General News
15 March, 2024
Council ends quietly
DOUGLAS shire councillors have ended their four-year term with a low-key ordinary meeting that lasted seven minutes on Tuesday morning.
Just two items were on the agenda – the latest financial reports and Cyclone Jasper expenditure.
The brief and surprisingly amicable meeting follows several meetings since the December floods where the multimillion-dollar damage to communities and infrastructure, particular roads and bridges, as well as the water supply, involved heated debate that the council had not done enough nor was working quickly enough to fix the carnage.
Most of the last year involved acrimony between Mayor Michael Kerr and the other four councillors – deputy mayor Cr Lisa Scomazzon and councillors Abigail Noli, Roy Zammataro and Peter McKeown – critical of his leadership style, lack of transparency and communications, and issues such as the Daintree ferry and the council’s media policy.
The conflict was obvious at council meetings and reached a stage in September last year when a vote of no confidence in Cr Kerr was passed by three councillors – Scomazzon, Noli and Zammataro.
At the next meeting in October nearly an hour of the one hour and 21-minute council meeting was devoted to two mayoral minutes.
One was Cr Kerr’s 2514-word response to the no confidence motion and the other about emergency repairs to the beleaguered Daintree River ferry (1344 words).
Cr Kerr is not standing at tomorrow’s local body elections. He announced his intention to not continue late in October, citing personal reasons, although he has been linked to an LNP bid to take on Labor’s Member for Cook, Cynthia Lui, at the state poll later this year.
There was no public farewell for Cr Kerr at Tuesday’s meeting. Instead he thanked the council and its staff.
“Thank you very much to everyone involved in this term. I wish the next council the best of luck and thank the staff for their reports over the last four years. Thank you,” Cr Kerr said.
There was a round of applause by councillors and the meeting ended at 10.07am.
The remaining four councillors are standing again. Cr Scomazzon is seeking the mayor’s job with competition from two Port Douglas businessmen, David Haratsis and Stacy Wilkinson. The other three councillors are also facing nine other contenders.
