By Casey Neill
Councillor Angela Long is “ripping off residents” if she accepts her councillor allowance during a 10-week holiday, colleague Maria Sampey says.
But Cr Long said voters would respond at the next election if they were unhappy with her representation.
Cr Sampey left the chamber during an otherwise unanimous vote to approve Cr Long’s leave of absence request at the Monday 10 April Greater Dandenong Council meeting.
She said about six or seven weeks was the previous longest leave approved, taken by now Mayor Jim Memeti.
“She’s taking seven council meetings which is nearly three months,” she said.
“She’s getting paid $7500 for the three months.
“Does she want to represent her residents or does she want to rip off her residents?
“I know it’s not a wage, it’s an allowance.
“Maybe, what she could do is donate the last month to the benevolent society or something like that.”
Cr Sampey questioned how Cr Long could represent residents while overseas.
“She’s going to run up an enormous phone bill,” she said.
She called other councils to find out how long other councillors had taken leave, and asked the CEO John Bennie to seek legal advice regarding what constituted a reasonable amount of leave.
Cr Long pointed out that Cr Sampey took 12 months off in 2014.
Her absence followed an investigation into Cr Sampey and then-Cr Peter Brown and was “stress leave”.
“I was handing in a medical certificate every month,” Cr Sampey said.
“It shows that she doesn’t have any remorse.
“I’m just fed up with her. She just doesn’t get it.”
Mr Bennie confirmed that the council sought legal advice following a councillor request.
The advice related to “whether there were any established legal precedents about what council could typically consider either reasonable or unreasonable in terms of requests for leave of absences”.
“The legal advice was that there were no established benchmarks and it remains up to each individual council to determine what is reasonable,” he said.
Cr Long’s leave will run from 7 June to 20 August inclusive, and will include the 13 June, 26 June, 10 July, 24 July and 14 August council meetings.
“It’s frustrating sometimes that our resources are wasted,” she said regarding the legal query.
“There’s no actual policy on it. There’s no limit or minimum or maximum.
“It’s up to the voters next time there’s an election.
“If they’re not happy with what I’m doing, they can vote me out.”
Cr Long said that when Cr Sampey was off sick, “she was still going to social events that council was paying for”.
“If it was anyone else I don’t believe she would have put up such an objection,” she said.
She said this was only the second time she’d applied for leave in nearly 17 years on council.
“I’m taking my iPad, I take my phone so I’m still in contact with the community all the time and I do accept phone calls,” she said.
“I accept all emails and I get back to them as soon as I possibly can.”
