In this letter, Mr Szwed responds to last week's front page and explains that, contrary to The Advocate's report,

he engaged his own legal representation.

THE first paragraph of last week's front page article is wrong and misleading.

Your article incorrectly claims that as Hepburn Council's former CEO, my "legal costs have led to a massive budget

blow-out for Hepburn Shire Council". This is incorrect.

In fact, I had engaged my own private legal representation and had paid all invoices relating to my own legal costs.

The $218,000 legal fees your article refers to covers three separate legal cases and costs incurred by council. Only

one of these related to my complaint and I stepped back as CEO to allow council to handle that complaint in a

manner which it decided on.

Prior to leaving Hepburn Council, when the extent of costs on the three cases were being realised, I ensured that

budget savings were found to counter these legal costs being incurred by council without impacting on services.

I also ensured that a claim was lodged with council's insurers. Council expects a significant portion of its own legal

costs to be reimbursed by its insurers.

The Bathhouse rent shortfall mentioned in your article was also something that I, as council's CEO, managed to

ensure would not impact on our ratepayers. As shown in successive annual financial reports I established a

Bathhouse Redevelopment Reserve over the past several years to save "profits" from the Bathhouse rent. This

totalled about $160,000 to carry council through the period that the Bathhouse was closed for redevelopment.

Because the Bathhouse redevelopment was running late this year I made sure that this additional shortfall was

to be accounted for as an IOU so that the future Bathhouse rent will reimburse council and ratepayers so that they