LOSER PAYS 3

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.

"Can you spare a moment, Shire President? I think the sporting clubs would like a word."