Councillor Mike Neoh has slammed as "flippant" the council's response to his claims of serious cultural and communication issues.
The council's chief executive officer Peter Schneider didn't respond to questions from The Standard in relation to Cr Neoh's claims.
Instead, Mr Schneider simply said that in the lead-up to the local government election, Warrnambool residents could expect councillors and council election candidates to "feature regularly in the media as they endeavour to present their values and priorities to the electorate".
When told of what the council had said, Cr Neoh said that "if the organisation wants to be flippant about the welfare of our staff, that's their prerogative, but I take it seriously, end of story".
On Monday, Cr Neoh, a self-confessed stickler for good governance and proper process, said he had plenty of concerns over the past six to 12 months about council process.
He also claimed that council management thought it was the boss of councillors, and management had at times refused or was reluctant to release strategic documents to councillors.
Mayor Tony Herbert said on Tuesday that he was disappointed that Cr Neoh had spoken out.
In relation to cultural issues, Cr Herbert said there were "a number" of investigations under way at the council to "weed out the individuals that are acting negatively towards other members of staff".
He said the new CEO was being proactive and what he needed was strong support from councillors to provide the right environment for him to perform his duties to the best of his ability.
Cr Herbert said that while Cr Neoh claimed he was a stickler for the rules, he hadn't stuck to proper processes and protocols when he didn't inform the mayor or communications manager Nick Higgins that he had spoken to media.
He said councillors had had a long and robust discussion about culture and leadership on Monday, but Cr Neoh failed to mention he had already spoken to The Standard for the article.
Cr Herbert said the role of councillors was to ensure the council delivered services to the community and attracted external funding for projects like Reid Oval and the library. "That's our role. This is all internal politicking," he said.
Cr Herbert said he believed Cr Neoh's main issues in relation to the blocking of information was in relation to the external organisational review which, according to the KPIs, would no be completed until June 2020.
The review was originally to include 30 staff but was widened to 47 when others said they wanted to be involved.
He said there were some councillors who had been demanding that document for a number of months.
"Why would you want to have an organisational review floating around unfinished?"
Cr Herbert said the CEO's job was to look after staff and the day-to-day operations of the organisation but some councillors were "jumping into this space on a regular basis", which according to local government law was "crossing the line".
"At the end of the day we've got a responsibility to show good positive culture as a councillor group, and sometimes we've done a poor job," he said.
"But I believe this is a fundamental role of leaders and even though we've failed on occasion. It is still my belief that we can work this through together to make council a great place for people to work at and deliver wonderful things for the community of Warrnambool."
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