The Frankston Council $460,000 Fraud

 The $460,000 Fraud

Fraud Prevention is better than cure

This article is from the Age in July 2020.  When it was published it was recent in terms of council events. But did you know that in the Council Elections that year not a single candidate spoke about fraud as an issue. A former Frankston council manager admited to $460,000 fraud and nobody said anything.  Wasn't it an issue? Fraud prevention is much better than cure.

What do we know?

• The Fraud accured over a period of 9 months from Sept 2016 to May 2017
• A software glitch allowed this to occur.
• The Fraud was undiscovered until Frankston City Council audited its purchasing history.
• It was then reported to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission
• The Manager was charged in January and Pleaded guilty in July 2020
• Another offender still hasn't been to Court

Frankston City Council Offices - $460,000 Fraud

So it has taken 3 years to discover and take action on this fraud and the actions are not yet complete.

The AGE article said it went on for seven months, but left out the event in May 2017 which makes it nine months over all.  Isn't it an issue that it went on undetected for nine months?  And then there was a significant period of time before the audit, and until that was completed Council had no idea anything was wrong. Even after the audit did they know that there had been a fraud, or did they just realise something was wrong? In the last twenty years how often has a fraud like this happened? Do we even know if their have been frauds in the past? What checks and assurances do we have that this won't happen again? Even if they have fixed this software glitch, what assurances do we have there is not another glitch? If it does happen again how will council detect it is happening?  There are lots of questions but not many answers. Is anybody trying to find an answer? Why is it that not a single candidate is talking about this as an issue? 

Again, which candidates were in office when this happened? It's not hard to figure out, but I will leave that for you.

PARC and other centres for ongoing problems.

PARC the centre for ongoing problems

PARC - Frankston’s Peninsula Aquatic Recreation Centre

PARC Frankston’s Peninsula Aquatic Recreation Centre, is just one of Frankston's suite of buildings. But they are of centres for ongoing problems. 

In the case of PARC, first it was the water slide, then the plumbing, then parking, and management (not necessarily in that order).  But are there any prospective candidates for council asking about or addressing these issues?

Could the water slide issue and other PARC problems have had anything to do with:

• Maybe they had no idea what they were doing?
• Was there insufficient planning
• Was there an issue to do with we want to do it differently to everyone else, and
• We don't care about supporting Australian businesses?

There are many News Paper articles, but here are just two:

• Flood of complaints about PARC
• PARC Plumbing problems - closed again

It's a bit hard to believe the circus, but is PARC the only building with problems?  No. Just pick one, any building it doesn't matter. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but after you read about the next bit, you might begine to wonder.

The Frankston Yacht Club

The Frankston Yacht Club, built in 2016 but has been mostly empty ever since. How could council let the place stay empty for so long? How much revenue was lost by leaving it empty? What was wrong with the design or fittings that made the building so unattractive to any potential leasee? This is just yet another troubled Frankston site:

• More trouble for the Yacht Club

So not only has it been virtually empty since 2016, shortly after it was built council realised it was going to cost  $100,000 a year to stop the building from turning grey.  But that wasn't the only problem. After being empty for four years, late last year it was suddenly realised the cladding on the building was extremely combustible and needed to be replaced. So that incurred another estimated $345,000 on top of a $10.5 million build cost, plus $100,000 or so per year to keep it brown. How much is the rate payer up for now?

Other buildings

There are others troubled buildings for which there are no News Paper articles. For example Karingal Place. Karingal Place has had multiple floodings, roof cave-ins and needed Air conditioning which had to be retro-fitted.

It was discovered after it had been occupied for some time that the floor loading was found insufficient for one of it's designed purposes.  The building also didn't have sufficient fire access for one of it's intended purposes. And the Occupancy limit wasn't sufficient for it's intended purpose. The couple I spoke to on this issue told be heaps of stories, but to top it off until very recently the play grounds which were not compliant with regulations.

Consequences

There is no doubt in my mind that there are other buildings with significant problems in Frankston.  But in every case I've head about the problems go all the way back to the planning stage and the lack of consultation and lack of thorough planning. The consequences are hefty bills to fix problems for which Rate Payers are forced to pay.

So again you need to ask who was in office when all this happened? What has been done since to stop a repeat of these problems? 

CEO Dennis Hovenden resigns - unexpectedly?

 CEO Dennis Hovenden resigns - unexpectedly?

In June 2019 Frankston Leader told us that the CEO Dennis Hovenden was resiging four months early.  But was it unexpected? Apparently not. The article goes on to say the resignation followed a mutual agreement between Mr Hovenden and councillors. It follows simmering tensions over the chief executive’s future, and councillors voting at a closed briefing in April to advertise the position.  But the then Mayor Michael O’Reilly praised Mr Hovenden’s seven years. How's that? The article talked about simmering tensions. Well how about this list. These are just some of the stories that occured under Hovenden's watch.

• Bayside News: Bullying Confirmed
• Bayside News: Council Low Morale
• Herald Sun: Spat over consultancy fees
• Age: The $460,000 Fraud

Maybe Council and Hovenden weren't such good buddies after all.

Candidates for Frankston Council - 2020

Information on Candidates for Frankston Council?

The Victorian Electoral Comission has questionaires where candidates answer two questions.  In addition they are asked whether they are endorsed by a political party (not a particularly useful question, because you can still be a member or an avid supporter of some party). Anyway here are the links.

• North-East Ward
• North-West Ward
• South Ward

Candidates from the North West Ward

Below are links to Facebook and Linked In information about candidates in the North West Ward for Frankston City Council Election 2020.

Name	Links
Justin Turner	Facebook justinforfrankston Linkedin
Jocelyn Torres	issuu.com Document Facebook jocelyn.torres1 Facebook vote1JocelynTorres
Alan Middleton	Facebook AlanMiddletonAdmin Linkedin alan-middleton
Steven Hughes	Facebook Steven-Hughes Linkedin steven-hughes
Glenn Aitken	Facebook  Frankston Community Noticeboard
Sue Baker	Facebook vote1suebaker Facebook sue.baker.9083
Stan Doric JP	Facebook stan.doric Linkedin zdravko-stan-doric-jp-a6a92413
Gabriel Norris	www.reimaginingfrankston.com Facebook gabrielnorris/
Banson Wong	Linkedin banson-wong-293a79a0 Facebook Frankston Community Noticeboard
Jeff Shelley	Frankston Community Noticeboard Facebook Vote1JeffShelley Facebook.com jeff.shelley Linkedin jeff-shelley-95b76842
Bolam Kris	Facebook Kris-Bolam-4-Frankston Facebook krisbolam Facebook other info
Michael O'Reilly	Facebook CrMichaelOreilly

Candidates from the North East Ward

David ASKER	Facebook david.asker.399
Nathan CONROY	Facebook FRANKSTON2020 https://www.nathanconroy.com.au/
Colin HAMPTON
Geoffrey Justin HARBECK	Facebook geoffrey.harbeck.1 Facebook Geoffrey Harbeck
Jay JOHNSTONE	Facebook Jay.johnstone.750 https://www.reimaginingfrankston.com/
Parker KAPP	Facebook parker.kapp Facebook Vote1forParker https://www.voiceoffrankston.com/
Henryk KAY	Facebook henmilk
Karan KENT	LinkedIn karan-kent-368b49107 Facebook oteNorth-EastKaran-107515191106895/
Shane OSBORNE	Facebook shaneforfrankston Facebook shane.osborne1
Prasad PHILIP	Facebook prasadphilipfrankston Fascebook prasad.philip.1
Richard RENDELL	Facebook Richard-Rendell-for-Frankston-North-East-Ward-109038997583345 Facebook rick.rendell.12
Rupinder SINGH	Facebook rupindersinghricky01
Suzette TAYLER	Facebook suzette.tayler Facebook vote1SuzetteTayler

Candidates from the South Ward

Evalyn CLOW	https://www.facebook.com/evalyn.clow https://evalyn-clow-for-frankston.raisely.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Evalyn-Clow-for-Frankston-South-Ward-105052851322889
Carmen GRIFFITHS	https://www.facebook.com/cgriffiths4southward/ https://www.facebook.com/carmen.griffiths
Claire HARVEY	https://www.reimaginingfrankston.com/ https://www.facebook.com/reimaginingfrankston https://www.facebook.com/chdawson
Brad HILL	https://www.facebook.com/brad.hill.au https://www.facebook.com/FairDealForFrankston https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-hill-9aa279/
Jerome HUGHES Liam HUGHES	https://www.facebook.com/LiamandJeromeHughes
Peter MALONE	https://www.petermalone.com.au/ https://www.facebook.com/petermalonefcc/ https://www.facebook.com/peter.malone.14224
Stephen McDONALD	https://www.facebook.com/Vote1McDonald http://vote1mcdonald.com/
Darrel TAYLOR	https://www.facebook.com/taylordarrel27 https://www.facebook.com/darrel.taylor27
Steve TOMS	https://www.facebook.com/steviet.toms https://www.facebook.com/TomsForSouthWard https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-toms-ba0816102/

Other Web Sites

Some other web sites you can get information about the candidates:

• Frankston Community Noticeboard
• https://www.pokiesplayyou.org.au/
• https://defeatdan.selfemployedaustralia.com.au/

Stories about Frankston Council:

In the next few days we are going to be listing some of the sories about Franston City Council.  These will be some of the public stories. There are many more that could be told privately but as that could be problematic we will just deal with some of the public stories.

The Wells Street revamp

Stories about Frankston Council

This is one of the public stories about Frankston City Council. There are many more that could be told privately, but telling them could be problematic, so here at least are some of the public stoies. Today let's talk about Wells Street.

The Wells Street revamp

So how could we forget the Wells St revamp? Over budget by more than half, $2.1 million or more than 60% over budget. The article says the cost overruns were due to nightworks done to minimise disruption, changes to the project scope and issues due to services being in unexpected locations. How can you call this a cost overrun?  Imagine you were building a house and the cost overrun was another 60%. What you do? Sue the builder? Stop the work and figure out how to finish it inside budget? Not finish the house because you found out too late and now don't have the money?

So here's a couple of questions:

• Why weren't nightworks planned for originally?
• What changes to the project scope were there?
• How incompetent was the planning that didn't know where services were located?
  If they weren't sure where they were, why wasn't it investigated at the start?
• What evidence is there of sufficient and adequate planning?
• Do we have any confidence that this won't happen on the next major project?

Which candidates were in office when this happened? It's not hard to figure out, but I will leave that for you.