Why we should care about Coal Seam Gas exploration activities here

The issue that I have with Coal Seam Gas exploration is much the same as the operation of the Clutha Creek Quarry and their use of explosives. There is no way that the regulatory agencies, whoever they might be, can tell what might go wrong until it has gone wrong.

When the regulators find that poisonous chemicals have leaked into the artesian water, into a river or up to the surface, it is far too late. And there's nothing they will do about the occasional noxious smell in the air downwind of the surface sites where gases and liquids are separated either.

What those issues have to do with us is that our water supply is, in part, reliant on the Logan River. Residents of Cedar Grove know that a modern weir and pumping station has been built, right here, and that contributes to the SEQ Water supply system. You can guess that this bulk-connection supplies, mostly, the Logan area. It would be irrational to think that they'd pump the treated river water further off.

Anything that is carried in the river, downstream to the weir, has a likelihood of getting into our water distribution system. Water treatment plants, like the one here, are set up to do a reasonable job of treating the average flow that can be pumped from the river. I know you won't like to read this, but that includes remnants of the dead animals and birds that get into the river, it includes the farm fertiliser runoff and other farm chemicals that often get into the river. There's going to be more and more industrial pollution from the new industries at Bromelton, along with the stuff that the existing ones contribute, and there will be natural pollutants that the river picks up as its flow varies from almost nothing to a raging torrent that will pick up every last item of jetsam that has been lying on the riverbank.

But it cannot cope with a sudden flow of fracking chemicals, whether they escape from a transport truck, are spilled at a drilling site or get there because the fracturing of the coal seam has not gone exactly to plan. We know that those first two accidents should be reported but we also know that many chemical-intensive industries cheat massively on timely reporting because, by delaying reporting, much of the evidence has long ago seeped away, been carried away or evaporated. You don't get pinged much, in courts, for delayed reporting of spills either.

But where fracking chemicals escape into the underground strata they are not easy to detect. There is always a natural amount of empty space in the rock that they are trying to fracture and a few million litres, mega litres, of chemical mixture can just never be recovered. Why report stuff that you have always expected to loose anyway?

There's a possibility that no one else will ever notice the missing chemical. It is underground, out of sight, out of mind.

But the original purpose of the chemical mixture is that it will find its sneaky way into every crevice and hole in the rock formation. You can bet that it will find a way out. Not necessarily to the surface of the ground where it might become obvious from the unnatural smell in the dirt, but into the steep-sided valleys where rivers have sliced away the rock anything up to 30 metres down in many parts of our region. In some places, way beyond 30 metres.

Our little automated water treatment plant on the Logan River at Cedar Grove is quietly chundering away pumping potable water into the supply system on the basis of the average chemical load in the river. Suddenly it is struck by a chemical load that the engineers didn't consider and, because it is automated, it keeps chugging on, pumping water contaminated by those chemicals into the distribution system. Even it the plant has a remote monitoring system at a monitoring office somewhere in SEQ Water's place of work you can expect that it might take hours for anyone to recognise the problem, get confirmation of the problem, get a team assembled and transport them to the treatment plant.

In fact it might not be a big issue if the weir is overflowing constantly, as it is now in rainy weather, the chemicals are most likely to be floating on the river surface and escape the pump intakes. But as the river drops below the height of the dam almost all of the water is going to be pumped into the plant and off to the consumer. However, I understand that some of the volatile chemicals can remain entrained in the water that is delivered to your door, a bit like CO² in a fizzy drink bottle, and only when you turn the tap and reduce the pressure in the line will it escape into the air in your house. That is how you see people, on TV exposés, lighting the gas as the water runs into a sink.

Our Environmental branch in council is doing a good job on the issue, or as good as they are allowed to do in the circumstances. The people of, particularly the southern country areas of the Scenic Rim are also doing what they can. But someone allowed this, below, to happen alongside the Logan River!

Hajnal faces music on 15 March in Beenleigh

Cr Black will face the music for her alleged failure to declare her financial position in the council register, as required by the Local Government Act 2009, on 15 March at the Beenleigh Magistrates Court. I know I said alleged but I had looked at the Register too and saw nothing like is known, now, should have been there.

This article in the Courier-Mail is a different one from the one I read in the City Edition yesterday morning. That item was more critical of her submission at the court. She was summarily told, it said, that there would be a judgement in the court on 15 March.

I was also surprised that I was told that, during consideration of the Governance & Finance recommendations, she spoke about the condition of school bus stops in the rural areas in and around Division 11. I have written about the two lots of $100k that has been allocated for that work.

I have been told that Item PD2 and PD3, MCUs in Crestmead and Cornubia, and PD8, about Yarrabilba, have been passed pack to the officers for a further report. You'd expect that they might get through at the next round of meetings at the end of March—beginning of April.

Ordinary meeting Thursday

The Ordinary council meeting was held today at 10 am. I was not able to be there so this is a short summary of the agenda documents.

There was nothing special to be about the conduct of the meeting, according to the agenda. But there are a few things that can be detected in the document. You should have read the Committee meeting summary at that link. There are things in it relative to my remarks today.

Item PD2, a MCU for a property in Crestmead, shows that both Power and Lutton walked for CoI issues at 10.32 am and that Cr S Black finally turned up to the meeting at 10.35 am. Seeing that he was there for the earlier meetings and he knew that there was an issue with quorums for some meetings, I think that it was either carelessly or deliberately provocative of him to act like that. This is also the Item that Cr Pidgeon has issues with because of Lot size shenanigans. Pages 28 and 29 and Item GB1 refer.

Both PD2 and PD3 will have been decided today.

Item PD7, an amendment Instrument to amend a previously approved Instrument, seems to me to have been a response to a serious lack of supervision by the cognisant manager and poor staff work by the officer, either the latter's lack of diligence or lack of training. However, I have to say that the task of writing an Instrument to cause amendments to an existing instrument—whether a technical manual, a Local Law, a Planning Guide or other document—is no easy task.

I'm sure many of you have seen Local Law amendment documents where there are pages and pages of instructions like—

Omit page 35,
Insert new page 35.

Nor is there any easy way to do the job. It is a matter of, at the last stage, taking the draft instructions in one hand, having the replacement pages on the table and the disassembled target document at your front. And just work through the documentary instructions a page at a time, doing the task, making any hand corrections to the instructions and making sure that everything is going to work properly. There are no shortcuts.

This difficulty is exactly why I am so critical when council passes out such amendment instructions, in lieu of the properly amended and marked up draft document, that is in the public's hands as a consultation draft. Amendment instructions are not community engagement drafts for the public.

Anyway, regardless of how the manager sidestepped the issue on Monday, an amendment to an amendment should never have to be done to correct errors. I have no idea why Cr Bradley voted against the recommendations because I didn't hear her speak, but she was right to offer some objection.

Item PD8, about the ULDA and Yarrabilba, is council biting back at the State government department that is supposed to be managing that, and Flagstone's, developments that, ultimately, will be dumped on Logan City Council at some time in the future. Nothing, at the moment, it seems to me, obligates ULDA to act in the best interests of anybody, certainly not the potential owners of the properties, not the council, not the ratepayers of the city who will carry the can for miscalculations by the State governments of the recent past and the future.

You can see that the resolutions, on page 31, run to seven sub-paragraphs of some detail.

The last item of this meeting, GB1, That the Strategy & Planning Manager be requested to prepare a report to a future Planning & Development Committee meeting reviewing the application of the current lot sizes in the Logan Planning Scheme, is a result of Cr Pidgeon's earlier complaints during consideration of Item PD2. This was resolved.

In the case of Item HC2, an Expression of Interest, I didn't even get who was to offer the expression document right in my previous past! I am even more concerned about the way the meeting was closed and how little notice was taken of the law relating to closed meetings. You can read the details of the resolutions on page 34.

Item GF3, pages 42 & 43, about the money that Rochedale Rovers owes us may be alleviated by a proposal from the Greenbank Returned Services League. This is not the club that manages the building and such at Anzac Avenue, Browns Plains, it is the league that owns and leases the premises to the club and that is controlled by ex-service men and women.

Item GF6, about our insurance policies, have details on page 44, and note that a broker fee of $20,000 is payable too. You might wonder why we never see a tender for the brokerage of our insurance.

There endeth the agenda. There would have been General Business speeches from most councillors including either self-valedictory statements or topical statements to support public relations releases or letters to editors for the coming elections. I think that those sorts of speeches are self-serving and should be deemed out-of-order by a decently impartial chairperson, but we have to recognise that the mayor wants to be re-elected too.

I invite anyone who was at the meeting to make Comment or to send longer than 70-word stories directly to me for publication—much over 70 words gets rejected by the comment system. I'll need your help like this more and more over the next few months. Your contribution will help people to understand what is happening at the council meetings.

Reasonable coopoeration between councillors gets long meeting done

Monday's series of seven committee meetings started just after 8.31 am and finished by 3.03 pm. There were ten minute breaks between meetings and a ten minute break for morning tea. There was only one time when they were concerned about achieving a quorum and that caused a short adjournment while calls were made to get councillors back to the forum.

The main cause for the lack of a quorum was because of Conflicts of Interest by two councillors, one of whom is just unable to bring himself to make a rational decision about how the law applies to himself. It seems to me that the recently amended Local Government (Operations) Act is as clear as it is possible to be. However, Cr Power has a serious inability to understand that it says that he, alone, has to decide the level of his conflict and he also has to decide whether he should stay and contribute to the meeting discussion or not.

At the base of his indecision is the fact that he is being required to defend himself against a suit that Roy Sommerville, a surveyor and development partner, has bought against Power for defamation. In this case Sommerville is in no great hurry to press the suit in court because it has, under the earlier legislation, kept Power out of the decision-making process regarding developments (MCUs) in the Planning & Development committee where Sommerville is concerned.

In the past Power has voluntarily walked out of the meetings. But he doesn't have to walk out under the amended legislation. If he stays he has, in essence, two levels of action he can decide to do, he can engage in discussion only or he can engage and vote too. If he votes, his voting, on the issue at hand, is recorded and available for us to see.

He knows that he believed what he said about Sommerville was right at the time. He expects that a court will find that he did not defame the bloke and he has said in council meetings that Sommerville is delaying the action to prevent him from voting—he may have been running away with his own rhetoric that day, and he has told me that he can steel himself to vote fairly. I know that decision-making in our council is at worst a 3 to 4 decision, so he would never be the only Nay, or Yea, voter to fail an Item or carry it over the bar to be a winner.

Yet he cannot bring himself to decide that for himself. It is the sort of dilemma that all councillors face and it is an issue that candidates for election should be asked to talk through before you vote for any one. Simply put, the question is, "Can you be brave enough to represent all of the people that elected you in a conflict of interest (CoI), or will you take the opportunity to remove yourself from the decision-making process?" An example of the CoI could be that the candidate's child is a member of a club that might get some premises use, or financial advantage, from the decision made at council.

The City Roads Infrastructure committee spent most of its time discussing issues of storm water damage, and associated drainage failures, and hardly any time on anything else. Three of the six Items were resolved in less than two and a half minutes. During General Business Cr Lutton wanted to get feedback about the increased incidence of failures of recent road repairs. An example that Mt Lindesay Highway users will know is that the area of South Maclean had a great amount of the road repaired by inlays in January, February and March 2011, that area has, again in the last two months, had inlay repairs over the same general area, in January and this month.

But the officers stone-walled him with evasive answers. In a way they can't be blamed for that because, if councillors cannot bring specific examples into the discussion, it is hard to get good replies. But I thought that what Lutton was asking is the sort of question most of us would ask. One of the important responses from the officers that many may not realise is that road paving materials and processes are aimed to provide a 20-year life to the road that they are used on. Roadmakers can easily achieve that life, if the conditions of road-use don't change much. But in fast growing areas, like we live in, that hardly holds true. Road traffic increases in numbers, speed and in load-per-vehicle skyrocket beyond planners' worst nightmares!

The Environment & Sustainability committee started at 9.34 am after the morning tea and obligatory inter-meeting break coincided. It took 20 minutes to dispose of and at one time they were discussing what difference the State elections will make to environmental concerns. The Mayor was adamant that both parties, whichever was elected, would hear from Logan.

Councillor Dalley asked if the new maps for the Karawatha–Greenbank–Flagstone forest were available yet. Jim said that they were but they have not been distributed yet.

The Animals & City Standards committee stated at one minute to ten am, and the one Item and General Business took 18 minutes! The first issue was that the report did not cover the material that the councillors wanted to know about and they asked how many trolleys were no longer littering the landscape. We still don't know. The discussion went on to dogs, dangerous ones, and council's inability to grab them off the owners. Regardless of hearing the bad news at the beginning they carried on thrashing the dead horse. Finally Cr Black reiterated his piece about election signage laws.

There are times when you just have to sit back and let all of the hot air waft gently over the public gallery.

At 10.28 am the Planning & Development committee started on its agenda. The second Item saw Cr Power finally decide to walk and there was a danger that, if Lutton decided to walk too, there would not be enough for a quorum. Some discussion delayed the decision for a few minutes. The chair was on the point of deciding to bypass Item PD2 when Cr Black wandered into the meeting room and made up the quorum numbers.

Cr Pidgeon was intent of exposing the way, and Item PD2 is an example, where developers gerrymander the lot sizes by including unusable land like flood-prone areas to ensure that the lot size calculations relative to the total area falls into the tick-box for the officers considering the merits. In the end they decided to defer this Item for a considered decision on Thursday at the Ordinary meeting.

Item PD3, a MCU, saw Cr Power argue on and on and on about issues that he said his constituents were concerned about. The main one being the area drainage. Largely, because he is the area councillor, no other councillor got involved. They came to an impasse where there was a motion floated to reject the recommendations and refuse the MCU, but on a vote the issue was four Yeas and five Nays, and lost. They were back with the original recommendations.

The chair asked if they wanted to defer the resolution until the Ordinary meeting and Cr Smith said that she could not do that because, since they rejected the defer motion, she was going against the vote of the assembly. Dalley decided to move on to Item PD4. That and the next four Items went through easily. In General Business Cr Pidgeon moved to have a report to a future meeting about what could be done about the lot-size issue he was pursuing. He obviously is sure he'll get re-elected.

There seems to be an issue for the council and for all of us in that while council has been working on Master Plans for areas of the city there have been changes to State controlled planning standards that will allow much denser placement of dwelling units. That means that where the master plans might limit the area to no smaller than 800 m² lots, the new standards could be saying they will be 500 m² minimum from now on. Another issue is that council has yet to get to the final stage of assembling the master plans, for areas, into a whole. It seems to be that, when they do, there will be a wholesale change to the data on those individual master plans. Or there might not. It is likely that in the next two years our planners will be living in interesting times.

That meeting closed at 11.53 and we had a 14-minute lunch break. The Health, Sport & Community Services committee consumed an hour and four minutes for trivia. They closed the meeting for an item illegally and they badgered one of the managers about non-issues. It seems that the most important thing at the meeting was how to squeeze the most money out of the Brisbane Lions. Or, maybe, Cr Power was trying desperately to stop them offering the council pokies-tainted money?

The Customer Service, Marketing and Parks committee spent little time on business Items and a lot on marketing trivia too. Item CS3, about moving the Beenleigh Visitor Information Centre, was deferred. At leas it only took 17 minutes for the whole meeting.

The Governance, Finance & Economic Development committee commenced at 1.49pm and quickly disposed of the starred Items. They closed Item GF1, about the Rochedale Rovers debt and when we came back to the meeting room I think that the Greenbank RSL has had a rescue package for the club. I was reading very quickly, but I think that is what they were resolving to accept.

The council's finances, Item GF3, are shown in the background papers from page 10 to page 25. I thought that the material is relatively easy to read and understand.

The Divisional Infrastructure Capital Improvement Fund suffered some last-minute raids by councillors who had been unprepared for the election caretaker period. Another four Items were dealt with and there was a short tea-time adjournment and it was off again.

Item GF12, Re-creation of Logan Water, took most of the rest of the day. The CEO was there to discuss details. The major things to understand are that it will be Logan Water from 1 July 2012. It is a $250 million business for the city's commercial arm. There's a structure chart on page 79 that shows how the business will be staffed and commanded. The business will have its retail revenue capped at CPI for the next two financial years and they will have some difficulty with making that income work. The CEO said that 233 staff positions went to Allconnex Water and 251 will be coming back, there will only be four additional positions in the council.

We walked out of the meeting room after the 3.03 pm closing of that meeting. The councillors stayed to have further staff discussions with the CEO.

The Ordinary Meeting of council will commence on Thursday 1 March at 10 am in the council chamber at 150 Wembley Road, Logan Central. There is nothing unusual on the meeting's List of items. I will be unable to attend. But I'll essay a report for you.

Long committee meeting on Monday

This will be a brief run-down of the seven committee meetings that will be held on Monday, 27 February at the Logan City Council's Logan Room on the third floor at 150 Wembley Road starting at 8.30 am and with 10 minute intervals after each meeting. There will, of course, be a break about 9.20 am for morning tea but the lunch-break will depend on the run of the meetings and may only be for 30 minutes.

The City Roads Infrastructure committee has six Items. One is a closed Item for possible land acquisition and four of the other five will be substantive Items. Item IN5, another land acquisition is also likely to be closed on the day.

The Environment & Sustainability committee meeting has four Items, one a starred report. None of the three are controversial and are likely to only take a few minutes.

The Animals & City Standards committee meeting has a single Item that is starred. You might wonder why this meeting was scheduled as its waiting time will be infinitely longer than its open time.

The Planning & Development committee meeting has eight Items, two are starred. Two are Material Change of Use applications, one is a story about Lend Lease, Yarrabilba and the ULDA that will be closed to the public and one about 82 Anders Street, Jimboomba. Two minor items will flesh-out the time.

The Health, Sport & Community Services committee meeting will have four Items, two closed and two kiss-and-run things. The two closed issues are about money and about service delivery. You wouldn't expect either to be simple to agree about and this might be the longest meeting of the day.

The Customer Service, Marketing & Parks committee meeting has four items, one starred, two about minor issues and one about the management of Beenleigh Visitor Information Centre. There's likely to be some shouting about this last Item. The two close-by councillors are at each other's throats. But one might decide not to bother as does his other half.

The Governance, Finance & Economic Development committee meeting will be the glutton of the whole lot. Thirteen Items and a number of substantial ones. Three are starred. Two are closed to the public, both about financial matters. Four are relatively trivial matters but the Allconnex Water, the easement and the re-creation of Logan Water ones will be difficult—it seems to me to be more so because this is the death knell of this group of councillors.

Which brings me to some speculation: who will bother to turn up to these meetings? There isn't a whole lot who are keen presenters at committee meetings. We won't see Cr Grant because he has gone to State elections all ready. We won't see Cr Black because she hasn't bothered for so long. There's not much incentive for Cr Clarke, she is retiring. That means only nine likely councillors and we need a minimum of seven. I would say that five will be available at start-time on Monday, we'll wait for, likely, fifteen minutes for the seven to all be available.

The way that councillors attendance at meetings allows for lateness at the beginning of a meeting because the counting doesn't start until there are seven to start. I think that is not reasonable. Start-time is when the clock ticks the hour set down, everyone who is missing should be marked as absent. But they don't do it like that!

Seven committees in one day on Monday

I've only just realised that council will hold all of its committee meetings on Monday. I really should have been going to the last two Governance meetings! But I have an excuse, there is nowhere on council's web site that tells me what is happening on Monday.

I'll deal with the Lists of Items tomorrow but you can download them, now, from the link above. None of them has a starting time on the header but I wouldn't think that they can wait till 10 am to start the first one. You need to plan that they will begin the first meeting at 8.30 am.

Maybe a councillor who reads this can help with a start time, otherwise I have to drive to Logan Central and look at the official notice that should be beside the main doors from the Wembley Road carpark. Later.

Parliament passes necessary winding-up bill

The ABC News at 6.30 am today noted that the Queensland Parliament has passed the Bill, related to the dissolution of Allconnex Water, and it is now an Act that will hold the Gold Coast City Council responsible and allow Logan and Redland councils to pursue GCCC for their costs.

This will be a great relief for our council financial planners.

Meeting with shouting

Today's Ordinary council meeting started off with shouting and almost ended with shouting. It is usual for a councillor to stand at the beginning of a meeting and move that missing councillors be given Leave of Absence (LoA). This is more a courtesy thing than part of the standing orders for the meeting. In this case Cr Power was the mover and Cr Black seconded the motion. Normally there is no debate about LoA and it is voted without much energy expended—meaning that as long as a couple of hands are waved the mayor takes that as a Yea vote and they move on.

Today, however, Cr Lutton stood and opposed the motion to allow Cr Black LoA. He offered a range of reasons, the main one being that he said that she has attended only 562 hours of a total of 4035 meeting-hours in a stated period. He said that recalcitrant members, with that sort of record, should not be offered LoA.

Cr Black stood and interrupted Lutton's speech and offered that he was astonished that Lutton should oppose the motion, that it was a Labor Party tactic, that the Labor government was attempting a trick to ensure that she was being charged over what was a family matter and that you can say that a person who has been dragged through various courts and has found herself almost penniless while owing significant legal fees to have herself vindicated in courts from such politically charged proceedings has a right to be able to concentrate on her defence and not attend to council meetings. He offered that Cr Hackwood has a similar record of attendance and has no similar excuse.

Cr Smith rose to a Point of Order and disputed some of the facts stated by Black. Without waiting for the mayor's ruling Black went on about his wife being pilloried by the Labor government. The mayor managed to get a word in and accused him of impropriety of language. Black changed tack and offered that he had moved motions in this chamber to record the proceedings and had got batted out of the grounds and when he had been able to get a recording of the session—in earlier times—it had shown that he was right and the mayor's behaviour was as bad—as his.

Once he was back, seated, the mayor started to summarise the earlier beginning of the debate as presented by Lutton. I have to say, here, that I was amazed that she would do that—most of the councillors had heard everything said, so far, and the volume was turned right up in the whole chamber. Black took the opportunity of demanding that she now summarise his position in supporting LoA for his wife. The mayor threatened to adjourn the meeting until there was a return to order. Cr Able stood and said something that I didn't hear—he faces away from where I sit in the gallery.

The mayor reiterated Lutton's issues about Cr Black's attendance and Black interrupted with an emotional speech supporting his wife. The mayor asked for a vote and there were three Yeas and she announced that the LoA motion was lost. Black raised a Point of Order and the mayor told him she refused that and he was to sit down. Black said that she couldn't refuse and she said that she could and he should sit down. There was another round of yes I can and no you cannot, sit! when Cr Pidgeon rose to ask if the original motion for LoA had included Cr Hackwood and was he now not granted that?

That bought that contretemps to a halt for the moment and they rectified the issue by voting to allow LoA to Hackwood. Black immediately asked for a division and the mayor asked people to raise and keep raised their hands while she announced the names for the Minutes secretary. Only two councillors names were not called.

There was a short prayer from the minister. I would have liked to reproduce his prayer for you all. It was a model of appropriateness where he asked everybody in the chamber, and in the city, to work in peacefulness and humility. One would almost think that he had foreseen the proceedings to that point and was pleading for them to get down and work together.

In the committee reports Cr Lutton spoke to IN4 about the $100 thousand government grant, that the council will match, to improve school bus stops in the Jimboomba-schools area. Cr Pidgeon said that it would have a significant impact on child safety.

For the next report Cr Bradley spoke about the Waste Stream Audit, Item ES2, and the recycling improvement of 68 percent that had been achieved. Cr Able lauded the recycling scheme for old TV and computer systems, Item ES4. Cr Clarke said that she'd like council to concentrate a little more on getting old paint out of people's sheds. Someone pointed out that there is a twice-yearly dumping day for those. Someone else snorted loudly.

During consideration of the Planning & Development report Cr Smith said that he was pleased that almost every resident supported Item PD8, the Meadowbrook Draft Key issues. Cr Pidgeon said that opposing the appeal by the developer for Item PD7, Jimboomba Lakes P/L, was a big waste of council's money. He continued that all of the local people were opposed to the development.

During consideration of the Customer Service, Marketing & Parks report they walked in an amendment to Item CS5, the Pilot for Free Overnight stays for Motorhomes and Caravans in Logan by removing Tully Park from the list. You have to think that the officers who wrote the report had no idea of the conditions at Tully Memorial Park and that Cr Pidgeon's timely nay-saying was well placed. And it isn't even in his Division! Cr Clarke spoke passionately about the advantages to the city of having the higher-end travellers stay, even for overnight, in the city. She is a long-time caravaner with her family.

By leaving that meeting early I had missed hearing Item GB1 where they offered a valedictory to Cr Grant who is resigning his representation on the council and standing for election to the Queensland Parliament. For myself I have often quoted or mentioned him in this weblog. He is probable the only councillor who reads all of the Agenda papers set before him. He is able to see errors and can question officers politely to get to facts not written into reports. He has gently chided DCEOs for the poor quality of some staff reports and he has always been ready to listen to his constituents problems—even to non-constituent's ones. The city will be worse off for his going.

The Governance report shows that they have replacement pages, 6 and 32, in relation to GF1, the Second Quarter Operational Plan report. They are pages 106 and 107 in this meeting's agenda.

Item GB1 for this meeting is about the council generating a Grant-funding Pack for Organisations that will be a resource for accessing the three levels of government grants and from those other philanthropic sources.

You wouldn't expect this sort of thing to be easy to assemble because of the constantly changing source information. And it will need staff-resourcing to be maintained in a useful condition. The other problem, as I see it, is that no one ever controls the issue and holding of the packs, to be able to update them as time changes things. It is even more wasteful like this because they cannot just replace the updated items—they have to give away a whole new pack to be sure that the recipient has everything updated.

It seems to me that there is a single source that council can control and that is its own web site. The officers need to look at how they might have to scan some documents to include them, to list URLs in other cases and to generate council's own information for the site and not give away one sheet of paper, in a pack, that is out-of-date even before it gets into your hands.

This motion shows just how out-of-date, unthinking and careless both the councillors and the officers in the matter of document control and the waste of paper that happens in big organisations because of lack of enterprise.

General Business was an opportunity for Cr Black to get on his Record Minutes of Meetings hobby-horse. His problem was that he had already annoyed most of the people at the meeting by his antics and none of the councillors were inclined to give him any support. I am likely to be unfair to all the parties in the discussion to say any more. Suffice to say that Black, the mayor, the CEO, Bradley, Able and Grant had a say. In a few cases there were supporting statements that such recording could be helpful. When the vote came there were only three Yeas.

Black still needs to learn how best to pick his targets. There's no sense in shouting about an issue that is almost unsupportable and, later, trying to get important democratic motions supported by the same people who have seen the clown in you. I have written here, before, how badly we are served by the meeting records of our council. I know that the senior officers are not happy to allow recording of proceedings in meetings because it can lead to constant carping about I said this, he said that, she said another and if you listen carefully you can just hear what she said!

But the issue is not that, it is just that if motions are recorded properly on the screen—from the minutes computer—that means that they voted for a printable record. The issue is what different people said during the meeting. I would have loved to tell you, verbatim, what participants in the initial dispute said, but I'm precluded from recording them too. Any councillor, now, can say anything about what they might have or might not have said. There's no proof otherwise. Those who are more liable to be rowdy or bullying get away with those tactics because of a lack of an official record. And, just for the record, I'd rather the recording was a video as well as a sound recording.

Other GB of note was Cr Power rattling the chains about congestion on four roads, including Daisy Hill and Winnetts Roads, in Division 10. He said that some people had told him that the roads might be made into clearways from parking. His constituents are concerned. Nobody told him that this sort of thing has been going on since the mid-1990s! No residents should be surprised.

The DCEO Infrastructure Services will look into ways and means of reducing congestion in the area. Power went on to say that Australians are always quick to criticise people overseas for their environmental savagery, he named Indonesians as one example, but none of us consider how badly we look after our environment, especially in relation to Koalas.

Most speakers had something to say about Grant's departure and he took his turn to thank them all. The meeting closed at 11.28 am.

Water billing is an issue and big cost

The Governance, Finance & Economic Development committee meeting went off, if we believe the rules, at 8.30 am today—without me, and you'll get a short version from my reading of the agendas. Yes, there was a late Chairperson's Agenda with two additional Items.

With Cr Smith away on Wednesday for an unknown reason I'm wondering if he was back for today's meeting. I hope so. He's got the skills to manage the meeting to the requisite degree. I think that he also has the confidence of the senior executives of the council too. I've been at meetings where the executives didn't have that confidence and it isn't a pretty sight or performance.

I'm taking my own advice too, I'm not going to tell you what the agendas say, but I'll tell you the effect of the important ones. I know you can all read and the agendas are at the link in my first paragraph.

Item GF1, about the 2011/12 Operational Plan (OP) progress shows that only 72 percent of the OP is on time, with another one percent deleted. Pages 3 and 4 summarise the deficiencies and the following background papers give the details. Even if you're not interested I'd ask you to have a look through the background and see how simple it is to understand a report to KPIs. On page 13 you'll see one of the dumbest excuses for not meeting a target. That should have drawn comment from the councillors and the issue is likely to be in limbo now because of the caretaker period looming. Who to blame? I'd say it was a fifty-fifty contribution from both parties. I'd also say that this is a cart-before-the horse project too. The citizens should have been consulted first.

But that also illustrates where a defective plan gets defective results. The DCEO for this item needs to pull his socks up for approving the unsuitable, or for not approving a suitable, plan.

Item GF2*, Organisational Services monthly report for December, has not much of interest except the Community Benefit Fund outlays in the background papers. Division 11's is on page 77. Item GF3*, Logan Mayoress' Community Service Committee Inc., grants, shows the disbursement of almost $129 thousand and you will see the grant's list starting on page 88. Almost half of the money granted is profit from the Recycle Market that is based from the Browns Plains tip.

Item GF4, Divisional Infrastructure and Capital Improvement Program Fund, has a single item approved for Division 12, the list of earlier donations in Div 11 is on page 99. Item GF5, Councillor Community Benefit Fund, shows that Cr Black gave the Jimboomba Rotary Club $4500 for an air conditioning plant of some sort. If I remember correctly that is every penny of her funding spent.

Item GF6 was discussion about a the billing cycle for the water and wastewater services when they are handed over, cross your fingers, to the council in July. You can see, in the report, the sorts of costs that it takes to bill for fees and charges. Item GF7, 2012 Local Government Election Update, tells us that the election will be held on Saturday, 28 April 2012, the rolls are already closed to new voters and the caretaker period starts on Saturday 10 March and the close of nominations for electoral candidates closes at 12 noon on Tuesday, 27 March 2012.

Because a meeting must, therefore, be held in April the councillors will have decided, today, to have a further round of committee meetings in March and the final one in April. I await the new calendar of meetings with baited breath, I don't think! There will be a full round of committee meetings starting 27 February, an Ordinary Meeting on 6 March and a further round starting on 19 or 26 March with an Ordinary meting on 3 April.

Item GF8, the leadership team's report, starts on page 114. It is a starred item but is worth reading to see what the senior executives do for us. Item GF9, Revised Policy for All Media-related Issues for Council and Elected Members during Caretaker Period, was in the chairperson's agenda. If the old election date had been adhered to a change to this would not have been necessary. The recommended change appears to be just the implementation date for the commencement of the policy.

Item GF10, is a closed item to allow them to continue to discuss the monies outstanding to council from the Rochdale Rovers soccer club. I understand that they are up to the stage of considering a significantly reduced payment of the amount owed. Something less than $50 thousand. I'm still wide-eyed at how this could have happened and ask What was the divisional councillor doing?

Only one councillor knows

Today's Health, Sport & Community Services committee meeting and the Customer Service, Marketing & Parks committee meeting were sad things in many ways. It is becoming increasingly obvious that councillors are milking every opportunity to ensure that they are handsomely set-up with ammunition to help them get re-elected. There are examples through this narrative.

Starting at the beginning, the first Item today was HC1, Lease to Park Ridge Panthers Inc, was passed in a second. I noticed that they are being asked to pay $390 a year for their lease. The next Item, HC2, Lease of the Nerida Street Community Centre, for $5 annually, to the representatives of Blue Care had Cr Able saying that the finalisation of this lease was a long time coming. Cr Bradley asked if it was possible for another lease to Meals on Wheels in her area could be finalised too.

None pointed out that the Blue Care (charity) who have nationwide backing and a seriously large budget couldn't pay more. Let's face it was only about six months ago that council almost imposed a $5000 lease agreement on a charity with it escalating by that amount each year to $25,000 annually as a maximum, for the time being. I seem to remember that it was about that time that they intended to review the policy on leasing of council facilities.

I wonder if this has fallen by the wayside because too many current councillors wouuld not have voted for any rational policy, just in case.

The Item was voted in under two minutes. No one questioned the difference in costs.

Item HC3, about a Sport and Recreation Project involving the Greenbank Boxing Club Facility saw the two members of the gallery locked out for their discussion. On our return we could see that they decided on Option 1 in their confidential papers. One has to wonder what could make it difficult to discuss the issues in public. Was it just that word Boxing?

In General Business for the Community Services Manager we had a free-for-all where everybody wanted to have their say about everybody else's business item. The most useful question was Cr Dalley asking if the council officers had done anything about making sure that organisations had upgraded their old constitutions to the new model. She thought there might be many who were still working on their old one. The manager said that they'd done some work on that last year but that she's taken on board the need to get Logan's clubs reminded where necessary.

Fortunately, morning tea interrupted and the chatter stopped. Subsequently there were not enough councillors for a quorum and when there was the chairperson took a nature-break. Item HC4, Major Venues and Facilities branch report for December, was discussed. It became more like a general business discussion and when it was done the meeting was closed because no one could think of anything else to say.

Power and Bradley had complaints about the swimming pools that should have been raised at the time. At one stage the manager noted that today was the 26th anniversary of him starting wotrk for the council. Greeted by some laughter and banter. Cr Able said that few people went to the Christmas carols and wanted them back at Logan Central this year. The meeting closed at 9.42 am.

Cr Able stood in for Clarke as chairperson for the second meeting. He managed to get CS1, CS2 and CS3 moved into place within three minutes of commencing the meeting. But General Business with the marketing Manager bogged everyone down to their ears. The first question, asked by Cr Bradley, was what he thought about the Logan West Leader's front-page question to change the name of the city. The officer said that he thought it was all good publicity and they needed to realise that it was an inter-Media exchange to sell more papers.

Ultimately Cr Pidgeon formulated a motion to affirm Logan as the name of the city. That was initially seconded by Cr Black, but as the motion got amended he withdrew. Cr Lutton said it was just a news beatup and people can decide for themselves what they think. In the process of them formulating a long-winded motion Cr Power offered the simple explanation that all councillors immediately fastened onto saying that Twenty percent of your voters will want to change and twenty percent will not. Regardless of what you say you will loose 20% of your votes in the election. Maybe more. Let the media run their story about but don't join in.

My opinion about Power changed at that moment. He'd hit the nail on the head and every councillor understood immediately. The part-formed motion was dropped and, with a smart remark from Able the meeting went on to Item CS4, about parks-constrained income expenditure, that was passed immediately, and to Item CS5, a Pilot for Free Overnight Parking in Parks for Motorhomes and Caravans. Cr Pidgeon said that he thought it was clear that access to Tully Memorial Park has to be via Teviot Road—he meant Beryl Parade, I'm sure, but no one corrected him. Never have we considered using the front entrance, meaning off Mt Lindesay Highway because of the narrow gateways there.

The item was voted as per the recommendation.

We were excluded from the meeting for CS6, a land acquisition discussion at Crestmead. I decided that it was 10.27 and time to leave for home. I'm sure that they went on for a good while after that. I'm unable to go to the meeting tomorrow, Thursday, so you're on your own.