MORE ON THE SPLURJ MAHAL

Yet again, Shire appoints consultants to sort out its problems, favours opinions of sporting club representatives over those of everybody else

At its ordinary meeting on 26 June 2017, Council considered a report from Suzie Haslehurst, Executive Manager, Corporate and Community Services, regarding possible management models for the YRCC.

You can find Suzie’s report as appendix SYO69-06/17 on pages 49-53 of the current unconfirmed minutes.

I was delighted to see that Suzie’s report does not contain a single instance of the much-abused word ‘stakeholders’ (see my article posted on 23 May 2017) but refers instead to ‘users’ of the YRCC.

Having considered the report, Council resolved to ‘request’ the CEO to engage a consultancy firm, SGL Consulting Group, to investigate how each of the proposed models might work and at what cost to the Shire.   

Reformed community firebrand Cr Jane Ferro proposed the motion, which was seconded by Cr Pam Heaton.

I’m not too happy about the use of the word ‘request’.  The Council isn’t a supplicant.  It’s the CEO’s boss.  Its role is to instruct, not to request.  The CEO’s role, in summary, is to advise and, if legal to do so, obey. 

I mean no disrespect to the excellent Paul Martin, but as every blueblood knows, if you say please too often to the servants they will end up telling you what to do. 

And before you can say ‘Your Majesty’, you’ll have created a problem our mediaeval pommy ancestors called that of ‘the over-mighty subject’.  I think we know all about that problem in York.

By my reckoning, SGL Consulting Group is the seventh or eighth consultancy firm engaged over the last decade to advise on the operations of the YRCC.  It will be paid from an allocation of $10,000 included in the Shire’s draft 2017/18 Budget.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if SGL is willing to do the job for such a paltry reward.  I would expect them to follow the example of their predecessors and bill the Shire for several times that amount.

SGL and kindred branches of the WA consultancy industry might well go broke were it not for local governments like the Shire of York lining up like chickens outside those sumptuous Perth offices and squawking ‘Go on, pluck us!  Pluck us till it hurts!’

Management models

SGL will be asked to recommend ‘the model that provides the best outcome for the Shire, users and the community’—note the presumed descending order of importance—and to ‘report back to Council with a recommended course of action and timeline for implementation’.

Its job will involve reviewing three competing models:  the Goomalling model—to which we are told participants in the workshop were ‘cautiously responsive’—and two ‘outsourced models’.

The Goomalling model turns over responsibility for operating the bar and kitchen to a user-based incorporated association.  The association is also required to service the capital loan that paid for the centre, while the Shire provides maintenance, insurance and ‘some cleaning’.  The bowling club is responsible for maintaining the surface of the bowling green.   

Presumably, if this model were adopted in York, both tennis club and bowling club would have to maintain the surfaces of their greens.   As recent experience tells us, that would be a notable saving for ratepayers.

The Goomalling model seems to rely heavily on the availability of eager, hard-working volunteers from the sporting clubs.  That goes some way to explaining the cautious nature of the York sporting club response.

Outsourced model 1 would require the Shire to lease the bar and kitchen to a private operator.  The Shire would retain responsibility for ‘operation, maintenance and renewal of sporting facilities’.

This model would ostensibly relieve the Shire from the embarrassment of running a business in competition with local enterprises, thereby exorcising the worrisome spectre of competitive neutrality. 

To my mind, this would be a conjuring trick—mere sleight of hand.  The Shire would still be involved in a business arrangement with the lessee, which would feed some of its profits to the Shire in the form of rent. 

On the other hand, ratepayers would not be called upon to subsidize meals (as at present) to give the business a competitive edge.

Frankly, I don’t see a private operator being able to run a profitable gorge and guzzle business at the YRCC unless propped up with various forms of subsidy from the Shire. 

If I were SGL, I wouldn’t waste too much time and ratepayers’ money on this one.

Outsourced model 2 means that the Shire would pay a successful tenderer to manage the YRCC lock, stock and barrel ‘against agreed performance criteria’. 

Suzie is right to say that this model would reduce the burden on club volunteers, but I’m not sure I can agree with her that it would reduce the burden on the Shire, or more specifically on ratepayers. 

Is the premise of her argument that under this model the operator would be able to run the YRCC in all its aspects more cheaply and efficiently than the Shire can, with the result that the Shire would have to pay the operator less than it would otherwise have to spend?  Why would that necessarily be so? 

If she means that this model would reduce the moral burden on the Shire (competitive neutrality again), this too would be sleight of hand, because the operator would simply be paid to carry out work that the Shire would otherwise have to do.

Closer, but no cigar

For my money, the Goomalling model, whatever its imperfections, is the only one of the three that offers a plausible alternative to the current ramshackle, hideously costly arrangement.  It would have a modest chance of reducing the financial burden on ratepayers, while giving the sporting clubs opportunities to raise revenue for their activities.  

I don’t buy the nonsense about ‘the burden on over-stretched volunteers’ (Suzie’s report, p.51).  If people love their sport, they will work hard to keep it going—which is what sporting clubs used to do in the days before empire-building local governments and other public authorities opened the gate to mendicancy and profligate spending.

But the Goomalling model is no panacea.  It seems likely that whatever SGL may recommend, the hapless ratepayers of York will continue to be bled dry into the foreseeable future—or ‘going forward indefinitely’ in the current jargon—by the vampirical sporting clubs and their hangers-on, the gourmands and guzzlers of the tavern tosspot tippling team.

Suzie’s report lists the names of those representatives of ‘key user groups’ who attended the workshop held on 18 May 2017—from which, need I remind you, York ratepayers in general were rigorously excluded.  The name of former shire president Pat ‘Minority Report’ Hooper heads the list, proving as if further proof were needed that there’s no show without Punch. 

The report states that ‘It was acknowledged by attendees that the YRCC provides significant benefits to the community’.  I’ve yet to see any indication anywhere of what those ‘significant benefits’ might be in relation to the community at large. 

I’m almost willing to accept, to complete the quotation, that ‘the current operation works well for the majority of users’, but how, how often and how well does it work for the rest of us who are obliged to pay for it whether we use it or not?

Competitive neutrality

My impression from studying Suzie’s report is that the Shire is a tad uneasy about the issue of competitive neutrality, while the sporting club representatives don’t give the proverbial volitational exchange of gender-based bodily fluids about it and regard the opportunity to go on sucking up ratepayer-subsidized grub and grog as an inalienable human right.

According to the report, the tavern and restaurant are in business for an average of 23 days per month, with staff time averaging 531 hours per month.  The restaurant serves an average of 59 adult meals on Friday nights and 31 on Sunday nights, i.e. 90 such meals per week, as well as 23 children’s meals for Friday and Sunday combined.

At the YRCC, the Shire is running a retail hospitality business in competition with private operators.  Leaving aside any negative impact on competitors, I should like to see a full cost-benefit analysis of that business—one that compares the Shire’s full outlay, including all staff costs, with financial returns flowing as profit to the Shire.  Perhaps SGL will give us one.

No intangibles please, no nebulous platitudes—just dollars and cents will do nicely.

Having your say

Last week the Shire issued a media release (see below) inviting residents to a ‘drop in session’ on Wednesday where they will be able to ‘provide input’, i.e. share their opinions on what should be done about the YRCC.

Actually, there will be two drop in sessions: one in the afternoon for ‘interested community members and ratepayers’ and the other in the evening for ‘user groups’. 

As I’ve pointed out in the past, user groups have already been given greater opportunity than the rest of us to make their views known to the Shire.  

Why not organize a single drop in session for everybody?  Is this ‘divide and conquer', or an attempt, in the best James Best style, to allay fears of a riot?

I don’t think I shall be ‘dropping in’ to share my opinions.  I’ve said everything I want to say about the Splurj Mahal in the pages of this blog. 

Besides, I suspect that my turning up to such an event would be about as welcome as a rasher of bacon at a Muslim barbecue.