THE WHITE ELEPHANT IN YORK’S PAJAMAS

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. 

How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

Groucho Marx, in the movie Animal Crackers

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Words said to have been spoken by Adolf Hitler on learning that Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of Russia, had failed.

 NOTE:  Two postscripts added 20 May 2016

Ladies and gentlemen, there is an elephant in York’s pajamas.  It’s a white elephant.  It’s called the York Recreation and Convention Centre, or YRCC.

It isn’t the only white elephant our local government has inflicted on the people of York.  There’s also the Old Convent School, thanks to James Best, appointed by Minister Tony Simpson to act as commissioner and hose down community dissent while our democratically elected council languished under a contrived suspension.

But that white elephant is tiny compared with the YRCC.  Eventually the treasury loan Mr. Best organised so the Shire could purchase the Old Convent School from his friends for an exorbitant price will have been repaid and the building either renovated and put to use or sold off, no doubt at a considerable loss. 

And that will be the end of that.  To use a phrase popular with my critics, we shall be ready to ‘move forward’—though where to, I’m not sure.

The YRCC is a much, much bigger white elephant.  And on present showing, York is doomed to possess and go on feeding it until the Last Trump or the heat death of the universe, concerning which your choice may depend on whether you barrack for the Pope or Richard Dawkins.

And yes, we do know (more or less) how that elephant got into York’s pajamas.  What we don’t know is how to get it out.  

Unlike Groucho, we don’t have the option of shooting it, because the corpse would be far too big to dispose of easily—unless the Shire locates a naïve Chinese buyer, which seems on the whole unlikely.

That might not matter if this elephant weren’t such a hungry beast.  Every year, it consumes a good deal of money—perhaps enough to keep the Shire’s budget in the black forever, thus doing away entirely with the need for annual rate increases.

For reasons that will shortly become apparent, the Shire has made sly but strenuous efforts to conceal the spiralling construction and maintenance costs of the YRCC (sorry Groucho, the elephant joke has served its purpose, and from now on I’m going to drop it).

‘A promise made is a debt unpaid’

More than 12 months ago, former Acting CEO Graeme Simpson, on the Shire‘s behalf, promised us what he called ‘a fact sheet’ about the YRCC.

I believe he did so at the suggestion of the FOI Commissioner.

Whether or not he seriously intended to keep that promise when he made it, I can’t say.  The point is that he didn’t keep the promise, perhaps because senior Shire employees put bricks under his wheels to stop him.

His promise is a debt that to this day remains unpaid.

It is possible that new CEO Paul Martin will be more forthcoming.  He may not be as firmly wedded as previous incumbents of the office to the local government culture of evasiveness, secrecy and concealment.   He may be more sensitive to community opinions and desires.

Who knows, he may impress on Council the importance of releasing the Fitz Gerald Report from its prison in the bunker at Joaquina Street.  He may even advocate making public aspects of the recent police report, which isn’t really a report, of the investigation into alleged fraudulent use of municipal funds, which wasn’t really an investigation.

A couple of ratepayers, one of them a former councillor, petitioned the Shire under FOI for information about the centre.  If their questions were answered, they haven’t shared the results with the rest of us, I suppose to spare others the full horror of what that information revealed.

I’ve looked into the origins of the YRCC.  I’ve also obtained, from various sources, fragments of information about how the YRCC project has developed since its inception and how much it has cost and continues to cost the ratepayers of York.

I won’t pretend that this article is definitive and covers all the facts. The truth is that some of it is speculative, though based on the best information currently available to me.  

If the Shire had done its duty by York’s ratepayers and come clean about the project, I wouldn’t have to speculate and there might be no reason to write about it, since details of how much it has cost would be in the public domain.

So—prepare to be stunned, astonished, amazed, alarmed, astounded, mentally boggled and thoroughly discombobulated by what I’m about to tell you.  I was, so why shouldn’t you be?

History…

For an official description of the YRCC, probably composed by a Perth firm of public relations consultants, go to http://recreation.york.wa.gov.au/about.aspx , where you will learn that the Shire conceived the centre as a ‘state of the art facility’ in 2008, work on it began in 2010, and construction was completed in 2012. 

You will also learn that the centre is ‘proud to be affiliated with sporting clubs, large and small’.  It is ‘currently being utilised for community meetings, sporting events, corporate conferences and local seminars, as well as being a popular spot for a weekend meal or a cold beverage and the occasional private party’, and offers ‘a welcoming and inclusive environment’.

So let’s go back to 2008, during the heyday of CEO Ray Hooper. 

In November of that year, the Shire received a document entitled Shire of York: Forrest Oval Precinct Sport and Recreation Facilities Master Plan.  This was the final report submitted by A Balanced View, a Perth firm providing something called ‘leisure consultancy services’.  

The document is 120 pages long, comprising 50 pages of main text and 70 of appendices.  Its tone is one of restrained optimism based on statistical projections reflecting social and financial conditions prevailing at the time.

What’s proposed in the document relies on a concept plan formulated by quantity surveyors Ralph Beattie Bosworth.

The 12 ‘broad principles’ underpinning the plan are set out as bullet points on p. 36 of the report.  Those principles include ‘minimising duplication of facilities’; sharing of premises by ‘compatible users’, which seems to mean clubs doing the same sort of thing in the same space but keeping out of one another’s way; rationalising and replacing poor facilities; ‘flexible design’ that will ‘eliminate anti social behaviour’; ‘creation of a sporting and recreation community “Hub”’;  ‘environmentally sustainable features’, namely ‘water conservation, energy efficiency and waste minimisation’; and ‘design for ongoing cost efficient management and maintenance’.

Please keep that last one in mind.

According to the plan’s author, ‘The collocation of compatible usage types is integral to the effective optimisation of facilities’.  Jeez, I wish I could write a sentence like that, I’d make a fortune.

The concept plan relates to a ‘Master Plan Concept’ giving particulars of projected developments on the Forrest Oval site.  

Among them are ‘six synthetic grass tennis courts’, a ‘12 rink synthetic bowling green with lighting’, and ‘a large bitumen parking area’ supplemented with ‘additional unsealed parking in the centre of [the] precinct with access from Barker Street entrance’.

Please keep those in mind, too.

A construction cost estimate supplied by Ralph Beattie Bosworth weighed in at $5,750,000, but according to the report the Shire of York took the more optimistic view that construction could be carried out in four stages for a mere $4,386,000.

Somebody must have been dreaming.

…and mystery—what the Shire of York hasn’t told us

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the full cost of construction to date is somewhere between $8m and $12m.  One of my sources has nominated $14m, but that strikes me as a dollar or two over the top, even for the Shire of York.

I have no idea if those figures include interest payments on money borrowed for the project.  I doubt the project could have gone ahead without borrowing, but I have heard that money was diverted from other projects, for example road maintenance, as construction costs at Forrest Oval began to spiral and unforeseen costs emerged.

The actual cost has never been disclosed.  If it were to be disclosed now, it would not be final, because the promised ‘large bitumen parking area’ hasn’t yet materialised—though to be fair, there is no shortage of unsealed parking as envisaged in the Master Concept Plan.

Equally mysterious is the cost of maintaining the centre.  My best guess is that it is in the region of $300K to $500K a year, more than enough to balance the budget, bearing in mind that the 2015/6 deficit was a little over $288,000. 

Over several years, the benefit of not having to pay so much to maintain the centre would help keep rates at a reasonable level, i.e. much lower than where they are now. 

A figure I’ve heard bandied about is that the centre services a mere 18% of York’s population.  If true, that means four-fifths of the population, those who don’t use the centre, are forking out heavily for the one-fifth that does. 

So far as I know, there has been no specific disclosure of the annual revenue the Shire obtains from users of the centre, including those who frequent the bar and restaurant.  I’m fairly sure that would do little to offset the cost of maintenance, but it would be nice to know exactly how much it is.

Called to the bar

And speaking of the bar and restaurant, is it right that in a town where wining and dining venues like the York Palace Hotel, the Castle Hotel, and Settlers and the Flour Mill Café, are having a hard time making ends meet, the Shire is running a facility in competition with all of them?

Wouldn’t it be better—or in bureaucratic parlance, ‘more appropriate’—to leave running ‘a popular spot for a weekend meal or a cold beverage and the occasional private party’, to local entrepreneurs who are perfectly capable of offering ‘a welcoming and inclusive environment’? 

I vaguely recall that similar questions were put to Commissioner Best, who responded by mumbling something about ‘competitive neutrality’.  This principle is meant to ensure that local government enterprises don’t snatch bread from the mouths of hard-working business people.

Unfortunately, the principle doesn’t cut in until profits from the centre’s bar and restaurant reach $200K, a figure that probably exceeds revenue obtained from visitors and the small minority of York residents using the facility. 

On the credit side, the bar and restaurant provide employment for a favoured handful of local people.  But at what cost in loss of business to York hostelries and indeed to the rest of us?

Anyone for tennis?

 (Click to enlarge)

It’s fair to say that the YRCC has encountered a few difficulties along the way since 2012, when, as we are told on the centre’s website, the project was completed.

Things started to go bad early in the piece, when toilets backed up into shower cubicles.  Plumbers had to cut through a concrete slab and dig down in order to repair the problem.

A sinkhole appeared in the ‘12 rink synthetic bowling green’.  I believe this happened when a mini excavator ran over a plastic stormwater drain, splitting the pipe so that water gushed out, washing soil away to create the sinkhole.  I understand that the problem was fixed but has since recurred. Orange cones were placed on the green as a warning to users not to fall into the hole.

To round out this tale of woe, the artificial grass on the tennis court has buckled.  This happened last year.  Not being a tennis player, I don’t know if it was fixed then—I believe the Shire was involved in a dispute with the supplier, Green Planet Grass, over who should bear the cost of repair—but if so it seems to have happened again.

Apparently the sporting clubs had asked the Shire to give the job of laying the greens to another Perth outfit, Tiger Turf, but CEO Hooper preferred Green Planet Grass.  He even gave the firm a puff on its website.  (See my article What a difference a tree makes, posted on 8 June 2015.)

In fairness to Green Planet Grass, I should say that the tennis court surface might have buckled as a result of inadequate maintenance, not because they did a crappy job.   I believe that was the position the firm took in the course of its dispute with the Shire.

 That sinking feeling... just bowls you over, doesn't it? 

Questions

It’s time for the Shire to come clean on the cost of the YRCC.

It’s time to produce the fact sheet promised by Acting CEO Simpson more than a year ago. 

The fact sheet should at the very least answer the following questions.

1.              How much has it cost to construct the centre?

2.              What moneys were diverted from other projects to help meet the cost of construction?

3.              What will be the cost of completing construction by bitumenising the car park?

4.              What since 2012 has been the annual cost of maintenance and repair?

5.              How much revenue has the Shire obtained annually since 2012 from the clubs that use it?

6.              What profits have flowed to the Shire since 2012 from the restaurant and bar?

7.              How many conventions (or conferences) and seminars has the centre hosted each year since 2012? What revenue flowed from that to the Shire?

8.              Does there exist a revised business plan for the centre, and if so, will the Shire post it online?

9.              Realistically, what likelihood is there that the centre will ever pay its own way and free ratepayers from the burden of maintaining it?

Issuing such a fact sheet will signal that the Shire has set its feet firmly on the road to open, honest and accountable government.

POSTSCRIPT added 200516:  The agenda for the OCM Monday 23 May 2016 includes a recommendation that Council approve the release for community consultation of a draft Strategic Plan and note that the CEO is undertaking an organisational review of the Shire’s operations.

The draft Strategic Plan incorporates ‘a comprehensive review’ of the Shire’s Corporate Business Plan and Long Term Financial Plan.

The draft Corporate Business Plan, under the heading Reviewing and improving use of Shire facilities and assets (Agenda p. 47), includes the following:

Reviewing the operations and management arrangements of the York Recreation and Convention Centre.  This review would examine the management structure, liquor licence, operating subsidy, involvement of clubs and other relevant matters to guide the centre operations into the future.

It also includes preparation of a concept plan for redevelopment of Avon Park and a discussion paper for future use of the Old Convent School.

As I see it, this is excellent news for all of us.  So is the proposal, under the heading Increased levels of service (Agenda, p.47) to install street trees in Avon Terrace.  (This one is especially close to my heart—see my blog article What a Difference a Tree Makes, 7 June 2015.)  It’s whispered that members of the public will be offered the opportunity to sponsor a tree.  I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, count me in.

The downside is a projected rate increase of 3.5% for the next financial year, followed by 3.75%, 4.00% and 4.25% respectively for the three years that follow.  The purpose of these increases is ‘to fund the current initiatives included in the draft Corporate Business Plan’ (Agenda, p.49).

But in my opinion, if the Shire implements its program for change as set out in the draft Strategic Plan, those relatively modest rate increases aren’t too high a price for the community to pay.

This appears to be the dawn of a new era for York. 

POSTPOSTSCRIPT  added 200516: I've submitted the following question to the Shire for Monday's OCM at Talbot.

 

Question for OCM 23 May 2016—York Recreation and Convention Centre

I note with pleasure the proposal in the Shire’s draft Corporate Business Plan to review the operations and management arrangements of the YRCC.

I note with equal pleasure the CEO’s recommendation to Council that the draft Strategic Community Plan, which incorporates the business plan, should be made available for community consultation.

To facilitate an informed consultation process, the community will require information about the construction and maintenance costs of the centre since its inception in May 2008.

I remind Council that well over a year ago Acting CEO Simpson promised to release a ‘fact sheet’ pertaining to those costs and other matters pertaining to the centre.  That document has never materialised.

Will Council now authorise the CEO to release a fact sheet that includes the following information:

1.              The total cost of construction to date, including the recent bitumenising of the car park;

2.              The amount of moneys diverted from other projects to help meet the cost of construction, and what those other projects were;

3.              The costs, annually since 2012, of maintenance and repair;

4.              The amount of revenue that the Shire has obtained annually since 2012 from the clubs that use the centre;

5.              The amount of profit flowing annually to the Shire since 2012 from operation of the restaurant and bar;

6.              The number of conventions (or conferences) and seminars hosted at the centre annually since 2012, and the amount of revenue flowing from such hosting annually to the Shire since 2012;

7.              The likelihood that the centre will ever pay its own way and free the majority of ratepayers, who don’t use it, from the burden of maintaining it.

I realise that these are mainly so-called ‘historical issues’, but they have direct relevance to community consideration of the future operations and management arrangements of the centre.