Cr Kylie Gaston asked a series of questions at Monday's council meeting in an effort to "clarify a few things" surrounding the "very serious matter of the payment agreement for the termination of the CEO".

A report tabled at the meeting revealed former CEO Peter Schneider received a $364,000 payout.

Cr Gaston's questions highlighted a number of meetings between councillors and the CEO over his performance, and revealed the "flawed" recruitment process in which nine applications for the job had been lost.

She said much had been made in the press, most recently last week, about the termination "coming out of nowhere, or out of the blue, without discussion or mediation". "I'm just pointing out that it's not necessarily out of the blue this stuff," she said.

It was revealed on February 21 there was "an exceptional meeting" of six councillors with Mr Schneider and another staff member that lasted for several hours to discuss issues about the CEO's performance.

Mayor Tony Herbert said at that meeting people aired some grievances and issues they had. "But there wasn't anything taken further as a bit of a plan that we probably needed to do at that stage," he said.

"We probably should have had some sort of plan or adjustment to Mr Schneider's KPIs, but from my leaving of the meeting that the best way to resolve these issues is to talk about them which I believe that we did."

However, Cr Gaston said she recalled Cr Herbert was leaving the meeting to discuss a plan with Mr Schneider.

Cr Gaston also questioned what she said was a delay in having that meeting documented in an ordinary council meeting agenda.

During her series of questions, Cr Peter Sycopoulis tried to call a point of order a number of times.

Cr Gaston also asked why Mr Schnedier's contract was signed with a 12-month payout clause as opposed to the industry standard of three to six months.

Cr Herbert said everything in it was agreed to by all seven councillors but Cr Gaston said she wasn't sure all councillors realised it was that amount.

Cr Gaston also asked if the mayor agreed the recruitment process was flawed with applications lost by the recruitment agency and there was a failure to receive all relevant information that should have been distributed.

Cr Herbert said all councillors could answer "the process was indeed flawed".

He said the previous company doing the recruiting had misplaced up to nine applications due to a computer changeover.

Cr Gaston also questioned a two-hour meeting "to reiterate grave concerns and raise many red flags with the CEO" that was held at the CEO's home and asked why it wasn't done in an office.

Cr Herbert said he thought it was appropriate that Cr Sue Cassidy have some answers that she had questions for.

"So you think it's appropriate to do council business at the CEO's private residence?" Cr Gaston said.

Cr Cassidy told the meeting she was contacted by the mayor on Febraury 22 and asked if she would go to Mr Schneider's house on Sunday, February 23 at 10am.

"The CEO knew were were coming to his private residence. The discussion went for over two hours. I thought it was odd to be asked on a Sunday to go to a private residence of the CEO. When I do think about it now it is a very unprofessional thing to do," she said.

Cr Gaston also asked about the "360 review" of the CEO's performance in May.

"Do you agree there were concerns raised by councillors and the report was not accepted and sent back to the CEEMAC committee for further follow through?" she said.

Cr Herbert said there was some difficulty in clarifying what a 360 review was about.

"The expectations of a 360 were clearly indicated through the chair of the CEEMAC and also the consultant," he said.

"That there were directors and councillors that had already had the opportunity to look at the CEO's performance and they were actually given another opportunity to do that.

"It was actually clear that there were three councillors at that stage that had marked the CEO incredibly poorly and there were a number of external stakeholders that had actually viewed the CEO's performance as quite high.

"I would say that the 360 was adequately performed."

Cr Gaston and Cr Herbert disagreed on where adequate staff consultation had been done.

She said a resolution from that meeting hadn't been accepted because it "wasn't accepted that the performance review had been done correctly", but Cr Herbert disagreed.

When asked why the minutes of that meeting were not brought to council for three months until councillors insisted, Cr Herbert indicated the issue may have been with the chair or consultant at the time.

"As you know Cr Gaston, it is not up to the mayor to write the minutes," he said.

Cr Gaston also asked the mayor whether it was his "understanding that the rumour is true that Mr Schneider in the final week of his employment, knowing that a special meeting was arranged to discuss his potential termination, signed employment contracts for other staff, renewing them for many years even though the contracts themselves were not due for review for many months, even up to a year? Thereby committing the next CEO to long term staff as Mr Schneider likely walked out the door?"

Cr Herbert said he had no knowledge of that.

Cr Peter Sycopoulis said the $364,000 figure in the annual report of Mr Schneider's payout could be too low. He said he was just concerned there will be more payments coming out in the future.

Cr Gaston said she tended to believe the full cost of the termination of the CEO in the annual report would be the final costs.

She said the amount paid to Mr Schneider was a "bitter pill to swallow". "This was an undeniably large amount of money," she said.

She said the new council appointing a future CEO needed to be aware of the contract.

"It was a bill to swallow, one taken with reluctance and after trying to deal with the issue on many levels contrary to what has been said," Cr Gaston said.

"No one wants this situation to occur again, however it would appear very prudent to align future contracts with average industry standards."

Cr Sycopoulis said he was a bit taken aback by the concern about the perceived high payout for Mr Schneider. "I would have thought if you were concerned about a high payout figure, maybe you shouldn't have terminated the gentleman in the first place," he said.

Earlier in the night, during discussion on the success of the council's activities and initiatives in the April-June quarter, Cr Sycopoulis and Cr Herbert praised the leadership of Mr Schneider on his sound leadership.

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