This letter was published in The Islander of 2011.11.23 in a different version.

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It was good to see the Ombudsman report in The Islander stating the obvious about withholding matters from elected members.
It seems the council seems still have their henchmen working at coming up with theories as to why the “Detail request could cost $8000″. This does pervert the matters from being open and transparent to elected members. Mr Boardman “expensive claims” seems like a load of rubbish to me: I have a fairly old computer and it has a database with sort and filter functions etc so if their search is that poor and slow, and they don’t have assessable files and folders systems going then the whole internal administration needs a major overhaul. As for censorship of the information: rather than just revolve right back to the initial complaint, things would be removed to hide the information requested to keep them going in the way wanted…
Teamwork should be all working together — not administration matters kept out of reach of councilors by numerous clauses.

Linda Davis
Cygnet River