FORMER federal assistant treasurer George Gear has announced a tilt at the Melville mayoralty which comes with a threat to the council’s senior executive.

At a fiery special electors’ meeting this week, Mr Gear told the council’s top brass that if he was elected he’d sack them all unless they moved to rescind a strategy that recommended moving the Melville Bowling Club.

Acting CEO Marten Tieleman sat stony-faced as Mr Gear described the report as a “sham” which had misled councillors into believing the club was not financially sustainable.

“The truth is that the audited financial records of the Melville Bowling Club show that they have $340,000 in the bank, pay all their bills on time and are expanding in both membership and number of games of bowls being played,” Mr Gear said.

“Twenty four new members joined last month.”

In another headache for the council, former East Fremantle mayor Tim Smith has been elected president of the bowls club and at a committee meeting on Monday immediately moved to formally withdraw from the move. Although he wasn’t allowed to speak at the meeting as he’s not a Melville ratepayer, Mr Smith later told the Herald he expects there’ll be threats from the council as a result of the withdrawal.

But he says clubs involved in the hub were waking up to the fact the council had shifted the goalposts on the deal and what they were initially promised wasn’t materialising.

by STEVE GRANT