LOSER PAYS 2

On 13 May of this year, I posted an article on this blog about the YRCC—‘The White Elephant in York’s Pajamas’.

  

I reminded Council that former ACEO Graeme Simpson had long ago promised what he called ‘a fact sheet’ regarding the YRCC and that his promise, made in the Shire’s name, had never been honoured. 

The article concluded with the draft of a composite question subsequently submitted, slightly amended, in writing to the Shire.  

The Shire President’s response, analysed in my article ‘Great Expectations’ posted on 8 June, made no attempt to deal with the substance of my question.  Instead, Cr Wallace told me that the Shire would undertake a ‘management review’ of the YRCC during the 2016/17 financial year, that said review ‘was expected’ to result in a ‘Business Plan’ for Council to consider, and that  ‘Directions for the Centre’ would ensue following ‘consultation with the sporting clubs’.  That, he opined, ‘would be a better time to issue a Facts Sheet if possible’.

I’m still wondering what he meant by ‘if possible’.  Why might it not be possible?  And if it does turn out to be impossible, what does that tell us about the management of Shire resources over the past few years?

A second composite question

We’re now halfway through the 2016/17 financial year.  To celebrate that impending milestone, I submitted in writing a further composite question on the YRCC to the November OCM.   Here it is, with preamble:

  

"Six months ago, at the May 2016 OCM, I asked a composite question relating to the York Recreation and Convention Centre (YRCC). 

In summary, I wanted to know how much the building had cost to construct; how much money had been diverted and from what other projects to help meet the cost of construction; the annual cost since 2012 of maintenance and repair; how much revenue had accrued annually to the Shire since 2012 from clubs using the centre; how much profit had accrued annually since 2012 from the operation of the restaurant and bar; how many conventions, conferences and seminars have been hosted at the centre annually since 2012, and at what profit to the Shire; and how likely it seemed that the centre would ever be self-supporting rather than, as now, an unprofitable burden on the majority of York’s ratepayers.

I also asked when the Shire proposed to issue the ‘fact sheet’ on the YRCC promised by Acting CEO Graeme Simpson in January 2015.

To my surprise—because all but the last of them were not speculative but referred simply to matters of record—the Shire did not provide definitive and comprehensive answers to any of those questions.  

However, I did receive from the Shire President a vague assurance that a forthcoming business plan for the YRCC would address ‘many of the issues involved in [my] question’. 

So I now ask:  

(a)            What progress has been made, and how, towards the formulation of a business plan for the YRCC;

(b)           If and when the business plan will be released for public scrutiny and discussion;

(c)            Which of the issues ‘involved’ in my May question the business plan is likely to address;

(d)           Why apparently no part of my May question could be answered by consulting Shire records; and

(e)            If the answer to (d) is that documents are missing from the files—

(1) What categories of document—e.g. those relating to awarding of contracts—appear to be missing;

(2)  Is the Shire satisfied that with respect to any missing documents no offences have been committed against the State Records Act 2000; and

(3) If it is not thus satisfied, will the Shire refer the matter to the proper authorities for investigation and possible prosecution?"

 

Unfortunately, illness prevented me from attending that meeting, so my question wasn’t answered publicly until the appearance of the agenda for the December OCM.  However, I received early private notification of the Shire’s response in a letter dated 6 December from the CEO, Paul Martin.

Here is CEO Martin 's letter, exactly as I received it (click to enlarge):

 'I trust this answers your queries', says CEO Martin.  No, not really, but the Executive Manager Corporate and Community Services has, perhaps inadvertently, shed some light on what lies in store for the downtrodden ratepayers of York.  These are my conclusions:

1.  The Shire will go on maintaining the centre for the benefit of the sporting clubs.

2.  In due course, Council will decide on how the centre will be managed and by whom.  My guess is that the task of managing the centre will devolve to some degree upon the sporting clubs, while the associated financial burden of repairing and maintaining it will continue to fall upon ratepayers in general much as it does now. 

3. The community and 'stakeholders' (the latter term being code for 'sporting clubs') will be allowed some say in how the centre is to be managed. But it seems unlikely that the views of 'the community', i.e. humble forelock tuggers like you and me, will be given much weight compared with those of the panjandrums who run the clubs and exert influence over Council.

It's all such a pity.  I strongly suspect that more than a few members of sporting clubs, especially the tennis and bowls clubs that traded their friendly former premises for accommodation in the sterile YRCC, are rueing the day when they allowed their executive committees to bully them into throwing in their lot with CEO Hooper's grandiose plans.

Open, honest and accountable?

Some of us are beginning to question if our current Council is as committed to open, honest and accountable government as we had hoped and trusted it would be.  

My default position is that when government officials, elected or appointed, decline to cooperate unreservedly in a legitimate fact-seeking exercise, it’s because they have guilty secrets to conceal and shoddy reputations to protect, their own or those of colleagues, relatives, friends, supporters and the like. 

It hasn’t escaped my notice that more than one of our present councillors sat on previous councils responsible for promoting and nurturing the YRCC—in other words, for hatching Ray Hooper’s diabolical egg, then attaching the hatchling’s greedy little beak to the Shire’s inexhaustible supply of ratepayer-funded nutriment.  

(Yes, I know I’ve changed the metaphor from pachyderm to pecker, but to borrow the words of an American philosopher, consistency in such matters is the hobgoblin of petty minds.) 

It wouldn't surprise me to discover that some of Ray's acolytes, including the 'cohesive team' that lined up obediently behind him in his heyday, are still running York by proxy.

Plus ça change…

And another thing… 

Like me, you may have learned with amazement from agenda item SY163 – 12/16 that 74.7% of rates for the current year remain outstanding.  That’s a total of $1,937,361.21.

A further $656,299.54 remains outstanding from previous years, making a combined total of $2,593,660.75.

What are we to make of this?  Why aren’t people in York paying their rates on time?

Is it because irresponsibly high rate increases in recent years, driven by reckless spending like James Best’s purchase of Chalkies and engaging consultants (almost $91,000 on a single firm of public relations consultants, hired to do his job for him) have placed too heavy a burden on York ratepayers, many of whom are retired people or pensioners?

How will Council’s latest act of extravagance, resurfacing the tennis courts at the YRCC, impact on the rates we will be called upon to pay in the 2017/18 financial year?

The Wheatbelt, in which York is located, is reputed to be the most economically depressed region in WA.

I think our councillors need to engage, if they can, in a process of sustained independent thinking before blindly accepting ‘officer recommendations’ to spend lots of our money unnecessarily on anything to do with a grotesquely flawed venture like the YRCC.

Senior local government officers are generously remunerated, earning what for most Yorkies must seem like a king’s ransom.  After a few years of riding the local government gravy train, it’s highly likely that they lose any real sense of how less privileged members of the community struggle to stay afloat financially.

I doubt very much that in preparing his tennis-court recommendation to Council, the officer responsible gave a nanosecond’s consideration to how it might make life a little harder for most of York’s ratepayers.

But when such recommendations are made and decisions taken, that thought should be uppermost in everyone’s mind.

 

*******

KIDDIES’ CORNER

(Click to enlarge picture, then see if you can find the misspelled word.)

‘Hurry up, hurry up, we’re late!’ cried the White Rabbit.  ‘Get into the van at once!’

‘Certainly not,’ Alice replied.   ‘I’ve got a sudden craving for one of Mad Mo’s succulent Danish pastries with lashings of cream and a nice pot of English Breakfast tea.’

‘Lady Norah won’t be pleased,’ said the White Rabbit, his whiskers twitching nervously as he extracted a shiny stopwatch from a pocket of his waistcoat.

‘I don’t give the proverbial occasion of momentary aerobatic sexual congress about that,’ said Alice crossly, ‘and I refuse to climb into a strange vehicle with a word in common use misspelled on its side.’

‘Quite right!’ huffed the Red Queen, striding furiously, sceptre in hand, out of the Post Office. ‘Off with their heads!’

(Carol Lewis, Malice in Blunderland, Ch.4 ‘Alice Up the Duff Again’)

LOSER PAYS

Misconceptions, restraint and commonsense

The West Australian for 12 July this year carried an advertisement headlined ‘Misconceptions on Council rates puts public in dark’.  The author was Cr Lynne Craigie, current president of WALGA.  

It seems Cr Craigie was on a mission to convince WA ratepayers that swingeing rate increases—of which we in York have had more than our fair share in recent years—are invariably justified by rising expenditures over which local governments apparently have little or no control.

The first ‘misconception’ she wrote about is that when property values fall, as they have in WA since the mining boom ended, rates should fall with them or at any rate shouldn’t rise.  She pointed out that the amount you pay in rates compared with what your neighbours have to pay is based on the rental value of your property relative to the value of theirs—the greater that rental value, the more you are required to cough up as your share of the expenditures set out in your council’s annual budget.  

The resale value of your property at any given time, whether it goes up or down or remains stable, plays no part in the calculation.

Lynne Craigie, President of WALGA (Photo: ABC)

The other ‘misconception’ is that the level of any rate increase should be pegged to the CPI. 

Actually, that isn’t a misconception. It’s an opinion, and one I happily admit to sharing—up to a point, anyway.

For Cr Craigie, rate increases simply reflect the ever-increasing cost of the services—‘local roads, waste services, parks and sports fields, libraries, pools and recreation facilities’—that local government provides. 

“Councils’ cost structures”, she wrote,

…are impacted by more components than the cost of living.  Wage and salary increases, reductions in funding, cost shifts from other governments and artificial restrictions on fees and charges all add to the pressure on rates.

I think it's more complicated than that.  Local government cost structures are also impacted by a variety of less tangible factors that Cr Craigie and the WALGA set generally would probably prefer us simple-minded forelock-tuggers not to think too deeply about. 

 

Those factors include the intelligence and wisdom of council members and the knowledge, skill, talent, experience and honesty of council employees, especially the CEO.

They include council’s willingness to make decisions that benefit the whole community, not just councillors themselves, their friends, relations, intimate partners past and present, sporting associates, drinking buddies and political supporters.

Above all, they include council’s readiness to exercise commonsense and restraint when deciding how municipal funds should be spent. 

Ah, commonsense and restraint…not much in evidence in York, especially when you consider the enormous financial burden, somewhere between $300K and $500K, that the hapless ratepayers of York are obliged to shoulder every year to repair and maintain our big white elephant, the York Recreation and Convention Centre aka the Splurj Mahal.

Turf wars

Which brings me to what reminded me of Cr Craigie’s instructive musings, namely item SY160-12 on pages 31-35 of the agenda for tomorrow night’s council meeting.

This item relates to the prospective award to West Coast Synthetic Services, the preferred tenderer, of a contract to replace the existing artificial turf on eight tennis courts at the YRCC with ‘Omni-Court Cool-Plus Synthetic Turf’ at a cost of—wait for it—$171,300 ‘excluding GST’.

Including GST, we’d be looking at an expenditure of $188,430—that’s around $54 for every man, woman and child in York, or just over $76 for each elector, assuming the population figures given on the My Council website are accurate.

We’re told that the current surface ‘is at the end of its life’. Alarmingly, it appears to have lasted for only about four years, perhaps less. 

Does this mean the turf will have to be replaced every few years at such a stupendous cost to the ratepayers of York, most of whom aren’t members of the Tennis Club and probably only take a passing interest in the game when Wimbledon is showing on the telly? 

The officer’s recommendation is for Council to delegate authority to the CEO to award the contract to West Coast Synthetic Services.  However, the officer advises Council that it has two further options: either to reject that recommendation and award the contract to another tenderer, or to put the contract out to tender again.

Well, folks, I can think of a much more sensible option. 

Here it is: postpone the resurfacing of the tennis courts (and any other major works project currently envisaged for the YRCC) until the fate of the centre has been decided comprehensively once and for all.

What would be the point of spending nearly $200,000 on new tennis court surfaces now if the decision is made next year—as it might well be—to save money and avoid further rate increases by mothballing the centre indefinitely, and maintaining it only to the minimal standard required by law and public safety, until we can find some way to make it pay for itself?

Here’s another option: go ahead with the contract, resurface the courts, but at the expense of members of the tennis club, not of the ratepayers in general.

I have a vague recollection of former CEO Ray Hooper telling us that the centre wouldn’t act as a drain on the public purse but instead would operate primarily on the principle of ‘user pays’. 

That hasn’t happened yet.

So far, it’s been overwhelmingly a matter of ‘loser pays’, the losers being the ratepayers of York.

Let’s see if Council acts true to form tomorrow, or opts instead for restraint and commonsense.

*******

NEWSFLASH 201216

Lisa Buckingham, proprietor of Hairitage Hair, has won the Best Decorated Business Competition for Christmas 2016.

At yesterday’s council meeting, Shire President David Wallace presented Lisa with two trophies, a large perpetual trophy and a smaller personal one, and a huge laminated cheque for $500.

Swan Lodge, as runner-up, received a cheque for $250.

Congratulations to both winners, and thanks to all contestants for adding a welcome touch of Christmas sparkle to the town.  Thanks also to the Shire of York for sponsoring the event.

The photo below shows Lisa with her trophies and cheque standing next to Roma Paton.  As a member of the Christmas Decorations Working Party chaired by Cr Pam Heaton, Roma organised the competition, donated the smaller trophy and paid for the engraving on both trophies.  The splendid perpetual trophy was crafted and donated by Ron Macey.

 

YORK FIREBUG NO MATCH FOR THE BLOG

On Friday 2 December 2016, at approximately 12.50 a.m., while my wife and I were sleeping, somebody deliberately set a fire at the bottom of our garden. 

Luckily, neighbours across the road in Macartney Street were alerted to the incident by their dogs.  They stretched their garden hose across the street and began putting out the flames.  Before long, the volunteer fire brigade arrived and helped to extinguish the fire. 

Thanks to their efforts and those of my kind and caring neighbours, a major disaster was averted—not only for us, but also for residents of nearby and adjoining properties.

The fire was not an accident or an instance of spontaneous combustion.  It was deliberately lit.

We know this because somebody was observed running from the scene into George Street.  A car was then heard being driven away at speed.

This is not the first such incident at our property.    Three weeks ago, also a while after midnight, somebody set fire to garden rubbish stacked up for collection against our main gate in Harriott Street.   That fire, too, was put out by our local firies who I’m told reported the incident to police. 

 

Remains of the first fire, 3 weeks after the event (click to enlarge)

On that occasion, we assumed the blaze was accidental, so didn’t follow up with our own report.  The police must have come to the same conclusion, because they didn’t contact us.

The second incident has changed my mind about the first.  I now believe that both fires were lit deliberately, possibly—in my view, very probably—in retaliation for articles or comments that have appeared on this blog.

Remains of Friday's fire, facing Harriott Street (click to enlarge)

Remains of Friday's fire, facing Macartney Street (click to enlarge)

As it happened, neither my wife nor I witnessed either incident.  In both cases, we learned what had happened from neighbours several hours after the fires had occurred.

I’m not pointing the finger at anyone in particular, but it does seem odd to me that more than once, within days of certain issues coming up on the blog, I’ve been subjected to attempts at intimidation. 

Remember that knuckle-dragging bully Animal Crackers and his threats to poison my dogs?  (I now have reason to believe that Mr. Crackers was not what he seemed, but an educated person of means posing very successfully as a half-wit.)

I suppose there might be a handful of folk in York who disagree enough with opinions expressed on the blog to regard the use of force, or threats of force, to shut me up as fully justified. 

But lighting fires?  Is anyone in York sufficiently stupid, drunk or drug-befuddled to take revenge in such a way as to threaten the lives and property not only of a person they dislike, but of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others as well?

‘Animal Crackers’ was bad enough.  Now, it seems, we have ‘Fire Crackers’ too, an even more daunting proposition.

I have reported the latest incident to local police, who have kindly offered to increase nocturnal surveillance of the area in which our property is located.   In addition, we shall lose no time in installing concealed CCTV throughout the property.

So, Mr. Fire Crackers, if you’re feeling the urge to star in a home movie, be my guest—and later, a guest of the Governor, because setting unauthorised fires on somebody’s property is a serious offence that carries a fair bit of prison time.

I won’t pretend that I’m not frightened and distressed as well as angered by what you’ve done.  Of course I am.  Only a complete fool wouldn’t be. 

But your spectacularly dangerous and stupid antics won’t stop me writing for and publishing comments on this blog.