Election rules need fixing

THERE is a need to change the council election date from the last week in November back to at least late September or early October.
Also, there is a desperate need to get back to three councillors for each ward with one new councillor elected each year.
Then ward meetings could significantly reduce the time spent at council meetings and provide a smoother transition of new councillors into the system.
Council elections, it has been deemed, will be held on the last Saturday in November in a year other than the State election, which is also held on the last Saturday of that month every four years.
This is a quirk in history that went bad for local government.
Premier Steve Bracks held his second election on the last week in November, then decided that henceforth state and local government elections would be held on the last Saturday in that month.
There is no strategic reason for choosing the date for councils, but there is plenty of strategic reason for changing it.
The date is totally unrelated to local government business and should not be tied in with state elections.
This is something the Premier and Local Government Victoria should place on the agenda for a big rethink well before the next council elections.
There is no point in leaving it until elections are upon us to start discussion.
I see time and again new councillors struggling to come to terms with council procedure and this is understandable because they have entered a whole new world.
Running a council is big and at times scary business. Because of this, some councillors are shell shocked at the workload and the knowledge they need to acquire when they first sit at the council table.
Officers begin the budget process months before it is finally presented to the public for comment and this means that a new bunch of councillors can come on stream well after the budget process has started.
Councillors are elected in the last week in November and must go through a training and settling in process that takes them into the Christmas break.
They cannot be expected to get all this training in time to deal with a budget that is already on the way.
By the time they get a grip on things, if they do, then the council is well into February.
My view is that officers should prepare the budget guided by the council plan that councillors provide.
Councillors must, under our system, contribute to the financial balance of the municipality, albeit under trained officer guidance, but should be given half a chance to do that.
By having elections each year and three councillors in each ward there is a much smoother transition of new councillors into the system and much of the ward business can be done by those three representatives.
Having three councillors also provides diversity of opinion and reduces the likelihood of communities being sectionalised and losing the value of franchise if they are offside with a councillor in the one or two councillors a ward system.