Latrobe City Council’s controversial new procurement policy is up for review, after it delayed road work on a Morwell street for a month and drew strong criticism from the public and building community.
In the meantime, one of the councillors who put together the new policy, successfully passed amendments on Wednesday night, in a bid to ease the severity of the new guidelines.
Councillor Dale Harriman said following a private discussion between councillors, he moved to compromise on the policy.
Under the amendments, variations on construction work can now be approved by chief executive Paul Buckley if they cost less than $15,000, or for more expensive works, go to a section 86 committee made up of some councillors and council officers who can meet at any time.
The new policy required all variations more than $5000 to go to a council meeting, rather than be immediately approved by council’s executive team, resulting in a month-long delay for Morwell’s Kelly Street road works.
Work on the site has now recommenced after the variations gained approval from councillors on Wednesday night.
Cr Harriman said he hoped the tweaks would help prevent situations like that at Kelly Street from occurring.
He also successfully implemented the change that goods and services of up to $150 only required one verbal quote, rather than two, in a bid to encourage council employees to support local businesses for small items.
“This is more than just a token gesture, this has been made in goodwill after discussions with the councillors,” Cr Harriman said.
The document was also tweaked to take out references to Whitehorse City Council, the municipality crs Harriman and Michael Rossiter based the Latrobe policy on.
Cr Kellie O’Callaghan, who opposed the new procurement policy, went a step further on Wednesday night, successfully moving a motion the entire document be reviewed by an independent auditor.
“I don’t think the changes that have been accepted will actually resolve the issues we have with the current procurement policy and I don’t believe it will achieve any greater benefit to the organisation or the local community,” Cr O’Callaghan said.
“It’s not appropriate for councillors to be hands-on developing the policy.
“We need an independent auditor to look at it and until that occurs, I won’t be satisfied that we have a robustly tested procurement policy.”
Cr Darrell White said the audit was required because the amendments were “totally inadequate”.
“But at least there was some recognition of the policy originally adopted went too far and already, it needed to be adjusted,” he said.
