Sydney council boss and senior staff placed on leave after secret four-hour meeting

The City of Ryde’s chief executive and two senior staff have been placed on leave pending an investigation after a closed-door council meeting called at the last minute that spanned more than four hours.

Council chief executive Wayne Rylands, deputy chief executive Michael Galderisi and governance boss Graham Humphreys were stood down with pay from the council, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation. An investigation is under way, but there are no allegations of wrongdoing.

The decision to place the staff on leave was made in mysterious circumstances. Councillors were called to the meeting without knowledge of what was to be discussed. There was only one item on the agenda, listed as a confidential matter. Councillor Penny Pedersen, before the meeting went into a confidential session, said: “Mr Mayor, we don’t know what the item is.”

Document metadata shows the agenda was created at 9am on Monday, modified two hours later, and uploaded to the council’s website at 3.30pm – three hours before the meeting.

Rylands has been at the council since 2018 and has led the organisation since 2022. He has been temporarily replaced by John Angilley, a former executive director at the City of Parramatta who began at Ryde as director of business services in October last year. He declined to comment.

In an email sent on Tuesday, Josh Hatten, the director of the office of the mayor and chief executive, told councillors Rylands had “commenced a period of absence”.

Rylands, Galderisi and Humphreys did not respond to requests for comment. In an automated response received after the Herald emailed with questions, Rylands wrote he would “be out of the office for a period of absence” and directed all matters to his assistant.

A similar email from Humphreys said he “is currently on leave and is unable to review and respond to emails and calls”.

A bounce-back email from Galderisi revealed he was placed on leave from Monday and would return to work on April 6.

Nine councillors attended in person at the council’s chambers in Ryde, and four – Kathy Tracey, Felix Lo, Tina Kordrostami, and Roy Maggio – were absent. Kordrostami and Maggio were barred from attending via audio-visual link. Neither the chief executive nor the two senior staff members were present. None of the 13 councillors responded to the Herald’s calls on Wednesday.

The meeting was in a confidential session, a mechanism that bans councillors from discussing matters outside the chamber, between 6.30pm and 10.50pm. The meeting closed one minute later, with no reading of a resolution or information about what was discussed.

The council’s code of meeting practice requires resolutions made during closed meetings to be made public “as soon as practicable after the meeting, or the relevant part of the meeting, has ended” and that the resolution is recorded in the public minutes of the meeting. No meeting minutes have yet been published.

With Nigel Gladstone

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