Warrnambool City councillor Peter Hulin says he feels sorry for new chief executive officer Peter Schneider who has a "massive" task reviewing the organisational structure of the council and the analysis of credit card spending.
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Cr Hulin, who returned from holidays to Warrnambool this week, said issues within the council including the misuse of a credit card had occurred "long before Mr Schneider was appointed". He said the majority of council staff were hard-working.
"Any fool can see there is a problem within the council structure," he said.
"I have full faith in our staff. I think the majority are good, hard working people and I feel incredibly sorry for them that they are being dragged into this. There are 81 credit cards within the council. Who has them - God only knows?
"These people now are being looked on suspiciously - 'are you one of those people and have you been misusing your card?' I think it's a terrible situation for the staff."
He said he felt "sorry" for Mr Schneider.
"I feel he is a man of high integrity," he said.
"He has accepted a job in Warrnambool seeing that it has so much potential and yet he would be completely unaware of what had been going on.
"Now it has all come to light he has a massive job to get to the bottom of it as well as run the city. I hope we can support him enough to get him through this bloody cancer."
Cr Hulin said he had been a vocal voice for years about council's operational matters.
"In the past three councillors including myself expressed concern about the management of Warrnambool and in fact went to Spring Street to talk to the (local government) minister," he said.
"We were branded as trouble makers but we were elected councillors who represented the people of Warrnambool who saw things that we didn't believe should have been going on.
"What we are finding now with the credit cards is the beginning of all of these things being exposed.
"I have no doubt that this is just the tip of the ice-berg of what is actually going to come out in the future.
"It may not be all to do with credit cards. It may be other issues."
Cr Hulin would not elaborate on those further issues.
He said the council preached about transparency, but needed to actually action it.
"We talk about transparency within council," he said.
"We hear that spewed out all the time but when it comes down to live-streaming and having a clear and accurate record of meetings and decision-making and even body language of councillors it wasn't allowed."
