By Michael Sinclair-Jones
TOODYAY Shire CEO Stan Scott has gone from losing his current job on July 22 to scoring a 2.5 per cent pay rise for another year after a secret council backflip in May.
Mr Scott will get a total of $243,000 in a new salary package, including payment of 14.5 per cent shire-funded superannuation.
Toodyay Shire councillors voted 6-1 behind closed doors last month (Cr Bill Manning against, Cr Ben Bell overseas on business) to add Mr Scott’s $20,800 annual housing allowance to his new base salary, which increases his ratepayer-funded superannuation to more than $25,000 a year.
Perth’s Consumer Price Index (cost of living) rose by 1.1 per cent in the 12 months to March 31.
Cr Manning’s motion for no pay rise lapsed without debate when no other councillor responded to President’s Rayner’s call for a seconder.
Mr Scott left the chamber only after Cr Manning queried why the CEO was being allowed to stay and watch while councillors decided how much to pay him.
Earlier, two State Government investigators conducting an ‘authorised inquiry’ into the Toodyay Shire Council introduced themselves to Shire President Brian Rayner and remained in the chamber when the public gallery was ordered to leave for four items of ‘confidential’ business, including the CEO’s contract.
President Rayner later told The Herald that Cr Manning had sent him five pages of “cosmetic changes” to the CEO’s contract the day before the council meeting.
“Council accepted those changes as they did not alter the meaning of the contract,” President Rayner said.
“There were also four amendments to the contract to be added.”
Cr Manning, a former WA Government senior lawyer who helped prepare multi-million-dollar State contracts, said the draft CEO contract contained several inconsistencies that needed to be corrected.
The contract also required about half a dozen “substantive” changes that councillors debated and accepted, he said.
President Rayner said he was unable to provide a copy of the CEO’s new contract to The Herald as a public document under local government law until a revised copy was signed by himself and Mr Scott.
