Joondalup mayor Albert Jacob has issued an apology to council members after he was deemed to have breached conduct by slamming a desk and saying “you are all f*****” after a committee voted against his motion.
Mr Jacob made his apology at the April 23 council meeting after he was found by the Local Government Standards Panel to have breached the city’s meeting procedure during a CEO Performance Review Committee on October 9 last year.
The complaint was lodged by former Cr Suzanne Thompson, who did not run for re-election last year.
The panel documents said council member feedback was sought and collected by an independent consultant before being compiled into a CEO performance review report.
However, the report had not contained all the written elected member comments but instead was heavily redacted and an edited version of the feedback was provided.
In the finding, it is said Mr Jacob spoke strongly against a motion in September and “counselled” the committee to vote down the amendment before offering his own to take on the elected member written comments.
Mayor Jacob’s Amendment was tied 3-3 and as presiding member, he used his casting vote “to prevent the elected members written responses from being entered into the record”.
As a result, a special committee meeting was held on October 9 in which Mr Jacob moved a motion to endorse the CEO’s performance review without the elected member comments.
“When it became clear that the motion might not be carried, mayor Jacob became ‘enraged and threatening’ towards the committee,” the standard panel document said.
“He ‘intoned’ that the first part of the motion ‘had better not be voted down’ and that doing so ‘would be just the sort of thing that got local governments into trouble and councils stood down’.
“Mayor Jacob ‘fallaciously framed’ the action of voting down the motion as meaning that the committee had failed to do the right thing. He had placed the committee members in a very difficult position and he had implied that they had no choice but to vote through the motion.”
When the first part of the motion lost 4-3 Mr Jacob is documented as saying “you are all f*****”.
“The complainant believed that mayor Jacob had called those members who had voted against the motion ‘stupid’ for not voting as he wished,” the panel document said. “She found his language objectionable and offensive.
“He then threw his pen down in anger and aggressively hit the table. There was a slight pause and he said he would put part two of the motion.“
The panel concluded that Mr Jacob breached the city’s meeting procedures local law in which a member must not reflect adversely on a decision of the council and committee as well as not using offensive language to another member, employee or other person.
However, he was not found to have breached local government regulation 18 by securing personal advantage or disadvantaging others.
Speaking to PerthNow, Mr Jacob said the meeting was not recorded and he did not agree with what was documented but admitted his actions were wrong regardless.
“The sanction decision is correct and fair and for that reason I complied with it and welcomed the opportunity to offer an apology,” he said.
“I don’t dispute that I disagreed with what had happened and express that which is allowed under the rules and furthermore, using a swear word when doing so, not appropriate and I apologise for that.
“What I do still maintain what the complainant attributed to me is not what I said and there are other elected members whose recollection matches mine but probably not worth pursuing that any further.”
Mr Jacob denies saying “you’re all f*****”, instead telling PerthNow he said “that was a f*** up”.
“The question is whether I should of said what I (did) or not?” he said. “Well, no, I shouldn’t and I apologise,
“I’ve spoken to other councillors whose recollection matches mine, but it’s all kind of beside the point; I did same something that I shouldn’t have and I apologise for that.”
Mr Jacob said council meetings can be heated and pointed to “significant personal family circumstances at the time” but said it was not an excuse for what he said and he did “regret” his actions.
“In the 18 years of elected member life, it’s the only time I have done that so I hope I don’t do it again and I am very happy to apologise,” he said.
In the panel document, Mr Jacob submitted he had booked himself in for counselling sessions via the city’s employee assistance program “to better equip him to handle the pressures of public office, especially in times when these pressures are compounded by outside challenges”.