendment from Cr Andrew Baker to a motion was voted on without being seconded, which is a clear breach of meeting procedure.
Clarence Valley mayor Ian Tiley has already gone on the record describing the meeting as a shambles.
He said the council should have admitted its mistakes and apologised to the residents.
Cr Tiley said a course of action for the council could be to not recognise the minutes from the meeting at the first meeting of the new council on February 22.
Mrs Cairns said while it was important the council cleared the residents of any wrongdoing it was also vital council become more transparent in dealing with the public.
She said she would make a deputation to the council on February 22 detailing the errors she has uncovered.
Mrs Cairns said she had also received an apology from Ms Black over an entry in the council business paper to the December 3 meeting, which claimed council had mentioned the behaviour of the residents to police. See article on P19 of last week’s Northern Rivers Times.
While she accepted the apology, she described it as “hollow and disingenuous”.
She said council’s actions over the past three years had been stressful and humiliating for her and her husband and Mr Powell.
“Not only with what is in the 3 December 2021 Business Paper, but how we have been treated by Council executive and senior staff since 2019 to our reasonable and valid questions
“This also included having received the UCC and having no right of reply or natural justice.”