Good relationships with councils are often key to successful and appropriate development but one southern Sydney councillor took it too far, a tribunal has found.
The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal was told that the then-Bayside mayor Bill Saravinovski had a “close personal relationship” with the director of the development company behind an apartment proposal at Brighton-Le-Sands.
Details of the case were only made public late last week due to procedural restrictions.
At a hearing in October, the former mayor of the rapidly expanding Sydney suburb to the south of the CBD was found guilty of misconduct. The case was brought to the attention of the tribunal by the Office of Local Government in March of 2024.
The tribunal was told during the hearing that Saravinovski had a close personal relationship with Al Ibrahim, also known as Ali Ibrahim, the director of The Boulevarde Oasis Pty Ltd.
The company had submitted an unsolicited proposal for a development project at a Brighton-Le-Sands carpark that would comprise 180 premium apartments, according to council minutes.
The proposal was a response to a council-led expressions-of-interest process to address a parking shortfall in Brighton-Le-Sands, and would have offered 492 public carparking spaces in a basement as part of the development.
The council had previously rejected all expressions of interest, but the draft planning proposal provided by Boulevarde Oasis Pty Ltd was considered at several meeting in 2021, including in April at which Ibrahim’s brother, Cr Tarek Ibrahim, had excused himself and alerted the meeting to his family connection.
Councillors agreed with an earlier planning panel recommendation and decided that the proposals lacked “both strategic and site-specific merit”.
However, the tribunal found that Saravinovski had not sufficiently disclosed the extent of his relationship with the developer and had demonstrated a “lack of care towards the rules designed to avoid conflict of interests”.
The tribunal heard that Saravinovski had disclosed he had been to Ibrahim’s engagement party, but it was argued that he did not fully disclose the nature of his conflict of interest because he failed to disclose the extent of his social media contact and ongoing meetings with Ibrahim.
The tribunal found the former mayor had “failed to properly disclose and manage his conflict of interest and engaged in inappropriate conduct towards council officers at the meetings where the proposal was discussed”.
Two instances were raised in which Saravinovski was alleged to have acted in a manner “likely to bring council or holders of civic office into disrepute”.
The first was at a 2018 meeting where, when discussing the Brighton-Le-Sands project with council officers, it was said he became angry, swore, and “inadvertently knocked a water bottle across the meeting room” because of alleged inaction by council staff with regards to the proposal. There was an instance of similar behaviour at a 2019 meeting, the tribunal was told.
The tribunal said it was satisfied that acting in an angry manner and yelling towards council staff was intimidatory behaviour and also constituted harassment and verbal abuse.
Saravinovski’s conduct, “of repeatedly interrupting to the point that the presentation was terminated early, was overbearing”, it said.
The tribunal ruled that the respondent was guilty of misconduct and reprimanded but was not ordered to pay any costs.
Saravinovski was elected the first mayor of the new Bayside Council in 2017.
In August of 2024 Saravinovski announced he was stepping down after 40 years in local government and would not contest the coming elections.
