After a few short months in the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council administrator role, Stephen Sykes has defended claims he is not spending enough time in the towns and villages that make up the Local Government Area.
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Mr Sykes told the Cootamundra Herald that while Orange is home and he has no intention of changing that, he has been putting considerable hours in both on the ground in Cootamundra and Gundagai and in Sydney at meetings representing the interests of the council.
He said it is a minority of administrators which call the town/s they represent home and his routine flying in and out to represent local government constituents is not out of the ordinary.
Mr Sykes has calculated that he spent 70 hours working for the council before his first day and since then has been on the job for a further 368 hours.
Had he been working a regular 35 hour week, he said he should have only clocked up 224 hours.
As administrator, Mr Sykes effectively takes on the role of the entire elected council – mayor, deputy mayor and all councillors.
Together, nine councillor positions are worth approximately $130,000 with the Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council contract in this same vicinity.
His role is paid for out of the $5 million purse handed to the council from the state government to implement the merger.
