Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You
In case you missed it this is a copy of an article by David Nankervis of the Advertiser dated Sept 13.

CAN I keep a monkey in my home? I visited a restaurant in your area a few years ago, can you tell me its name?
These are some of the quirky questions posed to local council staff in the past year.
Among the tens of thousands of calls made to the state’s 68 councils each year are the strange, bizarre and unintentionally humorous.
The Local Government Association has surveyed its members to compile a list of the more unusual questions posed, compared to the run of the mill queries about parks, potholes and rubbish.
Keeping monkeys as pets, are among some of the bizarre questions our councils deal with every year.
Keeping monkeys as pets, are among some of the bizarre questions our councils deal with every year.
One staffer, who wished to remain anonymous, said “some calls can quickly become quite bizarre … some calls make you want to giggle.”
“One man rang and asked if we knew where his car was, three hours after he’d parked it in a bus stop and gone into a place to gamble,” she said.
From the list composed, it seems some callers believe councils are the font of all knowledge or expect amazing value for their rate
Some of the more quirky questions asked of councils include:
CAN I put a dead rat in the green bin because I found it in the garden?
COULD you help me put my Ikea furniture together because I didn’t get an allen key?
HOW long does it take for dog poo to turn white?
WHAT do I need to do to keep a pygmy pig in my apartment?
COULD council please colour code all roads so that yellow roads go into the city and red ones go out of the city?
THE recent earthquake left a fault line in my front garden – can council come and inspect it for scientific purposes?
CAN council send out some earth moving equipment, the recent storm has moved the sand in front of my shack and I’ve lost my view?
HOW low does my ceiling fan have to go?
THERE are four council bees on my screen door, can you come and get them?
Local Government Association president, Mayor David O’Loughlin, said special skills are often required by customer service staff to “remain calm and cooperative” while responding to inquiries.
“My favourite is a council being asked to build a kangaroo overpass over a main road to prevent kangaroo carnage,” he said.
“I am still unsure how that overpass would be sign posted or how we could encourage kangaroos to converge on a single footbridge in interests of self-preservation.”
Mayor O’Loughlin said most of calls are routine queries about every day council operations like rubbish bin collections, street closures and rates notices.
“But our skilled front counter and telephone staff members can be thrown some curly ones,” he said.
“Our staff members have training guidelines for most eventualities but there are some questions that require outside of the square responses.”