It has been four months since the last Crikey update on affairs of state at Manningham City Council. After some promising signs of detente, the ruling Labor faction was back in action at Tuesday night’s council meeting, ignoring professional advice from the officers and providing bloc voting support for each other’s pet issues.

The council remains fundamentally split 5-4 with the most divisive issue being over deputy mayor Fred Chuah and the ministerial intervention he helped secure to change our planning scheme and permit a $10 million-plus tripling of the nursing home he chairs in the Green Wedge.

Councillors were not briefed before the formal Ministerial amendment was lodged. As a result, two investigations are under way. The first is a Councillor Conduct Panel initiated by three of us minority councillors. The Manningham Leader reported yesterday that the findings are expected next week and the strongest sanction directly available to the two independent panellists is a two month suspension of Cr Chuah on full pay.

The second investigation is a more mysterious affair by the state government’s municipal inspector which has sweeping powers and is reportedly examining specific matters of alleged conflicts of interest related to Cr Chuah’s participation in two contentious votes last December over other nursing home proposals.

Since these issues blew up, the deputy mayor has missed 15 public council meetings and regular Tuesday night briefing sessions due to ill-health.

But he returned on Tuesday night and got straight back into the saddle, delivering the swing vote on two more contentious 5-4 votes for the Labor faction, both of which rejected the professional officer advice.

The first related to building a tiny 60 square metre cafe in our biggest and best piece of public open space, Ruffey Lake Park, which attracts 300,000 visitors a year.  The gang of five want a proposed feasibility study expunged from council’s long term planning documents based on a 2004 survey which only registered opposition at 50.6%.

The second related to Manningham’s 19.8 square kilometre of public open space, which represents a world leading 17% of the entire municipality. This comprises a sprawling 300-plus pieces of land, ranging from the 68ha Ruffey Lake Park to literally dozens of vacant lots, battle-axe sites and leftovers from sub-divisions.

Only about 150 of these parks have any playground equipment and we spend $400,000 upgrading an average seven play spaces each year. My pitch is that we should cash in on the current property bubble and flog off a small number of our dodgiest blocks to fund the expansion and improvement of the remaining 300. Unfortunately, the ruling clique won’t entertain such talk.

After a long campaign of scaremongering, including two divisive debates in response to Labor councillor motions, the officers blinked on Tuesday night and recommended we change the name of 37 “unclassified reserves” to “neighbourhood parks” and remove any reference to their sale from the public open space strategy. But that wasn’t enough for the gang of five.

Labor mayor Charles Pick and his mate Ivan Reid have just returned from a holiday together in the Philippines and declared their candidacy for Labor pre-selection in the safe Liberal seats of Doncaster and Bulleen respectively at the November 27 Victorian election. Looking for an issue to run with, they decided not to gracefully pocket the win on land sales and instead sought amendments to the officer recommendation with politically loaded language and an inflexible declaration that no vacant lot would ever be sold in any circumstances.

The officers refused to support the move, so we were back to yet another 5-4 factional vote and a long-winded divisive debate.

The odd man out in the gang of five is former Young Liberal President Graeme MacMillan, a grumpy former PwC auditor who wants to dramatically downsize council’s operations and slash rates. He’s previously rejected all this game playing over sales of surplus land and on Tuesday night he initially did that again, but then changed his vote to fall into line with the Labor faction.

We’ve just set up a Finance and Government committee chaired by Cr MacMillan yet the gang of five have now ruled out ever selling a single vacant lot before we’ve even had a presentation from council’s valuers about the massive $116 million increase in the value of council’s land and buildings to a record $668 million over the past two years. Without asset sales, the big-spending Labor faction seems hell-bent on fulfilling their pledge to take Manningham Council into debt for the first time in years.

*Stephen Mayne is an independent Manningham councillor and will not be paid for this contribution