The Courier revealed last week that City of Ballarat mayor John Philips had held a secret meeting with councillors, allegedly planning to siphon millions of dollars in funds promised to the Civic Hall site. 

While The Courier supports 

the council and the many great things it achieves, it’s revelations like this that make us lose faith. 

And readers agree. 

Saturday’s front page story focused on former mayor John Barnes calling for the resignation of the city’s chief executive officer, Anthony Schinck.

An overwhelming number of readers agreed with Mr Barnes. 

Summing up their feelings was Don Task who said the state government needed to intervene on our “incompetent” council. 

“The state government needs to sack this incompetent council and appoint administrators until a new council is elected, just like Kennett did in the 90s,” Mr Task wrote online.

“They are simply incapable of making decisions without spending thousands on ‘consultation processes’. They lie to the ratepayers to get elected, they make a raft of commitments pre-election then completely abandon them afterwards . . . they show no respect whatsoever to the people who put them on council.”

But others were equally scathing of Mr Barnes. 

“I have just about had enough of Barnes, he snipes away from the cheap seats,” one said. 

“Based on Barnes this city should shut up shop and do nothing.”

The Courier is certainly not calling for any resignations, and does not support the idea that administrators should be brought in to run the city. But, we do want more transparency. 

It should not be up to a senior council insider to tell us of “secret meetings”.   At the end of the day, we should never have to report on such meetings, because they shouldn’t exist.