Wyndham deputy mayor Jasmine Hill says she feels targeted following allegations she partook in bullying behaviour towards council officers.
As reported by Star Weekly, Wyndham council chief executive Stephen Wall commissioned a report which collected the perceptions of several staff and their dealings with councillors.
Despite other councillors being mentioned in the report, Cr Hill was the only one publicly named by another councillor during a council meeting on September 27.
“I was singled out amongst the councillors’ team whose names were in the report,” Cr Hill said.
Documents seen by Star Weekly indicate there are 19 allegations against Cr Hill, such as directing officers to provide access to documents prior to their submission and “unreasonably” requesting officers make changes to the minutes of a meeting.
Other allegations indicate Cr Hill said words to the effect of, ‘I don’t know why you can’t do your job’, ‘I have never been made to feel so unwelcome by the council’, and ‘the way staff do their job is awful. I can do this all by myself much better’.
Cr Hill said she was incorrectly paraphrased in many of the cases, and found it “puzzling” council officers had not raised any issues with her prior to the release of the report.
“Some of these allegations relate to matters that were more than a year and half ago,” Cr Hill said.
“If I have ever inadvertently offended anyone, I hope they would tell me directly or via the CEO, and I would have tried to been given opportunity to reflect, to learn and to improve.”
“I thank officers for their feedback and I am taking the allegations very seriously.”
Despite calls from other councillors for Cr Hill to step down, she said was grateful for the community’s support and would continue to diligently carry out her role as deputy mayor.
“I have grown stronger from this and will further strengthen my governance role in council and continue to fight for what is right and what is best for the community,” she said.
In September Star Weekly reported Crs Adele Hegedich, Sahana Ramesh, Peter Maynard, Jennie Barrera and Marcel Mahfoud confirmed they were not named in the report.
Cr Mia Shaw told Star Weekly she would leave all comments about the issue in the chamber.
Cr Robert Szatkowski declined to comment.
Crs Susan McIntyre and Josh Gilligan were contacted for comment.
At a council meeting on September 27, Cr Heather Marcus admitted she was one of the councillors named.
