AN ongoing power struggle between Albury councillors and senior management will come to a head on Monday night.
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A move to counter the recent decision to strip council’s planning department of its delegated authority to approve development applications via rescission motion has been met with a notice of motion from deputy mayor Amanda Cohn proposing three changes to the powers of delegated authority presently held by general manager Frank Zaknich.
In a further attempted show of strength, another first term councillor, John Stuchbery wants the four long-standing committees made up of councillors – planning, engineering, community and cultural and finance – scrapped and replaced by two monthly council meetings from June.
Cr Cohn also wants to see a monthly report, but in addition she wants council to determine development applications with a value of more than $500,000, a sub-division proposal of 10 or more lots and an application has generated more than five objections rather than the general manager.
The council committee system was re-introduced in the mid-2000s when Les Tomich became general manager.
But Cr Stuchbery said they weren’t a great use of councillor and staff time.
“The committee meetings on average go for around six to eight minutes and anything we debate within the committee meetings that is faintly controversial gets taken out and re-debated when council meets,” he said.
“Rather than waste our time in committee meetings where all we do is make recommendations just scrap them and have the debate in council meetings.
“If we are going to be looking at more development applications then for the purposes of keeping things moving we would rather meet twice a month.”