Joondalup council vote against special motion to reduce CEO powers

City of Joondalup CEO James Pearson has survived a coup from council members.

Seven of the city’s 13 elected members called for a special meeting on April 2 to vote on a proposal to strip some of the CEO’s delegated authority.

The meeting was called by Crs Daniel Kingston, Rohan O’Neill, John Raftis, Christopher May, John Chester, Lewis Hutton and Rebecca Pizzey.

Crs May and Hutton later withdrew their support, but there was still enough to force the meeting to go ahead.

The councillors also wanted to debate a push for zero-based budgeting for the next financial year and for a budgeting committee to be formed.

But the proposal to limit some of the delegated authority given to the CEO dominated the meeting, which lasted two hours.

Like many other large councils, Joondalup currently delegates decisions to the CEO who rules on behalf of the council. These are usually to do with proposals that have smaller budgets or considered of lesser importance.

The City of Joondalup website says delegated authority is a means to deliver efficient service to the community and enable the council to concentrate on policy development, representation, strategic planning and community leadership.

Nine proposed amendments to the CEO’s delegated authority were voted on separately and all were rejected.

They included removing the CEO’s authority to dispose of council property, authorising payments from the trust fund and limiting the contract extensions which the CEO can grant.

Cr Kingston led the discussions and was vocal in his concerns on the level of authority currently delegated to CEO James Pearson.

“If a power is not delegated to the CEO, it doesn’t mean the administration stops working, it doesn’t mean there’s a lack of trust, it just means that the decision comes to the council meeting so it can be discussed by the council and publicly scrutinised,” Cr Kingston said.

“It just means that the administration makes a recommendation to the council and the council can choose to accept it or not.”

Cr O’Neill said it was a “necessity” to delegate these authorities back to the council.

“The delegation of authorities to external entities has in many instances undermined the very essence of democratic governance and accountability,” he said.

“It is about reclaiming our rightful role as the primary decision makers on mater that impact the lives of our citizens — it’s what we’re here for.”

Cr O’Neill said a total of $35,000 was approved by the CEO to go to the Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club between 2022 and 2023 which were not brought to the council as the individual amounts did not reach the $10,000 threshold.

Cr O’Neill stressed at the meeting that he was not accusing the CEO of wrongdoing but made note of the four separate payments through the city’s community funding program and the public’s perception of such funding under delegated authority.

“The amounts were $7245, $8347, $8800, $9702, all falling shy of the $10,000 mark which would require them to be brought to council. This makes a grand total of $34,094,” he said.

“Now this can be viewed in the public eye as a method to supply organisations with extra funding without those requests coming to the council.”

Mayor Albert Jacob, who voted against all the proposals for reduced delegated authority, said the CEO answered to the council and would follow its decisions.

“Any suggestion that the CEO would do otherwise ... is highly inappropriate,” he said.

“The City of Joondalup is a very large city with over 700 staff; it is the job of the CEO both in a statutory sense and also in a practical sense to manage the day-to-day operations of the city that will always involve a level of delegation.”

Mr Pearson said delegated authority was important for the city so it could use its full-time employees’ expertise day-to-day.

“Putting those delegations of authority into an experienced, competent and relevantly skilled management team led by a CEO is the way in which you’re able to give effect day to day to the strategic level decisions that are made via council,” Mr Pearson said.

“To not have that delegation of authority, that level would create serious problems in being able to deliver on services that are decided at the strategic level — by the governing body, the council — because managers and leaders, including myself as a CEO, that is what we are paid to do, we work full-time.

“We’re compensated appropriately for the skills and experience, which is why people like me come and do jobs like this because that’s what we’re able to do.

“We’re only able to do (the job) because we have a certain level of delegated authority. If we didn’t have that authority, some large parts of the job that I’m paid to do would end up being done by the 13 men and women sitting around the council who are not recruited for their particular skills or experience in relation to running a large sophisticated organisation.

“They are appointed democratically, as is appropriate, and they are part-time, not full-time.”

A council report said a yearly review of delegated authority would be submitted to the council in May 2024 and it “may be more appropriate for elected members to consider the proposals at that time”.