A STOUSH over a council grant to a community group has seen $200 returned by the Kingston Residents Association to Kingston Council.
Council officers approved a Quick Response Grant requested by the KRA “to print and mail out newsletters” but recommended an application for $2000 be reduced to $200 “to allow opportunities for other individuals or groups to access grant funds”.
KRA president Trevor Shewan, a former Kingston councillor, returned the $200 grant to council “because we feel the majority councillors have insulted us by reducing our grant from the $2000 requested without providing any valid reason”.
Councillors decided to defer a decision on voting through the grant to the KRA in April before finally agreeing to release the $200 in funding at May’s public council meeting (‘Lower grant for ‘activist group’, The News 15/6/16).
In a letter from Mr Shewan to council, seen by The News, the group’s president says he is unhappy at “aspersions cast on KRA as a community organisation and on me personally as KRA president”.
Cr Paul Peulich called the KRA an “activist group” and questioned whether ratepayers should fund an organisation that had, in the past, appealed against council decisions at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“It’s OK to go against council decisions but in this case it’s clear for local political purposes,” Cr Peulich said.
Funding to the KRA, under a councillors’ discretionary ward funds grants program now abolished across Victoria by the state government, was the subject of legal action by Cr David Eden against former Mordialloc Liberal MP Lorraine Wreford.
Ms Wreford claimed in Parliament in late 2013 that the KRA is a Labor Party front “propped up” by ratepayers’ funds and later apologised to Cr Eden over comments made about his $1500 ward funds donation to the group originally founded by his father Nick Eden.
Cr Eden then stopped defamation legal proceedings against Ms Wreford.
Crs Tamara Barth, Steve Staikos and Rosemary West also allocated ward grants to the KRA under the now axed ward funds system.
Mr Shewan has been advised by the mayor that she cannot order remarks by Cr Peulich made at April and May’s council meetings to be withdrawn since no point of order was raised at the time.
“However, as you would be aware, parliamentary privilege does not extend to council meetings,” Cr Bearsley wrote in a letter to the KRA president.
“Therefore, councillors are liable for their actions or statements made during a council meeting, which it is your right to pursue.”
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 3 August 2016
