FIVE City of Swan councillors seek to halt the release of the city’s ward boundary discussion paper amid questions about how its four options were developed.
During the August meeting, councillors Jennifer Catalano, Nav Kaur, Ian Johnson, Sarah Howlett and Rashelle Predovnik were in favour of a pause on the boundary review.
However, the pause was not adopted due to majority against.
A special council meeting will be held next week to consider partially revoking the council’s August decision to not pause the Ward Boundary and Representation Review.
Midland/Guildford ward councillor Rashelle Predovnik said the move followed concerns raised with her after the August meeting about the number of options presented and councillor involvement in developing or shaping them.
The review’s four options are:
The City of Swan is a band one local government with a district population of 75.000.
This means the city may have a minimum of eight councillors or a maximum of 14 councillors plus a popularly elected mayor.
At that meeting Cr Predovnik unsuccessfully moved to add two further options to the four contained in the discussion paper.
She later supported releasing the paper for public consultation but said conversations after the meeting prompted her to reconsider the process.
“I had conversations with community leaders (after the meeting) and those conversations alerted me to a perception of bias: they questioned the limited amount of options in the discussion paper and the level of councillor involvement in creating or shaping options,” she said.
Whiteman ward councillor Mel Congerton said the review was never intended to be divisive and was simply a process the city needed to undertake before presenting the outcome to the Local Government Advisory Board.
He said he was familiar with the process after Whiteman ward previously underwent a review which resulted in its representation being reduced from three councillors to two.
Cr Congerton described the exercise as “number crunching” to bring representation within the required variation and said the Whiteman community had not suffered because of its reduction in councillor numbers.
Cr Predovnik said she subsequently reviewed the process and wrote to City of Swan chief executive officer Stephen Cain on August 26.
She raised questions about how the four options were selected, why other options were not included and how perceived conflicts of interest should be managed in a review affecting councillor numbers and ward boundaries.
Cr Predovnik said four other councillors supporting the revocation agreed a short pause would allow those issues to be examined before consultation began.
She said city staff had also told her in an emailed response that seven councillors had requested and received access to data “to develop their own options if they wished”.
Cr Predovnik said the response did not identify the seven councillors, what options they may have worked on or whether any councillor-developed concepts contributed to the four options ultimately included in the discussion paper.
She said no councillors made declarations during debate on the item at the August meeting.
“My concern is that if consultation proceeds without clarity on these matters it will affect the perceived independence and transparency of the review,” she said.
The city’s special meeting agenda includes an impact statement responding to the proposed revocation.
Cr Predovnik rejected the position that governance questions could be addressed while consultation proceeded.
“The issues I raised relate to how the ward options were developed including how councillor involvement was managed and the process followed to select options,” she said.
“Saying these issues can be ‘explained later’ overlooks the fact they influenced how the ward options were created in the first place.
“The short pause was requested to protect the integrity of the process.
“There is no genuine urgency in the timeline, yet the city continues to push the process forward as though there is.”
