Margot Giblin
SOME decisions on ratepayer funded trips for Hobart City councilors are made at open Council meetings.
Others are not.
The request for and decision in favour of Councilor Marti Zucco’s June 08 side trips to the Tastes of Chicago and London were made at a closed meeting.
Details of these trips were not publicised by Council.
Councilor Peter Sexton’s visit to Brest also lacked fanfare despite his return fare, business class, to Europe at a cost of $11,000 being paid for by Council.
The final cost of Zucco’s European stage including a round trip from Nice to L’Aquila, Italy, Brest and back to Nice has yet to be confirmed. None of Zucco’s itinerary on this circuit coincided with the Council delegations. Sexton was also back in Hobart before the delegation hit Brest.
At last Monday night’s open Council meeting two items were put forward by the City Services committee.
One was ‘that Alderman Haigh be nominated to attend the 2008 Confederation of Tram Museums, Australia (COTMS) Conference to be held in Launceston from 22-26 August 2008 at an estimated cost of $1,100 to be funded from the Aldermanic Conference allocation in the City Government Function of the Annual Plan’.
The other was ‘that Alderman Zucco be nominated to attend the 2008 Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management National Conference to be held in Perth, Western Australia from 3-5 September 2008 at an estimated cost of $5,772’ to be funded from the same source.
Further nominations were called for both trips. No hands went up.
Haigh’s nomination to attend COTM was passed unopposed. Haigh voted No to the proposal that Zucco go to Perth.
At the last Council meeting Haigh urged caution in relation to councilor trips. She suggested that the public was becoming unhappy with their number and that ‘the same name keeps coming up’.
After this week’s meeting Haigh told TT that she was still concerned about the number of trips and whether they came within Council guidelines. These include one overseas trip per councilor in a four year term.
Council management has said, however, that if the situation warranted it a delegation might include a councilor whose quota had already been reached. Celebration of a significant anniversary of sister city status was given as an example.
Six councillors put their hands up for trips to Europe’s summer of 08. They were Valentine, (whose wife Margaret Laird Valentine was also funded), Briscoe, Christie, Burnett, Sexton and Zucco.
Hobart has two overseas sister cities in place and some sort of formal relationship with Brest in the offing.
Like mushrooms in a hugely fertile field these getaways are set to become even thicker on the ground.
