Beardon should quit, says mayor

By Alison Noonan
ON-again Casey councillor Steve Beardon should be off again, says mayor Kevin Bradford.
The call came following a heated confrontation between the mayor and the renegade councillor over Cr Beardon’s recent claims that the council was ‘mired in sleaze’ and must be sacked immediately.
Cr Beardon last week caused a stir when he told the media that State Government commissioners needed to be brought in to overhaul the troubled council, which was plagued by controversy and low-level corruption.
He also accused Cr Bradford of ordering him to resign from council during a visit to his house.
“I want the books opened and that has caused a lot of angst,” Cr Beardon said.
“The mayor came to my house and told me to resign, but why would I?
“That’s for the electorate to decide, not the mayor.
“I’m not feeling any pressure for asking the questions no other councillor has the courage to. They won’t be bullying me out again.”
However, Cr Bradford said he did not direct Cr Beardon to resign but instead suggested that if he was embarrassed to be a councillor he should step down, as he did during his infamous 37-day stint on council in 2003.
“I went to his house to discuss his demeanour and the way he speaks to council staff,” he said.
“My exact words to him were ‘if you are so embarrassed about being a councillor and frustrated with the fact you can’t get things your own way, you are quite welcome to resign like you did last time’. Nobody is asking him or pushing him to resign. He is free to do what he wants.”
Cr Bradford said his fellow ward councillor’s ‘off-the-wall’ comments had prompted him to issue a reply in the local papers through a paid advertisement.
Titled ‘Most Casey councillors are united for the good of the community’, the public statement was endorsed by nine of the 11 councillors and released without Cr Beardon’s knowledge.
It played down claims of misconduct surrounding four councillors and dismissed Cr Beardon’s comments as ‘nothing more than an exaggeration and mischief making’.
“There is no doubt that a degree of conflict exists between some councillors, which is always to be expected in a democratically elected group of people,” Cr Bradford said in the statement.
“However, the article creates an impression of a council bogged down in legal investigations and scandal, week after week, which is not the case.
“A couple of councillors who persist in perpetrating misinformation and mischief, and who do not work cooperatively with the other councillors, have created the appearance of division far greater than actually exists.”