Warrnambool's councillors have voted to give themselves the top allowance available while also taking a swipe at online bullying.
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Anonymous public submissions about the allowance were labelled "very personal", "highly inflammatory" and "just plain untrue" at Monday night's council meeting.
Councillors defended their decision to accept the top allowance in band two which would give them $26,245 a year and the mayor $81,204. The vote was unanimous.
All up, the budget says councillor costs for the next financial year will total $285,000.
Cr Debbie Arnott drew attention to comments in the public submission which she said must now carry a name and address.
"The issue that I object to with those submissions is they have come in under the guise of a submission but the attacks have been very personal, highly inflammatory and just plain untrue," she said.
"In this age of cyber bulling, this behavior is unacceptable."
Cr Richard Ziegeler also took issue with some of the submissions and said people who made unfair inflammatory comments should be made to stand up when they made such remarks.
"A lot of those were based on falsehood and misinformation. Some of them were quite inflammatory and as Cr Arnott said, quite rude," he said.
"It's not the way we want to operate. We make a decision based on fairness, that's all I want to say about it."
The fact submissions would now come with identifying information was "a good thing", Cr Ziegeler said.
He also pointed out the range of the councillor allowance was not set by council but the Local Government Act.
Cr Angie Paspaliaris said there didn't seem to be much of a formal response to the allowances - just six submissions.
However, she said councillors were aware of the general public sentiment.
Submission responses listed in the agenda raised concerns about expenses such as internet and mobile phones being paid on top of allowances.
They also said councillors should prove themselves, and should not receive the top allowance based on experience.
Another says the mayoral allowance should not be almost double the median wage of Warrnambool residents, and that $50,000 would be justifiable.
Cr Paspaliaris also asked the community if they generally believed the new councillors deserved "possibly less or no money" compared to the previous councillors.
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"We've now been left to clean up a bit of mess on a few fronts," Cr Paspaliaris said.
"It's adding a lot more time commitments, sudden changes of events, sudden meetings."
Cr Paspaliaris said the only people who saw how much time being a councillor consumed was family and work colleagues.
"I do believe we are working quite hard for this allowance," she said.
Cr Max Taylor said when he was elected he had doubts as to whether councillors should be paid the top allowance.
"After being a councillor now for eight months, I can see that we do earn this allowance," he said.
He repeated his comment from the March meeting that if any councillor felt they were not worthy of the amount they could talk to corporate services director Peter Utri and have the allowance reduced.
Cr Taylor also praised mayor Vicki Jellie for her hard work.
"It's a full-time job. She works a long day and works on the weekends," he said.
"Mayor Jellie you're doing a good job, well done."
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