Citizens of York: If you think our current shire council
and administration plan to keep York’s options open regarding our massive white
elephant, the Splurj Mahal aka YRCC—think again.
If you think they will
at least yield to community disquiet over the issue of competitive neutrality
by closing down the restaurant and tavern—think again.
If you think the
ongoing burden of staffing, repairing and maintaining the Splurj Mahal will
ever be lifted from the shoulders of the majority of ratepayers who don’t use
it—think again.
If you think that one
day the community’s huge and continuing investment in the Splurj Mahal will
return a handsome dividend—or even a meagre one—think again.
And if you think we shall
ever be told, as has been promised, the full truth about the construction
costs, where the money to build the Splurj Mahal came from, how much it has
cost to repair and maintain every year since it began operation, and the like—well,
stranger things may have happened in York, but I wouldn’t bet my shirt on that.
Mixed martial arts
Much has changed for
the better in York since the departure of James Best and Graeme Simpson. It would be churlish not to say so.
But what doesn’t seem
to have changed is the entrenched bureaucratic outlook of senior Shire
employees. The singers have
changed, the song is more sophisticated, the tune is a little sweeter, but like
HIV or malaria the malady lingers on.
There are things the
Shire wants to conceal from you, even though you have an indisputable moral right
to know about them. It seems still
to be in the business of shielding sensitive or vulnerable reputations. No doubt some of those reputations belong
to past and present members of the council as well as to former employees.
It’s no accident that
while our corporate plans pay lip service to ‘empathy’, ‘respect’ and ‘courage’,
the magic word ‘transparency’—like its semantic relatives ‘honesty’ and
‘accountability’—is absolutely nowhere to be seen.
And for the purposes
of concealment the Shire relies on its top officers’ mastery of the mixed
bureaucratic martial arts: prevarication, obfuscation and evasiveness. It’s the language they use to answer
questions that gives their game away.
Help from the past
Some of you may remember
that in May of last year, and again in November, I addressed a series of quite
precise questions to the Shire about the YRCC. I don’t want to rehash my vain attempts on both occasions to
get satisfactory answers, but I haven’t forgotten the insight I gained from
them into what represents itself as the bureaucratic mind.
To recap, some of my
questions alluded to what the DLGC likes to call ‘historical issues’. Unlike some of our councillors
and virtually everybody under the age of 60, I’m a great believer in getting to
grips with the past.
That’s because doing
so helps us to find clues to understanding the present as it arises from the
past, and to forge directions for shaping the future. It provides warnings of what courses of action we would do well
to avoid and hints at possible unwanted and unintended consequences of whatever
we may decide to do.
As an example, Europe’s
recent, current and impending miseries might easily have been prevented or at
any rate mitigated if the continent’s leaders had all made a diligent study of what
has happened around the place and in the neighbourhood during the last 1500
years.
The principle I’m advocating
here applies no less to small country towns than to nations and
continents. In its own way, York
is a microcosm of the world. So,
of course, is everywhere else, including Mukinbudin, Dowerin and Aleppo.
My questions about
what the the Splurj Mahal had cost to build, where the money came from, how
often the building had been used as a convention centre and at what profit, if
any, to the people of York—all those were ignored. Instead of honest answers, I got a bland assurance that one
day all would be made known. That’s
local government for you: the bland leading the blind.
Yet as I’ve pointed
out before, all but one of my questions of May and November last year related
to matters of record. Answers did
not require deep thought or creative speculation. All that the respondent needed to do was look up records in
the files. If, as I strongly
suspect, some files were incomplete because records had gone missing, that information
should have formed part of the response.
Language
In an article, ‘A
Year’s Reconciliation of Council Coffers and Credibility’ posted recently on
the Shire of York Official Unofficial
Site, the admirable David Taylor went into bat for the truth about the YRCC
by reporting on an illuminating exchange of emails with the Executive Manager,
Corporate and Community Services.
(Don’t you love those
titles? When you see a title like
that, don’t you just know that a supersized salary is attached to it? Don’t you feel great knowing that a
tiny bit of that salary is siphoned annually from your purse or wallet?)
To get that kind of
title, you must learn to speak and write a special language, Gobbledygook,
designed to keep unpleasant facts at bay.
Here's an example, culled from David’s article.
David wanted to know
if it’s true that Shire employees get a discount for using the YRCC
gymnasium. Stone me, thinks the
Executive Manager Etc., there’s a curly one. So this is her answer:
I understand the frustration experienced regarding the
YRCC and the desire to see the matter resolved expeditiously. The process
outlined above [a six-stage management
review plan—J P] will provide an
opportunity for the community and YRCC users to be involved in each step and to
have provide [sic] into the options
for the improved future operations of the YRCC. The Shire is committed to this.
A brilliant bit of
evasiveness, that, almost championship level but for an unforced syntactical
error. Embarrassing query knocked
right out of the ring.
But she does inadvertently tell us
something important that we need to know, namely that no matter at what cost to
ratepayers the Shire intends to keep an 'improved' Splurj Mahal going until the arrival
of Armageddon—which according to the Book of Revelations will be announced by
the Last Trump, now is that spooky or what?
David wanted to know
if ‘stakeholders’ had been identified, and whether or not former Shire
President Pat Hooper was a member of the Forrest Oval Advisory Group. Alas, that question went wide and
disappeared into the stands, evoking no response other than soft screams and suppressed
reports from a minority of distant lookers-on.
Never mind ‘keep calm and carry on’—stay
healthy and vibrate!
Here’s my favourite
quote from the Executive Manager Etc.:
Sport and recreation is [sic] an important part of maintaining a healthy and vibrant
community. Council and Shire staff
are committed to not only [sic]
providing the best possible facilities to accommodate our community but also to
minimise [sic] the cost of services to
ratepayers while taking into account the need to promote economic development
for the town. These principles underpin
the review and will inform the resulting YRCC Business Plan.
And motherhood’s
wonderful too. Only three unforced
errors, otherwise a lovely bit of bureaucratic boilerplate prose articulated at
arm’s length from reality.
Most of us would agree
that sport and recreation contribute to the health and vibrancy of a community,
but while local government may well have a part to play in providing support
for sporting and recreational organisations, it should be a small part.
An ounce of private endeavour
is worth a ton of shire-owned enterprise.
Governments at every level have been for many decades taking over what
used to be individual and community responsibilities. As a result, we are at risk of turning into a tribe of
narcissistic mendicants relying on government to do stuff we ought to do for
ourselves—or if we can’t be bothered to do it for ourselves, we should learn
to do without.
If we took back some
of those responsibilities—basing our attitudes and actions on the principle of
‘user pays’, not as at present ‘loser pays’—I think we would be more likely to
achieve ‘a healthy and vibrant community’ and to ‘minimise the cost of services
to ratepayers’.
Sadly, though, we
would not require the services of the Executive Manager Etc., and I’m sure that
would be a considerable loss.
The Forrest Bar and Café
The Executive Manager
Etc. has acknowledged the existence of community disquiet about the Shire
running a restaurant in the YRCC. Many of us see this as breaching the
important principle of competitive neutrality to the detriment of other
munching and swigging stations in town.
So I was surprised to
discover that the Shire’s tavern is not being closed but has been re-christened the Forrest Bar and
Café. Here’s the bill of fare for
Friday as it appears on the Shire’s website. It all looks healthy, vibrant and delicious, but I
still think it’s wrong and unfair to local restaurant proprietors, and on
principle I won’t be eating or drinking there even if all the other local nosheries
and guzzleshops are forced to close.
The following letter appeared in the West Australian on 23 January 2017. Sums it all up, really. I hope the author hasn't laid himself open to unwanted visits from the ranger.
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| "Can you spare a moment, Shire President? I think the sporting clubs would like a word." |
