Kalgoorlie-Boulder council votes to hold on to lease approval powers, shooting down delegated authority motion

A move aimed to lighten the load on City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder councillors by shifting some leasing responsibility to the city’s chief executive has been rejected by council, with some fearing it would result in a “tick and flick” approach. The council shot down a motion, which would have given authority to the city’s chief executive to renew commercial and community body leases, 4-3 at its June 16 meeting. The report to council said delegating renewals of leases previously approved by council and residential leases for attraction and retention strategies would be best for “operational efficiency”, stating some delays occurred when council approval was required. Councillor Terrence Winner was the first to speak against the motion, stating reviewing leases was not an onerous task for councillors and allowed greater transparency of leasing arrangements. “It allows council to ensure leases are in line with intended direction, it ensures misinterpretation does not occur, it ensures leases not in line with council intentions are not granted, and it allows for the decision-making process to be clearly understood by council and the community,” he said. Cr Nardia Turner also spoke against the motion, stating she understood the intent was to streamline council business and make it easier, but she agreed with Cr Winner that it was not an onerous task. She further said she did not believe it slows up the process “enormously”. “The other issue that I have is that there’s already, under the new Local Government Act, so much delegated responsibility that’s being removed from councillors and I don’t wish our council to become a tick and flick council,” she said. “I just feel that it’s taking away some very valuable discussion that we could have in the community and more so around the table because we’ve already had quite a few lease issues that have come up and raised their head with us that have kind of slipped through council now, so I’d prefer that we kept the existing arrangements.” The motion was lost 4-3 with only mayor Glenn Wilson and Crs Carla Viskovich and Deborah Botica voting in support of the motion.