Smooth start to council meetings

Most notably, councillors passed an item allocating each elected member $3500 a year to go exclusively towards learning and development activities.

Cr Patrick Hall sought to specify that learning and development must be aligned to the roles and responsibilities of elected members, and the item was amended.

Further efforts to amend the item so councillors had to seek permission for training from the chief executive or mayor were not accepted by the council.

Cr Pauline Tarrant said the move would add another layer of bureaucracy to the process, while Cr Cunningham said councillors were not answerable to the chief executive or the mayor.

Meanwhile, a Shelley man’s application to disperse of his deceased wife’s ashes on the foreshore was passed, with Councillor Margaret Hall calling the gesture “quite wonderful”.

The item has enabled the man to fulfil his wishes at any time so long as some conditions were adhered to, including notice to the community via newspaper and employing a contractor with insurance.

In his letter to the City of Canning, the man said his partner, who would have been 48 on February 17, wanted her ashes spread at the Shelley Foreshore because it was where the family had attended Australia Day for many years with his children. No date has been set for the event.