THE TWEED SHIRE Volume 2 #14 Thursday, December 3, 2009 Advertising and news enquiries: Phone: (02) 6672 2280 Fax: (02) 6672 4933 Our new
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[email protected] starts on page 23 www.tweedecho.com.au LOCAL & INDEPENDENT Eagle soars to freedom Councillors’ expenses to be revealed? Ken Sapwell A bid to hide councillors’ expenses from public scrutiny appears set to come unstuck at this month’s council meeting. Greens councillor Katie Milne is expected to win majority support for a push to re-instate a list of councillors’ individual expenses tradition- ally published in an annual report. Senior council staff quietly axed the list fol- lowing the return of the new council in Sep- tember last year after the previous council was sacked in 2005 and administrators appointed. Chinderah-based councillor Kevin Skinner blew the whistle on the change when he de- scribed expenses being claimed by some coun- cillors on their trips away as ‘exorbitant.’ ‘I just don’t think it’s necessary for all the councillors to be going off to these things all the time,’ he complained, adding he had attended just one. Although he did not name names, he told the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary animal trainer Luke Chigwidden with the three-year-old Wedgetailed eagle nicknamed Miss Toby just before he last council meeting there should be a limit on released her in the Cudgera Creek area on Tuesday. Photo Luis Feliu the number of councillors attending conference and seminars and that they provide a report for Luis Feliu all the birds around here were harassing her, she they can chase their prey and scavenge.