Melville’s electors AGM voted to replace CEO Marten Tieleman.

THERE were more dramas at Melville council on Wednesday evening when its annual general meeting of electors voted to replace CEO Marten Tieleman within three months.

Forty two electors attended the meeting – half in person and half remotely – also passed votes to reject the council’s annual community report and also criticising the council’s failure to comply with local government legislation.

Included in the crowd was former councillor Steve Keppert, who’d clashed repeatedly with the administration over 

a complaint lodged against him with the local government standards panel and his request for council funds to help his defence.

The city’s planning department also felt the electors’ wrath, facing a vote of no confidence.

Former Melville Residents and Ratepayers Association chair Gary Crawford is now running Citizens for Building Reform WA, which along with website Shonky Local Governments WA is running a competition offering people $100 gift vouchers to best a “building fiasco” featuring a retaining wall retrospectively approved by Melville despite showing exposed piping and crumbling foundations.

A councillor told the Herald the meeting was “outrageous” and featured “the usual suspects who just can’t move on”. The councillor said the administration had made wholesale changes following a state-ordered inquiry and was forging ahead, but some residents were just blinkered by the anger.

by STEVE GRANT