Demand. Deny. Distract.
Confused by Mayor Patricia White's claims that Shoalhaven Council job cuts have nothing to do with her or the councillors?
Confusion is exactly what they want.
But in the effort to centralise and simplify to become financially sustainable, Shoalhaven Council needs skilled, educated professionals, with proven experience and strong work ethic.
First, it needs a culture and reputation to attract those kinds of people.
A Mayor who is honest, accountable and able to compassionately communicate Council's vision would go a long way to achieving that.
by Cat Holloway
A brief history of Mayor White and the Shoalhaven Independents Group (SIG) role in Council's ongoing "workplace restructure" tells the truth about job cuts.
Various Spark article links here contain evidence of the long-term agenda of the SIG party with Mayor Patricia White deeply embedded in the mire.
Mayor White, while still a councillor, campaigned long and strong on a platform of reducing the size of Council's workforce.
With her SIG colleagues, she spoke about it in Council, on radio and other public platforms, carefully presenting palatable servings of 'natural attrition' and 'operational efficiency' while sidestepping questions about staff numbers.
But lead campaigners and vocal supporters of SIG were less careful with their words, publicly demanding the "culling" of hundreds of staff and calls to "sack them all", especially the CEO Robyn Stevens.
Spark Shoalhaven
Mayor White did not, before the 2024 election or after becoming Mayor, quell those cruel and unrealistic calls from within the party she leads.
Instead, one loyal SIG sidekick, Denise Kemp, who demanded on Facebook and deputised in Council on staff cuts, is now a councillor.
Ironically, before becoming Mayor, White roundly criticised the proposed executive-level streamlining by then CEO, Robyn Stevens, claiming that councillors should have decision-making power over hiring and firing of top staff.
Spark Shoalhaven
Emails circulated between SIG Crs. Greg Watson, John Wells and Patricia White show that they sought to flex their elected-official might to save the position of James Ruprai, whom White would later appoint as acting CEO.
Robyn Stevens resigned under acrimonious and expensive circumstances following an unofficial meeting including Mayor White, SIG Cr Bob Proudfoot and SIG Deputy Mayor Peter Wilkins who said on the ABC News:
“The current restructure proposal — which would see 19 full-time jobs cut and two director roles absorbed into other departments — did not go far enough.”
Spark Shoalhaven
With the CEO gone, Mayor White then personally appointed as a 'job lot' five self-declared financial experts to fulfil her campaign promises via the formation of a Financial Review Panel (FRP).
At least two of those Mayoral appointees enthusiastically campaigned with SIG for Patricia White to be elected Mayor.
Berry Forum secretary and Financial Review Panel member-in-waiting, Stuart Coughlan, wrote scathingly against SCC staff and former Mayor Amanda Findley, but glowingly of Patricia White.
"The choice for Mayor is clear. Only Patricia White has the experience and demonstrated understanding of Council's finances to be able to make the immediate tough decisions required for Council to have any hope of survival."
Coughlan, as far back as January 2024, spoke at community meetings about reducing staff numbers in Council and published and distributed as part of a "collective of Shoalhaven ratepayer financial professionals" a 9-point plan to address council's financial woes. Point 3 (with questionable statistics) raised staff reductions:
Mayor White also sits on the Financial Review Panel - because, in these times of economic strain, who wouldn't want a her to apply the skills she supposedly developed in her 20s as a "former Corporate Executive Manager at Barclays Bank" with access to the books of failed fraudsters, Alan Bond and Christopher Skase.
Spark Shoalhaven
In November 2024 debate on council restructuring, Labor Cr Ben Krikstolaitis opposed apparent pitting of workers against ratepayers.
“There seems to be a push from some councillors to sack a bunch of staff or reduce all of the staff incomes to stave off an SRV.”
“Firstly, the impacts of that would be monumental ... Reduced services, reduced output and reduced outcome.
"That doesn't even address the poor people getting fired or having their salaries lowered.”
But the Financial Review Panel pushed ahead on setting an employee cost reduction target, contrary to advice of the acting CEO James Ruprai and opposition from Cr Jemma Tribe who said it would mean at least 110 jobs would be cut over two years.
On June 10, Mayor White, and every SIG councillor (plus Cr Selena Clancy, previously a SIG party member but now just a friend with benefits) voted in favour of that staff reduction 'metric'.
The other five councillors from Labor and Team Tribe, opposed the plan.
The United Services Union stepped into the fray again with vehement criticism of SIG Mayor and councillors for setting staff targets.
Stuart Geddes of the United Services Union said Mayor White had, in December 2024, assured staff that their jobs were safe.
But by June, decisions in FRP meetings revealed the job shedding strategy.
"The Mayor has been talking about percentages thus far, she says the council is 31% overstaffed and she wants to bring that down to 22%, but people aren’t percentages, they’re human beings and they deserve to know if they’re being shown the door." said Geddes in a USU statement.
Mayor White hit back with a caustic press release attempting to deflect criticism and avoid responsibility, claiming it was all a media beat-up, instigated by Cr Tribe who she claimed wanted to stage a coup and take over as Mayor.
Yet, here we are three months later with, exactly as Cr Tribe and the union predicted, 55 council jobs on the chopping block, including the 31 positions already vacated.
The blow to remaining staff of this phase of the restructure is softened by the future creation of 14.6 new permanent positions.
But the hit to public services remains hard on ratepayers who already experience reduced access to libraries, pools, art and sporting facilities, roads still dangerously potholed and the closure of Shoalhaven's much-loved Family Day Care service.
Remember, Council turned down a Federal grant of $80,000 designed to help make Family Day Care viable into the future.
The term 'disestablishment' has got to be the most cynical of spin tossed around during this staff-cut saga.
If jobs are 'disestablished', they are eliminated, removed, deleted.
The least bureaucrats and elected representatives could do to respect ratepayers and workers is use plain, sincere language to explain what they are doing to the services community members pay for and, often, volunteer to prop up.
If this current staff restructure goes ahead, there'll be no Environmental Services manager, no Cultural & Community Services manager, no Executive Manager of Government Relations, Strategy & Advocacy, no Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre manager, no Commercial Service or Floodplain manager.
Full details of the 'workplace change' proposal was obtained by Stephen Prothero's Eye on Shoalhaven platform and can be found here.
Steve Prothero
The Ulladulla Civic Centre Manager penned a pointed and poignant message about the job cuts:
I was shocked to be told that to ensure Council’s “commitment to operational excellence” and “strengthen community confidence in Council operations” both my job and my assistant’s role will be “centralised to eliminate inefficiencies and improve service delivery”.
Right now I am very angry and sad that everything I’ve worked to build at the Civic Centre will be gone. The whole idea of it is incredulous.
There are many people - fantastic staff members at Council - who have had the rug pulled from under them this week. Many people are often angry at Council for the stupid decisions they feel are being made, but I can guarantee you, the “little people” working hard to serve their community do not deserve your ire, so please be kind to them. They are only following the policies that are set down from those in higher positions."
Particularly troubling in the restructure is the dissolving of Council's Environmental Services department.
This eliminates the manager position, previously held by PhD ecologist, zoologist and environmental scientist, Dr Michael Roberts, and splits up Council's environment team members across different directorates and under managers whose environmental knowledge could be non-existent.
Moving the Biodiversity Assessment unit, away from Land Management to directly under Development, is alarming - especially given increasing development demand, pressure from multiple natural disasters and strong community attachment to environmentally valuable places that Shoalhaven celebrates to attract tourists, business and residents.
According to an ex-government ecologist, the biodiversity team changes will remove a crucial layer of independence and integrity in development assessments and could leave Council more vulnerable to Land and Environment court disputes or even accusations of corruption.
Cases involving councils and the highly technical biodiversity credits scheme show that council staff and proponents often do not understand that developers’ must legally first avoid and minimise impacts before resorting to offsets to get their developments approved.
But the offical word from a Council spokesperson is that legislation not organisational hierarchy determine environment staff responsibilities.
"Environmental planning and related requirements are upheld irrespective of the structure.”
It's nearly a year since the Mayor negotiated a farewell to CEO Robyn Stevens likely costing more than $360,000. Since then she has appointed two acting CEOs, but Shoalhaven is still waiting on the announcement of a permanent CEO.
The new CEO's individual salary package including relocation costs plus fees to the professional recruitment service will hover around $500,000.
Two more executive director positions are yet to be filled.
Cr Bob Proudfoot gave hope to good reason at last night's Council meeting, asserting that reviewing efficiency and productivity was important, but losing Council staff would not equate to Council gaining strength.
"To solve our financial sustainability, putting staff off is not the way...that is simply a knee jerk reaction...we need to be looking at other things."
Apart from the fact that morale will drop, so will productivity and the organisation will suffer and so too will our ratepayers.
Staff cuts to a large extent should be off the table...We need to be very careful about the way we go about this."
Spoken like a true man of the people, right?
Well, this same councillor voted in favour of staff reduction targets back in June and in favour of the report tabled at last night's meeting justifying workforce changes.
If only it were true that Mayor Patricia White and her SIG councillor team had "nothing to do" with staff cuts. But they are inextricably entwined in this.
The political party's stated agenda is pro-privatisation and anti-environment and Mayor White and SIG councillors have made no secret of their intention to pave the way for developers and politically aligned partners, even if it means cutting corners on the accountability and transparency of fair process they call "red tape".
Whoever is announced as the new Shoalhaven City Council CEO will face crucial decisions on the current workforce changes and more job cuts expected next year.
Political agendas shouldn't determine which employees stay or go, and neither should number-crunching by accountants.
In the effort to centralise and simplify to become financially sustainable in the coming months and years, Shoalhaven Council may lose quantity. But what it needs to gain is quality: skilled, educated professionals, with proven experience and strong work ethic.
First, it needs a culture and reputation to attract those kinds of people.
A Mayor who is honest, accountable and able to compassionately communicate Council's vision would go a long way to achieving that.
