WODONGA ratepayers who funded a trip to Seoul for the city’s chief executive and a councillor have every right to be upset at what can only be described as a lame report tabled to council.
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The report by chief executive officer Patience Harrington was a virtual cut-and-paste from a range of authors, easily sourced on the internet.
All but four paragraphs in the three-page report on a trip to Seoul for the social enterprise world forum are the work of other authors.
Wodonga mayor Rodney Wangman seemed to pre-empt today’s revelation, saying on Monday night the report was “only a short snapshot”, and that Ms Harrington had, and would continue to, provide a lot more detail.
One would hope so. The idea that ratepayers funded a $13,600 trip for the chief executive and Cr Lisa Mahood, only to be presented with a report that could have been submitted — almost in its entirety — before either boarded their flight to South Korea, is no laughing matter.
That is not to say the trip to Seoul was not a worthwhile exercise and may even have been value for money.
But one can only wonder now how it is that ratepayers are supposed to make that determination with the tendering of a report that fails to offer any real or original insight.
While councillors may get to see the benefits of what was garnered on the trip on a day-to-day basis, that’s not a luxury the average ratepayer gets to enjoy.
Monday night’s report to the Wodonga councillors was effectively the only report to the ratepayers those councillors represent. Ratepayers have a right to expect that their elected representatives demand more than what they got.
Ms Harrington has acknowledged her failure to make the appropriate attributions in her report, saying it was an oversight that will be rectified on the council’s website.
She also described her report as an explanation to councillors of the meaning of social enterprise, but that surely raises another question.
How could councillors sign off on funding a $13,600 trip to a forum in Seoul if they failed to understand what the forum was about and, in fact, continue to fail to understand even three months after the trip was taken?
Council’s agenda headlined the item “delegates report”. It further described the purpose of the paper as being to provide a report on the attendance of Ms Harrington and Cr Mahood at the social enterprise world forum conference.
It manifestly failed to do that.
