JURMANNS INVADE BEVERLEY

‘Resistance useless’, terrified residents cry

Some York readers may remember Jacky Jurmann and her husband Tim.  Jacky was employed for three years from 2011 as the Shire of York’s planning officer or ‘manager of planning’, while Tim served the Shire as a building inspector.

In 2014, both Jacky and her husband jumped ship.  Jacky set herself up as director of a consultancy, Glenwarra Development Services.  In that capacity she continued for some time to provide advice to the Shire regarding SITA’s landfill application. 

Why did she resign?  Well, as I reported on this blog in August 2015 (see http://shireofyork6302realvoice.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/the-history-channel_15.html ), the popular explanation at the time was that she had done so in anger because the Shire had refused or ignored her request for it to delete all references to her from the ill-fated (i.e. rigorously suppressed) Fitz Gerald Report of 2014.

Enter Mike Fitz Gerald

Unluckily for Jacky, the Fitz Gerald Report (FGR) is freely available at various places on the Internet, for example at http://yorkwatransparency.weebly.com/uploads/4/2/7/1/42713461/york_final_report.pdf . 

As book reviewers used to say, it’s a rattling good read.  I commend it to the upstanding burghers of Beverley, where Jacky (and Tim) are currently employed.

The Shire of York, under then Shire President Matthew Reid, appointed Mr Mike Fitz Gerald to investigate serious questions concerning the conduct of then CEO Ray Hooper.  

Mr. Fitz Gerald’s investigation led him to raise additional questions about the conduct of Shire employees alleged to have acted maliciously under CEO Hooper’s direction (or on his caprice). 

One of those employees was Jacky Jurmann.

According to Mr Fitz Gerald, Jacky was an aggressively uncooperative witness, refusing to answer his questions on the supercilious and irrelevant grounds that she was a professional planner and he was not.   

I’d say that refusal was a mistake, because she passed up the opportunity to defend herself against allegations that as York’s manager of planning she had behaved, presumably at Ray Hooper’s behest, in ways unbefitting a professional planner (or any kind of professional, come to that).

In particular, she might have been able to tell us if (or explain why) she dealt as alleged in the report with planning issues relating to a couple of local enterprises, now sadly defunct, namely Saint’s Diner and The Dog’s Bollocks.

 I don’t propose to detail in this article the questions posed in the FGR about Jacky Jurmann.  Instead, I’ll just leave you with the link (given above) and a list of the numbered paragraphs that refer specifically to her, namely 2, 7.19, 7.21, 7.22, 7.49, 7.59, 7.62, 7.63, and 7.64.

My advice is to read the whole report.  It won’t take long, and you might come away with some valuable insights into what can go wrong in a small rural community under the thumb of a dictatorial CEO who is aided and abetted by a couple of gormless shire presidents (neither of them, I hasten to add, the public-spirited Matthew Reid) and a bunch of lickspittle councillors.

You might also find yourself wondering why the Department of Local Government insisted that the York Shire Council suppress the FGR; why it persecuted Matthew Reid and dismissed the Council for authorising the report; why the allegations the report contains have never been properly followed up by the CCC or any other government agency; why no politician of any stripe found the story interesting enough to give it a parliamentary airing, and why our current councillors seem to have conspired with successive shire administrations to keep the report officially under wraps.

Read it and weep.

Jacky reinvents herself, but I guess she’s still the same gal

In January of this year, the Shire of Beverley appointed Jacky Jurmann to the position of Shire Planner.  At the same time, it found work for husband Tim as building inspector.

For now, Jacky is also filling in as manager of health services.

Hold on a moment.  I must stop calling her ‘Jacky’.   She isn’t ‘Jacky’ any more.  On the Shire of Beverley website, her name appears as ‘Jacqui’. 

I must say the new name does seem more aristocratic, or at any rate, less, shall we say, bogan.

But to me the change seems a bit like putting your hands over your eyes in the hope that nobody can see you.

Despite her change of name, Jacqui still appears as Jacky Jurmann on the FIGJAM website Linked In.  There, she lists her qualifications as a ‘postgraduate’ bachelor’s degree (surely a bachelor’s is an ‘undergraduate’ degree?) from UNE in urban and regional planning; a master’s in ‘social ecology’ from Western Sydney, and an associate degree in health and building surveying from Sydney TAFE.

For those who don’t know what ‘social ecology’ might be, it’s an approach based on the radical ideas of the late US anarchist and utopian philosopher Murray Bookchin to the analysis (or in the modern jargon, ‘deconstruction’) of social and environmental issues. 

In some ways, social ecology is a fine example of the green-left nonsense peddled in today’s universities as an alternative (or antidote) to despised activities like traditional scholarship, rational argument, free and open debate and the use of commonsense.

York readers will be interested to know that real estate agent Michael Watts is listed on Jacky/Jacqui’s Linked In page as a person who ‘endorses’ her local government knowledge and skills. 

Mr Watts cracks a mention in the FGR as chairperson of the former Shire-sponsored York Tourist Bureau and Visitors’ Centre.   That enterprise fell in a heap after his daughter, controversially employed by the bureau as a bookkeeper despite a prior criminal conviction for stealing, diverted a very large sum of her employer’s money to her own use and purposes.   You can read all about it in numbered paragraph 5 of the FGR.

Jacky Jurmann as York's planning officer, 2014

Muscle car madness in Beverley

It didn’t take long for Jacky/Jacqui to make her mark as Beverley’s Shire Planner.  She’d only been in the job for a couple of weeks when she found herself facing a real social ecology challenge—an application to set up a muscle car tuning shop at 46 Dawson Street.

Allegedly, the applicant, Adrian ‘Pip’ Smith, is a friend and neighbour of Shire President Dee Ridgway, which of course if true would have had no relevance whatsoever to the success of his application. 

I only mention that because when the application came before council, a naughty resident asked during PQT if councillors were there to represent residents of Beverley ‘or their mate’.  Council responded that it was ‘quite offended’ by the question, and anyway four of the eight councillors present didn’t know Mr Smith, so there.

Another question came from a tenant of one of the Shire’s ‘independent living units’ located diagonally across the street from the proposed development.  The questioner wanted to know how Council could ‘even consider the construction of a noisy muscle car repair business’ when her tenancy contract guaranteed quiet enjoyment of the unit.

(As any lawyer will tell you, a tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment restricts the landlord’s right to enter the property and has nothing to do with noise, but let that pass.)

Council’s response was illuminating.  The Shire, it said, ‘takes the application on face value and trust from the information provided by the applicant and is informed and guided by the recommendations of the Shire Planner’, i.e. Jacky/Jacqui Jurmann. 

Even more illuminating was the response to a second question from the same resident pointing out that Council planning policy recommends that ‘a generic 200 meter buffer be provided between motor body works or service stations and sensitive land uses, such as residential where site specific investigation[s] have not been undertaken’. 

In this instance, the distance between the proposed development and sensitive residential land use was ‘considerably less than 200 meters’, and more residential units were on the way, so had councillors previously met to decide on the suitability of this application and if so, where were the minutes and what was the vote?

Illuminating response no. 2:  ‘…the Shire Planner has delegated authority to assess planning applications on behalf of Council’. 

Deconstruct that, suckers.  The question was about decision, not assessment, and the important 200-meter element of the question was simply brushed aside.  To York readers, that kind of response will have a familiar ring, like the sound of a dud coin flicked at a muscle car door.

Social ecology in action

If it means anything in relation to municipal planning, social ecology must imply evaluating a proposed development against a variety of factors concerning where and how people live, why they live there, how they are likely to be affected if the development is allowed to go through, and how their lives are governed and directed by local hierarchies (Bookchin’s word, not mine) wielding power and influence over them.

So let’s take a look at some facts about Beverley, its population and its local government, Beverley Shire Council.  After that, we’ll have a digression on muscle cars, followed by a closer examination of the application itself, written objections from residents, and the applicant’s response to those objections.

The Shire of Beverley

Beverley is a small town located at a distance of 131 kms from Perth and 34 kms south of York along the Great Southern Highway.  While systems of local government have operated in Beverley since 1843, the Shire Council (motto: ‘Progress by Perseverance’) dates from 1960 and the Shire’s present administrative structure from 1995, when the Local Government Act, exemplifying the neo-conservative spirit of those days, replaced Shire Clerks with a corporate set-up headed by CEOs.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, as the old saying goes, but in this case they did fix it, good and proper.

According to the Shire’s website, the population of Beverley stands at 1755.  Of that number, 1294 qualify as electors, which means that roughly 74% of the population is old enough to vote.  By comparison, the corresponding percentage (rounded) for York is 70.6%, for Merredin 61% and for Moora 62%.

On the basis of those figures, I tentatively conclude that Beverley may have a more elderly population than those other Wheatbelt towns, a conclusion reinforced by the information that the Shire flag was flown at half-mast eleven times in the brief period from Christmas Eve 2016 to 9 February 2017 (I'm assuming that most if not all of those deaths were from age-related natural causes).

From a ‘social ecological’ point of view, such a preponderance of older people in Beverley should surely have some bearing on the kind of enterprise permitted in or close to a residential area—more particularly, within 200 meters of ‘independent living units’ occupied for the most part by elderly folk. 

Moreover, one might think that members of the local decision-making ‘hierarchy’, i.e. the Shire Council, some of whom may themselves match the description ‘no spring chicken’, would listen respectfully to the relatively youthful new shire planner, and then vote to reject her recommendation to allow the development. 

That isn’t what happened in Beverley on 21 February 2017, when Jacky/Jacqui’s recommendation was adopted and Mr Smith’s application unanimously approved—subject, of course, to conditions and ‘advice notes’, of which more later.

Beverley has nine councillors.  One of them, Cr Darryl Brown, missed the meeting because he was in hospital following a brutal assault.  So don’t blame him. 

Why all the fuss about muscle cars?

It occurs to me that not everybody knows what ‘muscle cars’ are or much about them.  The term is American, dates from the 1950s and referred originally to sports cars fitted with powerful, high performance V8 engines making them capable of high speed and extremely rapid acceleration.

The first such car was probably the ‘supercar’ Oldsmobile Rocket 88 (1949), but the heyday of the muscle car was the 1960s and 1970s, when high performance versions of standard vehicles were introduced first to the US market and later in Australia.  Famous US examples of muscle cars include the Pontiac GTO (1964), the Chevrolet Malibu SS (1965), and the Ford Mustang (1964-73).

In Australia, Ford introduced the Falcon GT in1968 and the Falcon Cobra in 1978.  Holden introduced the Monaro in 1968 and the Torana in 1974.  Chrysler’s contribution included the Valiant Hardtop (1969) and Charger RT (1971).

The market for muscle cars waned during the 1980s, probably because they cost so much to run and maintain.  Many of them are now collector’s items, only rarely seen on the road.

What’s the attraction of muscle cars?  It’s the enticing combination of fast acceleration and power, which as your mechanic will tell you can generate a whole lot of noise. 

In fact, when you read comments on sites frequented by muscle car enthusiasts, it’s easy to form the impression that lots of noise is what muscle cars are really all about.  One owner boasts about the ability of his modified Ford Corvette to produce more than 130 decibels, which is roughly equivalent to the noise made by a packed footy stadium in full cry.  I very much doubt it can, but you get my point.

Back in the day when muscle cars thronged the roads, I had the impression that the typical muscle car aficionado was the kind of young fellow who considered that the ability to produce, at will, for public consumption, al fresco or in confined spaces, a gigantic, asphyxiating, eye-watering, ear-popping, throat-closing, teeth-rattling, bone-shaking, barbecue-stopping expulsion of intestinal gases, with appropriate aromatic accompaniment, was the surest measure of masculine prowess in every sphere of social life—especially the romantic.

But the world has changed since then.  The image now in my mind is that of a middle-aged, cashed up collector free of youth’s illusions, especially those relating to romance.

In Australia, the noise capability of newly manufactured vehicles is regulated under Section 71 of the Motor Vehicle Standards Act 1989.  Noise emissions from vehicles capable of producing 320 kilowatts of power or more are restricted to 83 decibels. 

Noise from vehicles on the road is governed by road traffic law.   In WA, control of excessive noise emissions from business premises falls to the lot of local government environmental health inspectors—a position currently held by Beverley’s shire planner.

Muscle car advocates like to remind their detractors that some household appliances and home handyman power tools push out much more noise than 83 decibels.  For example, a food processor may produce 95 decibels and a handyman’s drill as many as 100. 

However, the use of such tools and appliances is usually limited to short bursts of activity in and around the home, constituting a minor domestic irritation rather than a major public disturbance.  We don’t tend to run them day after day for six days every week from early morning to late afternoon.

1970s Holden Monaro GTS (the young lady is now a grandma, maybe yours)

So what did Mr Smith apply to do?

Mr Smith sought Shire approval to build a motor vehicle repair shop where he can house and restore his muscle car collection.  At the same time, his son James will run his own business, RHE Performance, from the premises.

According to Mr Smith, his son’s business ‘specialises in high end engine building, transplantation of late model engines into older cars and the testing and tuning of those cars’.

I believe ‘tuning and testing’ of muscle cars would normally involve a particularly noisy and expensive process known as ‘dyno-tuning’.  

Sensibly, the Shire Council has prohibited dyno-tuning on site pending the installation of soundproofing by way of ‘a purposely designed acoustic enclosure’ to be approved by the Shire ‘in consultation with the Department of Environmental Regulation’.

Mr Smith’s plans as presented to Council (if I’ve understood them correctly) include the construction of a two-storey edifice comprising office, workshop and space for storing vehicles with upstairs accommodation for a caretaker.  A floor area covering 384 sq. m. is to be set aside ‘for…storage of completed vehicles’—which he says ‘are for the owner’s enjoyment and are not being restored as a commercial venture’—and for his son’s business, RHE Performance, which presumably is run as a commercial venture. 

So what Mr Smith proposed is a combination of space for his collection of classic muscle cars and for a functioning ‘high end’ engine building, testing and tuning workshop equipped for various aspects of vehicle restoration and repair.

Mr. Smith’s plans also include two disabled parking spaces fronting Dawson Street and additional parking and vehicle entry elsewhere on the premises.

His application proposes opening hours from 8 am to 6 pm Monday to Saturday.  Council cut back the Saturday hours to 4 pm.

As a potential benefit to the community at large, Mr Smith foresees the possibility of ‘an influx of cashed up car enthusiasts who may spend a considerable amount of money in local business establishments’.   In a later submission, he added that he would be creating ‘another new business for the town which could have economic benefit by way of bring[ing] car clubs on their cruises…’ (Does he intend to charge an entrance fee?)

None of that would be music to the ears of elderly folk, craving peace and quiet, inhabiting  ‘independent living units’ across the road.  But who cares about the elderly these days, even in towns like Beverley where flags are flown at half-mast almost every week to farewell residents taking off for a better world where every councillor is incorruptible, an angel or a saint?

Objections

The Shire received 16 notices of objection to the development, eight from residents of Dawson Street and one from the owner of a property in Dawson Street currently living in Queensland.  The rest appear to have come from concerned citizens living elsewhere in Beverley, including the secretary of the local CWA.

Overwhelmingly, the objectors were worried about noise and air pollution.  One wrote tersely:  ‘ I know the so-called work on muscle cars better than anyone in Beverley and I don’t want it in my street ever’. 

Others said that this kind of business belongs in an industrial area, not a residential street; that the proposed hours of operation were too long; that there might be problems associated with the disposal of toxic wastes from degreasers; that the Shire would not be able to enforce permitted hours of operation; that a fire danger would be posed by proximity to the Beverley Tyre Service, and that property values would decline.

One objector alluded to the possibility that customers of such a business might engage in anti-social behaviour.  In her view, ‘…people, mostly males, have muscle cars because they [the cars] are loud, fast, visually appealing and exciting.  Not opposed to their existence but do not want to see them on my street.  Will we see the occasional street drag up Dawson Street or the highway?’

The applicant responds to his critics

Summarised alongside those objections are Mr Smith’s responses to them.  He disputes them in almost every particular, especially regarding noise and toxic waste, going so far as to suggest in poetic vein that the ‘presence of beautifully restored road-going automotive art would only enhance the amenity of the area, with many residents fondly remembering their younger days spent driving and doing what young people did in that era’.

I can’t speak for everybody, but driving is the least thing I remember from ‘my salad days, when I was green in judgment’, and much of what I do remember from those days I’ve spent half a lifetime trying desperately to forget and hoping nobody will ever find out.

A more expanded version of Mr Smith’s responses appears in the later (handwritten) submission mentioned earlier.  He gets a bit tetchy at times, the result, I think, of a genuine inability to understand why any honest person would want to stomp on his dreams. 

He accuses an unnamed person who had circulated a flyer opposing his proposed development of being ‘well meaning but totally uninformed’, and of making a ‘ludicrous’ statement about muscle car noise and ‘scurrulous [sic] accusations’ regarding the toxicity of degreasers. 

He concludes: ‘I urge Council to see these objections for what they are, which is a person with a lot of time on their hands, with very little information who has decieved [sic] other people into objecting based on false and misleading information…’

Where have I seen that kind of prose before?  Ah yes, in York, in the good old days of the Hooper-Boyle-Hooper ascendancy.  In a strange way I’m glad that sentiments like those expressed continue to influence the recommendations of local government planners.  Why should polite and rational discourse have all the best tunes?

What the planner recommended (and Council decided)

Which brings us back to Shire Planner and social ecologist Jacky/Jacqui Jurmann, whose recommendation to Beverley’s Shire Council was accepted with only one tiny amendment regarding dyno-tuning.

Not being a qualified planner, and mindful of her alleged contemptuous treatment of Mike Fitz Gerald, I’m not going to undertake a detailed critique of Shire Planner Jurmann’s recommendation to Council.   A few stray comments will suffice.

She points out that the proposed land use as ‘a motor vehicle repair station’ is discretionary, meaning Council may allow the application after giving due notice of it to the public. 

It must therefore also mean that Council may refuse the application, though she doesn’t say so.  I suppose it’s just a matter of emphasis.  Perhaps she had the impression that Council had already made up its mind; anyway, there appears to have been no significant debate on the application, and approval was unanimous.

On the subject of environmental protection, she notes that EPA policy ‘does not specifically provide guidance for mechanical workshops’, but ‘does recommend a generic 200 metre buffer be provided between motor body works or stations and sensitive land uses, such as residential…The site is considerably less than 200 metres from residences and therefore further investigations may be required regarding the management of potential emissions, such as noise and odour’.

I can’t help feeling a tad uneasy about this.  How much less is ‘considerably less’?  Why no actual measurement?  Who will carry out further investigations if required, and at whose instigation?  Will the burden of forcing change fall on the weary shoulders of elderly residents living nearby, and how good a chance will they have of convincing their local authority to impose further restrictions on a business in full swing?

It is more likely they will be reviled as ‘nimbys’ and ‘troublemakers’ whose opinions and interests are of paltry account compared with those of a wealthy and well-connected man of business.  I think we get a foretaste of that in the gentleman’s response to his critics, discussed above.

All that said, I must admit to admiring the Shire Planner’s tone of breezy optimism.  Environmental impacts like noise, odour, air and wastes ‘can be managed through the use of acoustic enclosures, ventilation, hours of operation and waste management practices…’

Hours of operation?  The Shire Planner’s recommendation is for the business to operate from 8 am to 6 pm from Monday to Friday and 8 am to 4 pm on Saturday.  The applicant wanted to stay open until 6 pm on Saturday.

This reduction is small comfort for the elderly residents of ‘independent living units’ across the road, but surely a spark of recognition on the Shire Planner’s (and Council’s) part that the installation of a mechanical workshop ‘considerably less’ than 200 meters from where they live will not bring those residents peace in the time that remains to them.

In fairness, it must be acknowledged that Council has attached a slew of conditions and advice notes to their approval that on the face of it transforms the proposed business from a muscle car operation to something resembling a standard mechanical workshop.

But I think they have missed the point, which is that a development of the kind proposed—even just an ordinary mechanical workshop—simply doesn’t belong in a predominantly residential street, let alone a lot closer than 200 meters to a group of independent living units designed and built for the elderly.

And if the applicant is correct in envisaging hordes of eager muscle car enthusiasts converging on Dawson Street, driving muscle cars of their own, what effect will that have on the character and amenity of the area?

The Shire Planner, in her advice to Council, mentions a new general industrial area planned for south of the Beverley townsite.

Surely it is in such an area that Mr Smith’s proposed development properly belongs. 

APPENDIX Psychology 101: Some observations on Muscle Car Syndrome  

Marking territory

Freaking out the girlfriend

Feeling the burn on the way to the crematorium

Who needs a 6-pack if you've got a V8?

A guide to social interaction

Dying for a smoke

A smoke to die for

THIS SPORTING (AND MUNCHING) LIFE

 Note: new material added 17042017

Shire of York thumbs its nose at Competitive Neutrality, uses ratepayers’ money to subsidise costly seafood meals for local gourmands and visitors to the town

York hostelries set to lose out again this Easter in the battle for the tourist dollar

Easter used to be a prosperous time for businesses in York.

 Sunny weather, plenty of visitors seeking a pleasant weekend away from the city, interesting things to do and see, money changing hands in local restaurants, cafés, hotels and shops, an atmosphere of cheerful optimism pervading the CBD, happy faces everywhere—what more could a rural community ask?

Well, that’s what it used to be like.   The tourists still come, perhaps in smaller numbers, but now there are many fewer businesses in town to benefit from their largesse.

One hotel, the magnificent Imperial, has stood empty for several years, and is rumoured to be awaiting resurrection as an office block (surely somebody is having us on). 

The others, the Castle and the York, don’t seem to be doing anything like as well as in happier times.  Both the York and Settlers are struggling hard to regain their former glory after years of bearing ‘Closed’ signs on their respective front doors. 

As for restaurants and cafés, the one that used to be Bugatti’s is closed, Mad Mo along the Terrace is fighting to survive, Yorkie’s carriage has not survived the vicissitudes of management changes—the last especially catastrophic—and the small establishment across the street from the Castle has also faded away. 

As for Saint’s Diner…

Thank goodness for Jules and the Flourmill Café, both of which still manage to attract locals and tourists alike and against all odds seem still to be doing well, though probably nothing like as well as they deserve.

In a recent issue of the Weekend West, the former proprietor of the Imperial, now settled in Albany and doing very nicely there, thank you, alluded to the period when his hotel in York prospered.  That, he told a reporter, was ‘before they killed the town’.

I think we all know who the unspecified ‘they’ might be.  In fact, most of them still walk cockily among us, middle fingers pointing resolutely heavenwards, faces permanently wreathed in a sly and jolly grin because they are confident that whatever their fellow ratepayers may demand, the Shire of York will go on propping up their favourite watering hole, courtesy of ratepayers, with a generous wad of cash.

‘They’ are folk who have been happy to sacrifice the welfare of local businesses and a majority of residents to the interests of the sporting clubs and the middle-aged and elderly club hangers-on who regularly avail themselves of subsidised grub and grog in the Shire’s licensed tavern, now doing brisk business as the Forrest Bar and Café.

At the risk of providing that enterprise with free advertising, I reproduce below its splendid bill of fare for the coming Easter weekend. It was emailed to me yesterday by a kind friend of this blog.

Forrest Bar and Café

Seafood menu selection

Bar opens 11am & meals service commences 5.30pm

Oysters Natural with two dressings $14 (6 oysters)

Asian-style squid and noodle salad $15

Creamy smoked salmon fettucine $18

Thai seafood laksa $18

Sizzling chilli garlic prawns and bread $20

Veal Parmigiana with chips OR spaghetti $20

Snapper fillet & chips – either grilled or battered $20

Chilli mussels, to your liking, served with bread $20

Seafood Mornay pie served with chips $25

Reef and beef: Scotch fillet with prawns, garlic sauce &

served with either chips/salad or potato/veges $33

Extras: Chips or Side salad $4, Sweet potato wedges $5.50

Kids’ $7 meals

Fish bites and chips
Small serve of lasagne and chips Nuggets and chips
Small spaghetti Bolognaise

Desserts $7.50

Rich chocolate mousse
Sticky date pudding and butterscotch sauce Easter rocky road cheesecake

Scrumptious offerings indeed, at extremely competitive prices—about 20-30% less, I’d say, than a customer could expect to stump up for equivalent fare in a privately owned bistro or restaurant, and well worth a trip out of town away from the CBD.   

Such is the power of a Shire of York subsidy.

It’s not far-fetched to suggest that when tourist families dine at the Forrest Bar and Restaurant, the open-handed ratepayers of York treat them to dessert and possibly the kids’ meals as well.

I suppose that for York residents who dine there, the Forrest Bar and Café provides a convenient opportunity to scratch back a few dollars of the outlandish rates sucked out of their pockets by a rapacious local government year after year.

But at what cost to the welfare of the town? How many more businesses are destined for the gurgler if the Forrest Bar and Restaurant continues to draw people away from the centre of town?

How many empty shops must we have before York's hospitality industry, already diminished, finally sickens and dies?

NB: You can find the above menu on the Shire of York website at
http://recreation.york.wa.gov.au/Profiles/reccentre/Assets/ClientData/What_s_on_16_4_17.pdf

******* 

Submissions are now available on the Shire of York website

In a comment appended to my previous posted article, I mentioned that I had responded with couple of questions to a letter from Ms Suzie Haslehurst, Executive Manager Corporate and Community Services.

In her reply, Suzie informed me that the submissions formed part of the agenda for the April meeting of Council.  You will find them at

http://www.york.wa.gov.au/Profiles/york/assets/moduledata/councilmeetings/4e55150e-29c8-43f5-8308-ae4932591d59/2.0/Appendices%20-%20SY039-0417%20-%20YRCC%20Submissions.pdf

 The Shire received a total of 12 submissions, comprising two from sporting clubs (Lawn Tennis and Bowling, signed respectively by club presidents Gary Lawrence and Pat Hooper), two from local businesses (York Olive Oil Company and York Palace Hotel), and the remainder from ‘the community’.

One of the community submissions was the work of Mrs Sheryl Russo, who as the spouse of the manager of the Forrest Bar and Café mysteriously omitted to declare an interest—unlike Nola and Richard Bliss, of the York Palace Hotel, who as we would all no doubt expect of them scrupulously observed the proprieties.

Other community submissions came from Deanne Slater, Bill Roy, Tanya Richardson, Jan Underwood, Roma Paton, Kirrie and Jamie Edis, and your humble and obedient servant, me.

The Shire has prefaced the submissions collectively with a useful synopsis of each one.  This reveals that five of them advert positively to the ‘User Pays’ principle while a sixth states that users should pay ‘standard industry fees’, which is at least a nod in the same direction.

I'll have more to say about the submissions when I’ve given them full and earnest consideration.   Meanwhile, here is the text of the exchange so far of emails between Suzie Haslehurst and me.

From: James Plumridge [mailto:bljp@westnet.com.au]
Sent: Sunday, 9 April 2017 2:05 PM
To: Records <records@york.wa.gov.au>
Subject: I159723 - CCP.7 - YRCC Submission

Attention Suzie Haslehurst, EMCCS

Dear Suzie,

I refer to your letter of 4 April 2017.

Please let me know (a) if the 'proposed options' referred to in your letter include only the options canvassed in your discussion paper and not others that may have been proposed in submissions from the public, and (b) if those submissions will be published (presumably on the Shire's website) before the 'workshopping' process is due to begin.

Yours sincerely

James Plumridge

On 13/04/2017 3:58 PM, Suzie Haslehurst wrote:

Dear James

Thank you for your email on 10 April.  In answer to your queries, the agenda for the April Council meeting is now on the Shire’s website and you’ll note the public submissions received have been included both for Council’s and the public’s information.  As outlined in the agenda report, we’re now collecting supporting information from other Shires following site visits and this information, along with the submissions received will inform the selection of options to be workshopped by Council and then with stakeholders.

Regards

Suzie Haslehurst

Executive Manager

Corporate & Community Services

Shire of York 

On 13/04/2017 5:24 PM, I replied:

Dear Suzie

Thank you for your response.

Who are the 'stakeholders' you refer to?  Does the term include ratepayers in general, or is it restricted to representatives of sporting clubs and perhaps habitual users of the tavern?

I would suppose that every one of York's ratepayers, without exception, has a considerable 'stake' in the future of the YRCC.

Regards

James Plumridge

SUBMISSION - YRCC REVIEW DISCUSSION PAPER

 

The Chief Executive Officer

Shire of York

PO Box 22

York WA 6302

30 March 2017

By email to records@york.wa.gov.au

Submission—YRCC Review Discussion Paper

Let me begin by thanking the Shire for providing this opportunity for public comment on options for the future management of the YRCC.  In particular, I congratulate the author of the Shire’s review discussion paper on having comprehensively canvassed relevant issues and for having summarised important financial information that appears up to now to have been diligently withheld from the public gaze.

As you may know, I have written extensively on my blog The REAL Voice of York about a variety of issues pertaining to the origins, history and present situation of the YRCC.  While at times I may have been mistaken as to detail, the discussion paper has provided me with no reason to resile from the main thrust of my opinion. 

In short, I believe that the project was poorly conceived and designed, incompetently constructed, ineptly managed and from the beginning misrepresented as an enterprise that would result in beneficial outcomes for the York community as a whole but at no serious cost to ratepayers. 

Instead, the project has generally benefited only a minority of members of the community, especially those belonging to various sporting clubs, and the degree of that benefit is itself questionable.  It is at least arguable that from a social, self-reliance and fundraising standpoint, the clubs (with the possible exception of the Hockey Club, which seems to have done quite well out of the venture) may have been better off in their previous accommodation.

Cost

What is not arguable is that the YRCC has imposed a massive financial impost on ratepayers leading to huge rate hikes over several years that many ratepayers resent and are finding it hard to contend with.   It comes as no surprise to learn that as of February 2017 some 66% of current rates ($1,217,633) remain outstanding, along with 34% ($622,267) from previous years (see SY029-03-17, March OCM agenda, p.66).  

I read somewhere recently that the Wheatbelt is the most socially and economically impoverished region in WA.  These are certainly tough times for the people of York, who are required to pay rates of metropolitan dimensions in return for a much inferior level of public amenity than most metropolitan local governments are able to provide. 

Analysis of the Shire’s discussion paper reveals the great proportion of municipal funds that have been consumed by construction, repair and maintenance of the YRCC.  Meanwhile, roads and other projects have been sadly neglected, to the detriment both of residents and visitors to York.

Those developments have occurred despite the involvement of several expensive consultants (six according to the discussion paper, or seven counting the quantity surveyors Ralph Beattie Bosworth, referred to in the 2008 report of the ‘leisure consultancy’ A Balanced View as authors of a ‘concept plan’ for the project).  

Notwithstanding that involvement, the Shire seems never to have formally adopted a definitive business plan to guide and direct the management of the YRCC, or to have exercised restraint and commonsense in its approach to spending on the project.  

Optimism

Regretfully, I cannot share the optimistic view maintained in the discussion paper (p. 15) that the YRCC ‘has the potential to become a facility that the whole community can enjoy and be proud of and one that contributes to the economy’. 

While I agree—up to a point—that providing sporting and recreation facilities ‘is an investment in the health and well-being of a community’, I remain unconvinced that this particular ‘investment’ has contributed much to the physical, social or psychological welfare of more than a small fraction of York’s inhabitants, if indeed of those. 

On the contrary, I believe it has created anger and division in the community, imposed an unfair financial burden on the majority of ratepayers, and threatened, by including a tavern and restaurant among its facilities, the livelihood of local business people and their employees. 

I would venture a guess that the YRCC has played no small part in the decline of York over the past few years from a vibrant tourist attraction focussed mainly on the CBD to its present relatively drab and cheerless condition.

Above all, the discussion paper makes clear that the YRCC operates at a thumping loss, every cent of which is made up from the rates.   Health and wellbeing is one thing; systematic impoverishment of our community is quite another.

‘Convention Centre’

Significantly, the original master plan for the redevelopment of the Forrest Oval Precinct did not envisage the construction of a convention centre such as now purportedly exists.   The idea of having a convention centre was an afterthought, first put forward in a revised master plan cobbled together to meet the funding rules of the Country Local Government Fund.  The centre was supposed to seat 250 participants.  I think it would have difficulty accommodating fewer than half that number.

The discussion paper indicates that this facility could be ‘aggressively’ promoted both in the region and Perth as a locus for conferences, seminars and the like (conventions tend to be much bigger affairs). 

Perhaps it’s worth a try, but Perth is well provided with conference facilities, and our building as it stands is not an ideal conference environment.  The acoustics are poor, the air-conditioning problematic, the structure barn-like and uninviting, and the immediate proximity of a bar, while superficially attractive, could well pose an unwelcome distraction to participants and organisers alike.   

Perhaps the first two of those objections could be overcome—no doubt at the usual outlandish cost to ratepayers.

The Tavern and Restaurant/Café

A local government should not be operating a facility that takes custom from local business owners, who especially in these straitened times battle to make ends meet and provide employment. 

In the absence, as is usually the case these days, of a teeming flow of visitors to York, proprietors of cafés, pubs and restaurants have to rely to a great extent on local trade.  A facility like the tavern and restaurant is capable of making a big dent in the viability of their businesses.

This objection is compounded by the astonishing disclosure that ratepayers—including those business owners—are willy-nilly contributing to an operational subsidy that enables the facility in question to serve food and drink at discounted prices.  This has been justified on the basis that ‘full cost pricing’ will drive patrons away, forcing the Shire to increase the amount of the operational subsidy.  I invite the Shire to meditate on the topsy-turvy morality of that arrangement.

By what seems to me a process of creative accounting, the tavern and restaurant have been made in financial reports to show a small but persistent profit.  Unless I am greatly mistaken, this happy result is achieved to some extent by ignoring the full cost of employing staff. 

At present, the Shire employs a full-time Centre Manager on a scale of $72,361 to $78,128 and a part-time Catering Manager on a scale of $48,000 to $52,000 (figures taken from the advertisements for those positions, so they may be out of date).  I’m told that it also provides the Centre Manager with subsidised accommodation, the cost of which, if that is true, should be factored into the equation.  Casual staff are also employed at the facility.

On p.11, the discussion paper recommends that the Centre Manager should cease being responsible for bar management duties, which should then devolve to a new position, that of Bar Manager.  That, the paper argues, would leave the Centre Manager free ‘to attract bookings and develop programs’.  Maybe so, but some might regard such a step as an expensive move in support of a nebulous outcome—a move, moreover, that might reduce the profitability of the bar.

The discussion paper correctly observes (p. 7) that the principle of competitive neutrality applies only to local government businesses ‘where annual income exceeds $200,000’.  So far as I can tell, the tavern and restaurant do not generate that level of income, but that is hardly the point, especially given the unfair competitive advantage conferred on the enterprise by the Shire’s operating subsidy.

Options

My first thought on contemplating the options presented in the discussion paper was that something was missing.  Those are not the only options we should be asked to think about.

For example, we might consider, in the first instance, simply closing down the centre for a year or two pending the adoption of a detailed business plan based on sound principles and acceptable, as determined perhaps by plebiscite, to the whole community.  If nothing else, that would take some temporary pressure off the rates.  During that period, no money would be spent on upgrading or repairing sporting facilities, unless the sporting clubs themselves were to provide it. 

Which brings me to my most important point:  that whatever option is finally adopted, it should be governed as far as possible by the principle of ‘user pays’.  No operational subsidy from the rates, no upgrading of sporting facililities at ratepayers’ expense, no Shire funding of centre employees—only basic repair and maintenance of the fabric, and repayment of currently existing loan repayments, to be met from municipal funds.  Such an arrangement would best accord with assurances given to the people of York when the construction of the centre was first broached.

As for the options proposed in the discussion paper, I find it difficult to decide among them because they have not been costed, and information gleaned by the Shire from its visits to other recreation centres has not yet been made available.

Having said that, if I were forced to choose today, I would lean towards Option 2, the Sporting Association option, which effectively hands over responsibility for the centre and its facilities to an incorporated association formed from representatives of the sporting clubs.  

I would do so with this proviso, that while the Shire must retain responsibility for loan repayments and depreciation, it should not be responsible for ‘asset renewal’ to the extent of upgrading sporting facilities like tennis courts and bowling greens.  Such costs ought to be met from fundraising and where possible state and federal grants, not from the rates.

This arrangement, I believe, would encourage a degree of self-reliance and a proud sense of ownership conducive to the future success of the YRCC.

 If the sporting association decides, as would be its right, to continue with the tavern and restaurant, it should do so without any subsidy from the Shire that would give it an unfair competitive advantage over privately owned businesses.  The facility would have to survive on its own merits, perhaps with the help of volunteer workers.

In conclusion, I hope nobody will assume that I am hostile in principle to the provision by local governments of sporting and recreation facilities.  That is certainly not the case.  My argument is simply that ratepayers should always be assured that they are getting value for money, and that has not happened with regard to the YRCC.  

In my view, the money spent on the YRCC would have been better spent elsewhere, for example on the swimming pool, on cycle tracks, on the river banks and parks and on pleasant open spaces in various locations where families and their neighbours can play sport casually, run with their dogs and picnic or barbecue with friends. 

Those are facilities that almost everyone can enjoy at almost any time without having to be a member of a sporting organisation.  If a healthy and vibrant community is what you want—surely it’s what we all want—focussing on such facilities would be the best way forward.

James Plumridge

THAT’S THE WAY THE MONEY GOES…

More on the cost of the Splurj Mahal

As we all know only too well, getting information from the Shire of York about the actual cost of building, repairing and maintaining the YRCC has never been easy.  In fact, it’s been wellnigh impossible for years.

On page 10 of her February discussion paper, Ms Suzie Haslehurst, Executive Manager Corporate and Community Services, set out a table (Table 4) providing a breakdown of construction costs up to the end of calendar 2016.   

We should applaud her efforts, which must have been herculean.  She has shone a bright light into a dark and dismal corner of the Shire’s history.

As I pointed out last month, while it was a welcome novelty for those of us who take an interest in such matters, her table does not tell the whole story—not by any means. 

For example, it doesn’t include loan repayments—though she details those in Tables 5 and 6—and administrative costs, like the proportion of staff salaries and consumables relating to management of the centre project. 

Nor, unless I’ve missed something, does it specify the actual cost of labour and materials comprising the Shire’s physical contribution to the project, or include the many tens of thousands of dollars frittered away over the years on the ‘expert’ advice of expensive consultants.

Operating expenditure and revenue

However, Table 8 on page 13 of Ms Haslehurst’s paper goes some way to remedy those deficiencies.  Although understandably short on specificity, it’s quite an eye-opener.  

It breaks down operating expenditure and operating revenue from financial 2012/13 to the present, revealing annually a considerable and inexorable negative balance, or in layman’s language, a loss.

I prefer to use the word ‘loss’ rather than ‘negative balance’ or some similar weaselly circumlocution because doing so helps give the lie to the Shire’s early assurances—naïve or duplicitous, make up your own mind—that the operation of the YRCC would be governed by the ‘user pays’ principle and would cost ratepayers nothing. 

The clear implication of those assurances was that the centre would pay for itself or even perhaps operate at a profit.  It hasn’t done either yet, and without divine intervention, I doubt that it ever can or will.

For 2012/13, the net operating result was a loss of $1,128,038; for 2013/14, a loss of $1,311,945; for 2014/15, a loss of  $1,160,493; for 2015/16, a loss of $1,521,631; and for the financial year to date, $597,446.

That’s a total loss since 1 July 2012 of $5,719,553, or over the first four years (2012/13 to 2015/16) of $5,122,107.  The average annual loss over those four years is therefore $1,280,526.75.

But wait, there’s more…

As usual, that isn’t the whole story.  Table 8 concludes with a breakdown of the Shire’s capital program for the YRCC for the same period from mid-2012 to the present.   That expenditure was respectively $446,500; $281,218; $423,879; $305,675; and $52,728. 

After taking into account relatively insignificant accessions of capital income during the first three years, the total loss of $5,719,553 calculated previously balloons to $7,186,812.   Excluding the figure for the current year, that gives us $7,134,084, or an average loss per annum over the first four years of $1,783,521.

And there we all were, wondering why York’s rates are so unconscionably stratospheric (and likely to remain so into the foreseeable future).

That seems an awful lot of money to keep a small fraction of York’s minuscule population ‘healthy and vibrant’.  That phrase was reported on the other blog as having been used by Ms Haslehurst a while ago in an email to David Taylor to justify, as I recall, more spending on the YRCC. 

And don’t forget, a portion of that money is deployed to subsidise grub and grog provided by the tavern in competition with local privately owned munching and swigging stations.  So much for the principle of competitive neutrality!

A cheaper and more efficient way of helping people to stay healthy and vibrant is to get them walking, cycling and swimming while providing pleasant open spaces in various locations where families and their neighbours can play sport casually, run with their dogs and picnic or barbecue with friends.

The bottom line

For some arcane reason, table 8 sets out the final amounts—the ‘bottom line’, so to speak—under the rubric ‘Total Comprehensive Income’.  Go figure, if you’ll pardon the pun.  To my admittedly untutored eye, they look like total comprehensive losses.

If you want to give yourself a real shock, just add $7,186,812 to the $8,048,001 that Ms Haslehurst identified as the cost of construction in Table 4 on page 10 of her discussion paper. 

All right then, I’ll do it for you.  The result is—wait for it—$15,234,813. 

Savour that figure, roll it round on your tongue, and keep it in mind for when the next gargantuan rates bill slithers into your home.

YORK SPORTING CLUBS         York Ratepayer

 

HOW ESTIMATES OF POPULATION GROWTH WERE DOCTORED TO JUSTIFY THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SPLURJ MAHAL

Early days

Until very recently, I thought that the story of York’s Great White Elephant, otherwise known as the Splurj Mahal or York Recreation and Convention Centre, began sometime in the mid- to late-noughties—say, around 2007.   I was wrong.

One of York’s elders, who would rather not be named, has kindly put me wise.  She told me that members of council and of various sporting clubs first mooted the idea as long ago as 1997.   

That was seven years before one of its most assiduous champions, Ray Hooper, sought asylum in York as a refugee from strife-torn Chittering and commenced his illustrious career as our shire’s CEO.

The idea surfaced again during the reign of Gavan Troy as the Shire’s commissioner—that is, between December 2004 and May 2006.  Apparently Mr. Troy gave it short shrift.  He pointed out that the Shire of York did not have the financial capacity to undertake and maintain a project of the kind envisaged by its proponents. 

As we now know only too well, Mr. Troy was right.  He is still right, whatever the Shire Council and administration might want to tell us to the contrary when they’ve finished gathering data from neighbouring shires.

 York’s population—an unbalanced view

Nothing daunted, after Mr. Troy had departed the idea’s movers and shakers got to work again.  In May 2008, Council adopted a ‘public open space strategy’, at the core of which was a proposal to redevelop the Forrest Oval precinct as a sport and recreation facility (at this stage, there was no mention of a convention centre). 

Council hired a ‘leisure consultancy’, A Balanced View (ABV), to prepare a ‘master plan’ for that redevelopment.   

In some respects, most notably with regard to the projected growth of York’s population over the ten years to 2018, the view presented by ABV fell somewhat short of being balanced.  

The consultancy made the mistake—if it was a mistake and not a deliberate ploy—of basing its projections on the Shire’s wildly optimistic expectation of a major increase in population following uptake of residential lots resulting from amendments to the local town planning scheme. 

Setting aside the WA Planning Commission’s ‘more modest’ population forecast of 4400 by 2021, ABV plumped for a figure of 6000 by 2018.   It’s now 2017, and it seems extremely unlikely to say the least that our current population of possibly less than 3500 will increase so dramatically over the next 12 months as to reach the ABV projection.

In 2006, the Census counted 3116 people living in York.   By 2011, the year of the following Census, the population had grown by 280 to 3396, representing an average yearly increase of 56 souls.  On that basis, it seems fair to suppose that York’s population in 2008 stood at around 3228 (3116 plus 112).

Simple arithmetic tells us that the difference between 6000 and 3228 is 2772.  So to arrive at a population of 6000 during the ten years from 2008 to 2018 would require an average annual population increase of 277 souls.

Pending the release of data from the 2016 Census, let’s assume that York’s current population has increased annually by 56 souls since 2008 and that my estimate for 2008 is correct.  That would yield a notional present population figure (calculated to the end of last year) of 3228 plus 448 (8 times 56), i.e. 3676.

(My guess is that that last figure overstates the situation by about 200, but never mind.)

If I’m right, we shall have to increase our population by 2484 or more over the next 12 months or so to reach the 6000 target.   Somehow I can't see that happening, not even if we prohibit the sale of condoms and local doctors stop prescribing the contraceptive pill.

So far as I know, there has been nothing in York’s history over the last half century to justify the degree of demographic optimism displayed by the Shire and ABV in 2008.   Yet I can find no indication that the master plan’s population projection was ever challenged in any of the planning documents that followed.

Short of a gold rush, the discovery of diamonds, or a government sponsored influx of Middle Eastern and African refugees (now there’s a thought, come on, Mr. Dutton, be a sport, give us those 'huddled masses yearning to be free'), there seems very little likelihood that York’s population will increase significantly in coming years.   God forbid, it may even decline, as the populations of country towns in WA have tended to do since the 1960s—perhaps even further back.

A grey invasion

Most of any increase in York’s population will probably—I dare say certainly— be made up of retired people aged 65 and over fleeing from the metro area in search of cheaper housing, bucolic tranquillity and a way of life defined by the absence of pushy millennials.  

Young families tend to migrate in search of employment opportunities, of which there are few in York at any given time.   Young people born and bred here will be tempted by education as well as employment opportunities to relocate in Perth, elsewhere in WA and interstate.

I think an increase in the proportion of elderly residents, resulting both from tree-changer migration and aging of settled inhabitants, will have serious implications for the economic fortunes of the Shire of York.  

Elderly people are usually less well off than younger residents of working age (younger residents with jobs, that is).   While often asset rich, many older folk are income poor.  They are likely to have difficulty paying their rates on time, and to have less money to spend in local shops.

They will also be less likely to make use of YRCC facilities and to be happy with having to pay the excessive rates that the Shire of York continues to inflict on us year after year when it should be seeking ways to reduce them.  It seems unconscionable, for example, that the same amount is charged on my property in York as on the much more valuable property of my wealthy barrister friend who lives in North Perth.

Incidentally, on page 84 of the master plan ABV notes that members of the York Bowling Club ‘may not wish to give up having [their] own clubroom facility to be part of a shared facility’.   On page 86, it makes a more emphatic comment regarding the Tennis Club:  ‘[The] Club is very happy with their current location and facilities’. 

So I wonder, what dark rhetorical arts did the Shire of York employ to persuade those good people that they would be better off in a sporting hub?  And what was in it for the Shire?