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."

MAIN ROADS AND THE SHIRE OF YORK SAY TREES ARE KILLING PEOPLE IN THE WHEATBELT

This morning I received a copy of the following email addressed to the Shire of York.   It was sent today at 5.43 am.

Subject: Main Roads vandalism along York-Quairading Road

Att: Shire President and CEO

Dear Mr Wallace and Mr Martin

I notice in the ABC news article online http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-10/'ancient'-wheatbelt-trees-felled-york-merredin-road-upgrade/8173624 that Shire President David Wallace claims that Shire of York “was not involved with the decision”. However, Main Roads as the applicant states in its permit application to DER that “Direct interest emails were sent to the Shires of Beverley, Quairading and York on 10 and 11 November 2015. To date, no response has been received from any Shire”.

Can you confirm that such an email was received by Shire of York and that no response was sent to Main Roads?

I would advise the Shire President to check his facts before he speaks to the media and to reflect on his ridiculous statement to the ABC:  "It's unfortunate that a lot of those big old trees will have to go but it's a safety thing. I would hate to see someone's child or grandson or granddaughter run into one of these trees." What’s next: are we going to see mass destruction of trees along each road in the Shire? What about the walls around people’s front yards? Knock those down? Cars tend to drive into those as well!

Shame on you, Shire President.  You badly let the Shire and its community down on your watch!

Danielle Courtin

Ashworth Road

York WA 6302

I invite Shire President Wallace and/or CEO Martin to issue a public response to Ms Courtin’s complaint—on this blog, if they wish.

We might reasonably ask what evidence does the Shire President possess to indicate that the trees in question have in fact caused accidents, fatal or otherwise.  How many accidents have occurred along that particular stretch of road, and over what period? 

In how many of those accidents was alcohol or speeding involved?  In such cases, the trees would hardly have been to blame.

I’ve driven along Cathedral Avenue more than once, and have never felt threatened by the trees that line it.  Not one has ever launched itself murderously at me from its hiding place in plain sight at the side of the road.

It is true, as Main Roads has asserted, that the traffic accident rate in the Wheatbelt is several times higher than the state average.  But that may well have nothing to do with trees.   Perhaps we should all take care to drive sober and more carefully while keeping to speed limits.

Then we can leave the trees remaining in the Wheatbelt for future generations to enjoy.

"Your Honour, my client's defence against this charge of drunken driving is that he wasn't drunk but sending an urgent text to his girlfriend, which caused him to collide with a stationary tree."
 

From today's West Australian (click to enlarge):

LOSER PAYS 2

On 13 May of this year, I posted an article on this blog about the YRCC—‘The White Elephant in York’s Pajamas’.

  

I reminded Council that former ACEO Graeme Simpson had long ago promised what he called ‘a fact sheet’ regarding the YRCC and that his promise, made in the Shire’s name, had never been honoured. 

The article concluded with the draft of a composite question subsequently submitted, slightly amended, in writing to the Shire.  

The Shire President’s response, analysed in my article ‘Great Expectations’ posted on 8 June, made no attempt to deal with the substance of my question.  Instead, Cr Wallace told me that the Shire would undertake a ‘management review’ of the YRCC during the 2016/17 financial year, that said review ‘was expected’ to result in a ‘Business Plan’ for Council to consider, and that  ‘Directions for the Centre’ would ensue following ‘consultation with the sporting clubs’.  That, he opined, ‘would be a better time to issue a Facts Sheet if possible’.

I’m still wondering what he meant by ‘if possible’.  Why might it not be possible?  And if it does turn out to be impossible, what does that tell us about the management of Shire resources over the past few years?

A second composite question

We’re now halfway through the 2016/17 financial year.  To celebrate that impending milestone, I submitted in writing a further composite question on the YRCC to the November OCM.   Here it is, with preamble:

  

"Six months ago, at the May 2016 OCM, I asked a composite question relating to the York Recreation and Convention Centre (YRCC). 

In summary, I wanted to know how much the building had cost to construct; how much money had been diverted and from what other projects to help meet the cost of construction; the annual cost since 2012 of maintenance and repair; how much revenue had accrued annually to the Shire since 2012 from clubs using the centre; how much profit had accrued annually since 2012 from the operation of the restaurant and bar; how many conventions, conferences and seminars have been hosted at the centre annually since 2012, and at what profit to the Shire; and how likely it seemed that the centre would ever be self-supporting rather than, as now, an unprofitable burden on the majority of York’s ratepayers.

I also asked when the Shire proposed to issue the ‘fact sheet’ on the YRCC promised by Acting CEO Graeme Simpson in January 2015.

To my surprise—because all but the last of them were not speculative but referred simply to matters of record—the Shire did not provide definitive and comprehensive answers to any of those questions.  

However, I did receive from the Shire President a vague assurance that a forthcoming business plan for the YRCC would address ‘many of the issues involved in [my] question’. 

So I now ask:  

(a)            What progress has been made, and how, towards the formulation of a business plan for the YRCC;

(b)           If and when the business plan will be released for public scrutiny and discussion;

(c)            Which of the issues ‘involved’ in my May question the business plan is likely to address;

(d)           Why apparently no part of my May question could be answered by consulting Shire records; and

(e)            If the answer to (d) is that documents are missing from the files—

(1) What categories of document—e.g. those relating to awarding of contracts—appear to be missing;

(2)  Is the Shire satisfied that with respect to any missing documents no offences have been committed against the State Records Act 2000; and

(3) If it is not thus satisfied, will the Shire refer the matter to the proper authorities for investigation and possible prosecution?"

 

Unfortunately, illness prevented me from attending that meeting, so my question wasn’t answered publicly until the appearance of the agenda for the December OCM.  However, I received early private notification of the Shire’s response in a letter dated 6 December from the CEO, Paul Martin.

Here is CEO Martin 's letter, exactly as I received it (click to enlarge):

 'I trust this answers your queries', says CEO Martin.  No, not really, but the Executive Manager Corporate and Community Services has, perhaps inadvertently, shed some light on what lies in store for the downtrodden ratepayers of York.  These are my conclusions:

1.  The Shire will go on maintaining the centre for the benefit of the sporting clubs.

2.  In due course, Council will decide on how the centre will be managed and by whom.  My guess is that the task of managing the centre will devolve to some degree upon the sporting clubs, while the associated financial burden of repairing and maintaining it will continue to fall upon ratepayers in general much as it does now. 

3. The community and 'stakeholders' (the latter term being code for 'sporting clubs') will be allowed some say in how the centre is to be managed. But it seems unlikely that the views of 'the community', i.e. humble forelock tuggers like you and me, will be given much weight compared with those of the panjandrums who run the clubs and exert influence over Council.

It's all such a pity.  I strongly suspect that more than a few members of sporting clubs, especially the tennis and bowls clubs that traded their friendly former premises for accommodation in the sterile YRCC, are rueing the day when they allowed their executive committees to bully them into throwing in their lot with CEO Hooper's grandiose plans.

Open, honest and accountable?

Some of us are beginning to question if our current Council is as committed to open, honest and accountable government as we had hoped and trusted it would be.  

My default position is that when government officials, elected or appointed, decline to cooperate unreservedly in a legitimate fact-seeking exercise, it’s because they have guilty secrets to conceal and shoddy reputations to protect, their own or those of colleagues, relatives, friends, supporters and the like. 

It hasn’t escaped my notice that more than one of our present councillors sat on previous councils responsible for promoting and nurturing the YRCC—in other words, for hatching Ray Hooper’s diabolical egg, then attaching the hatchling’s greedy little beak to the Shire’s inexhaustible supply of ratepayer-funded nutriment.  

(Yes, I know I’ve changed the metaphor from pachyderm to pecker, but to borrow the words of an American philosopher, consistency in such matters is the hobgoblin of petty minds.) 

It wouldn't surprise me to discover that some of Ray's acolytes, including the 'cohesive team' that lined up obediently behind him in his heyday, are still running York by proxy.

Plus ça change…

And another thing… 

Like me, you may have learned with amazement from agenda item SY163 – 12/16 that 74.7% of rates for the current year remain outstanding.  That’s a total of $1,937,361.21.

A further $656,299.54 remains outstanding from previous years, making a combined total of $2,593,660.75.

What are we to make of this?  Why aren’t people in York paying their rates on time?

Is it because irresponsibly high rate increases in recent years, driven by reckless spending like James Best’s purchase of Chalkies and engaging consultants (almost $91,000 on a single firm of public relations consultants, hired to do his job for him) have placed too heavy a burden on York ratepayers, many of whom are retired people or pensioners?

How will Council’s latest act of extravagance, resurfacing the tennis courts at the YRCC, impact on the rates we will be called upon to pay in the 2017/18 financial year?

The Wheatbelt, in which York is located, is reputed to be the most economically depressed region in WA.

I think our councillors need to engage, if they can, in a process of sustained independent thinking before blindly accepting ‘officer recommendations’ to spend lots of our money unnecessarily on anything to do with a grotesquely flawed venture like the YRCC.

Senior local government officers are generously remunerated, earning what for most Yorkies must seem like a king’s ransom.  After a few years of riding the local government gravy train, it’s highly likely that they lose any real sense of how less privileged members of the community struggle to stay afloat financially.

I doubt very much that in preparing his tennis-court recommendation to Council, the officer responsible gave a nanosecond’s consideration to how it might make life a little harder for most of York’s ratepayers.

But when such recommendations are made and decisions taken, that thought should be uppermost in everyone’s mind.

 

*******

KIDDIES’ CORNER

(Click to enlarge picture, then see if you can find the misspelled word.)

‘Hurry up, hurry up, we’re late!’ cried the White Rabbit.  ‘Get into the van at once!’

‘Certainly not,’ Alice replied.   ‘I’ve got a sudden craving for one of Mad Mo’s succulent Danish pastries with lashings of cream and a nice pot of English Breakfast tea.’

‘Lady Norah won’t be pleased,’ said the White Rabbit, his whiskers twitching nervously as he extracted a shiny stopwatch from a pocket of his waistcoat.

‘I don’t give the proverbial occasion of momentary aerobatic sexual congress about that,’ said Alice crossly, ‘and I refuse to climb into a strange vehicle with a word in common use misspelled on its side.’

‘Quite right!’ huffed the Red Queen, striding furiously, sceptre in hand, out of the Post Office. ‘Off with their heads!’

(Carol Lewis, Malice in Blunderland, Ch.4 ‘Alice Up the Duff Again’)

LOSER PAYS

Misconceptions, restraint and commonsense

The West Australian for 12 July this year carried an advertisement headlined ‘Misconceptions on Council rates puts public in dark’.  The author was Cr Lynne Craigie, current president of WALGA.  

It seems Cr Craigie was on a mission to convince WA ratepayers that swingeing rate increases—of which we in York have had more than our fair share in recent years—are invariably justified by rising expenditures over which local governments apparently have little or no control.

The first ‘misconception’ she wrote about is that when property values fall, as they have in WA since the mining boom ended, rates should fall with them or at any rate shouldn’t rise.  She pointed out that the amount you pay in rates compared with what your neighbours have to pay is based on the rental value of your property relative to the value of theirs—the greater that rental value, the more you are required to cough up as your share of the expenditures set out in your council’s annual budget.  

The resale value of your property at any given time, whether it goes up or down or remains stable, plays no part in the calculation.

Lynne Craigie, President of WALGA (Photo: ABC)

The other ‘misconception’ is that the level of any rate increase should be pegged to the CPI. 

Actually, that isn’t a misconception. It’s an opinion, and one I happily admit to sharing—up to a point, anyway.

For Cr Craigie, rate increases simply reflect the ever-increasing cost of the services—‘local roads, waste services, parks and sports fields, libraries, pools and recreation facilities’—that local government provides. 

“Councils’ cost structures”, she wrote,

…are impacted by more components than the cost of living.  Wage and salary increases, reductions in funding, cost shifts from other governments and artificial restrictions on fees and charges all add to the pressure on rates.

I think it's more complicated than that.  Local government cost structures are also impacted by a variety of less tangible factors that Cr Craigie and the WALGA set generally would probably prefer us simple-minded forelock-tuggers not to think too deeply about. 

 

Those factors include the intelligence and wisdom of council members and the knowledge, skill, talent, experience and honesty of council employees, especially the CEO.

They include council’s willingness to make decisions that benefit the whole community, not just councillors themselves, their friends, relations, intimate partners past and present, sporting associates, drinking buddies and political supporters.

Above all, they include council’s readiness to exercise commonsense and restraint when deciding how municipal funds should be spent. 

Ah, commonsense and restraint…not much in evidence in York, especially when you consider the enormous financial burden, somewhere between $300K and $500K, that the hapless ratepayers of York are obliged to shoulder every year to repair and maintain our big white elephant, the York Recreation and Convention Centre aka the Splurj Mahal.

Turf wars

Which brings me to what reminded me of Cr Craigie’s instructive musings, namely item SY160-12 on pages 31-35 of the agenda for tomorrow night’s council meeting.

This item relates to the prospective award to West Coast Synthetic Services, the preferred tenderer, of a contract to replace the existing artificial turf on eight tennis courts at the YRCC with ‘Omni-Court Cool-Plus Synthetic Turf’ at a cost of—wait for it—$171,300 ‘excluding GST’.

Including GST, we’d be looking at an expenditure of $188,430—that’s around $54 for every man, woman and child in York, or just over $76 for each elector, assuming the population figures given on the My Council website are accurate.

We’re told that the current surface ‘is at the end of its life’. Alarmingly, it appears to have lasted for only about four years, perhaps less. 

Does this mean the turf will have to be replaced every few years at such a stupendous cost to the ratepayers of York, most of whom aren’t members of the Tennis Club and probably only take a passing interest in the game when Wimbledon is showing on the telly? 

The officer’s recommendation is for Council to delegate authority to the CEO to award the contract to West Coast Synthetic Services.  However, the officer advises Council that it has two further options: either to reject that recommendation and award the contract to another tenderer, or to put the contract out to tender again.

Well, folks, I can think of a much more sensible option. 

Here it is: postpone the resurfacing of the tennis courts (and any other major works project currently envisaged for the YRCC) until the fate of the centre has been decided comprehensively once and for all.

What would be the point of spending nearly $200,000 on new tennis court surfaces now if the decision is made next year—as it might well be—to save money and avoid further rate increases by mothballing the centre indefinitely, and maintaining it only to the minimal standard required by law and public safety, until we can find some way to make it pay for itself?

Here’s another option: go ahead with the contract, resurface the courts, but at the expense of members of the tennis club, not of the ratepayers in general.

I have a vague recollection of former CEO Ray Hooper telling us that the centre wouldn’t act as a drain on the public purse but instead would operate primarily on the principle of ‘user pays’. 

That hasn’t happened yet.

So far, it’s been overwhelmingly a matter of ‘loser pays’, the losers being the ratepayers of York.

Let’s see if Council acts true to form tomorrow, or opts instead for restraint and commonsense.

*******

NEWSFLASH 201216

Lisa Buckingham, proprietor of Hairitage Hair, has won the Best Decorated Business Competition for Christmas 2016.

At yesterday’s council meeting, Shire President David Wallace presented Lisa with two trophies, a large perpetual trophy and a smaller personal one, and a huge laminated cheque for $500.

Swan Lodge, as runner-up, received a cheque for $250.

Congratulations to both winners, and thanks to all contestants for adding a welcome touch of Christmas sparkle to the town.  Thanks also to the Shire of York for sponsoring the event.

The photo below shows Lisa with her trophies and cheque standing next to Roma Paton.  As a member of the Christmas Decorations Working Party chaired by Cr Pam Heaton, Roma organised the competition, donated the smaller trophy and paid for the engraving on both trophies.  The splendid perpetual trophy was crafted and donated by Ron Macey.