Proactive approach by council

COUNCILLORS are urging City of Greater Dandenong residents to contact the customer service department or their local councillor to discuss issues, rather than waiting for a council meeting to ask a question.
At their 11 January meeting, councillor Peter Brown moved that CEO John Bennie use his discretion to determine whether questions submitted from people not in the gallery would be answered at the meeting or in writing in due course.
The motion arose after 26 questions were submitted for each of the past two meetings, many rephrasing their complaint into multiple questions.
Several also raised issues that could have been resolved earlier through a call to the customer service department, including one about toilet block graffiti.
Engineering services director Bruce Rendall said the offensive scrawl could have been cleaned up just hours after it happened if reported immediately, instead of several days later.