Why are there only 4 staff to answer information requests from 400,000 people and 37 elected members?

Many elected members have been complaining about the amount of time it takes to get information.

Cr Tyla Harrison-Hunt asked some good questions in a recent finance and performance committee meeting. But why didn’t he bring a motion for a review?

Cr Andrei Moore has complained about delays to getting roading information that the media appeared to get quickly.

Why didn’t he bring a motion to ask the CEO to provide more resources?

Why was this not part of the draft annual plan submissions?

Why is 20 working days, as a target, acceptable?

Why can’t elected members ask staff written questions directly?

Why is there no public facing information about the current queue of questions?

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for Sean Rainey and his team. I pay ~$5,000 a year in rates and get more than my fair share of attention from his team.

Perhaps that is because I ask easy questions. I always try to explain a reason why I am asking. I try to break my questions down. I try to explain what I want to do with the information and make a positive contribution.

I often copy my questions to others, especially elected members and the media.

I copy elected members because their job is to represent us at the table. In my view if a member feels my question is unreasonable then they have every right to veto it.

I copy the media to let them know it’s an issue I, as a member of their audience, am interested in.

I also copy other people incase someone else already knows the answer.

Sean is amazing. In our time addressing the waste water treatment plant issues, Stephen McPaike and I sent in dozens of questions.

Often Sean simply didn’t reply directly, but it was obvious that the question was seen as having valid community interest because we would often see our questions answered in social media posts from the comms team.

Council still has poor performance metrics in community engagement, trust and elected member confidence. I can’t help but feel this is partly driven by members simply not using proper process to drive better access to information.