Is there a relationship between the increase in rates and the increase in the number of pages of the Council budget?

The weather is getting grey and cold – you know it’s budget time again. This is the time when strategies, actions, targets, objectives, KRAs and all that stuff gets a working over. This is when Council tells us what it is going to do in the coming year and how much it is going to cost. A lot of work goes into this with many furrowed brows and sucking on pencils.

Last year’s budget was based on nine Strategic Objectives which led to a slew of Strategies which required a long list of Actions and each of the Actions had a Target. So, for example, one of the Strategic Objectives was to:

Enhance the quality of residents’ lives by facilitating and encouraging healthy lifestyles; a community in which it is safe to live and an environment that is diverse and sustainable.

This required a number of Strategies and Actions and then some Targets (not commitments, mind you – Targets are aimed for, not necessarily hit). In this case, for example, two of the Targets (which would obviously enhance our lives) were:

• A Community Infrastructure and Services Plan was to be completed and presented to Council by 30 June 2013 at a cost to Council of $25,000.
• A Health and Wellbeing Plan was to be completed and presented to Council by December 2012 at a cost of $20,000.

Another Strategic Objective was concerned with economic development:

Council will foster increased employment opportunities in the region, facilitate economic development that is appropriate and sustain tourism opportunities.

This had some pretty ambitious Targets that would really have the potential to transform the economy of our shire into an industrial powerhouse. Some of these were the sort of bold visionary objectives that you would think came from a Chinese Five year Plan, viz:

• Two trainees employed in 2012/13.
• Create an events calendar for 2012/13.
• Support the Tourism Expo in May 2013.

And there were seven other Strategic Objectives along those lines.

Now, how did Council go in meeting its targets? Who knows? Were the two trainees employed (that’s really increasing employment opportunities in the region)? Has the/will the Community Infrastructure and Services Plan be completed and presented to Council by 30 June 2013 at a cost to Council of $25,000? Do we get a report on how Council went against its list of Targets?

Well, this year the Strategic Objectives have changed. Now we have only five and, ominously, they don’t have capital letters. They are only strategic objectives. They are:

• Sustainable Growth and Development – Shaping the future of our communities through forward planning and well built and maintained facilities and infrastructure.
• Healthy and Vibrant Communities – Providing and supporting programs and services to build vibrant and healthy communities where people are proud to live.
• Strong Reputation and Economy – Developing a strong regional reputation and supporting local tourism and economic development opportunities.
• Environmental Resilience – Responding to changing environmental conditions and protecting our natural environment to ensure long term sustainability.
• Organisational Capacity and Performance – Excellent and innovative performance underpinned by good governance and responsible financial management.

Nevertheless, there are still Key Strategic Activities leading to Performance Measures leading to Performance Targets. (All capital letters, it is pleasing to note.) But this year the Performance Measures and Performance Targets are quite obscure.  For example, under the Strong Reputation and Economy, a Key Strategic Activity is the development and delivery of an Economic Development Strategy, the performance Measure is Corporate reporting system, and the Performance Target is to have the plan developed by end Year 1 and actions within the plan 80% delivered in Years 2-4.  Clear? (And, by the way, how many economic development plans has the Council prepared in recent years?)
Enough! Let’s lead the light reading of the other 115 pages (!) of the budget document for another day.

Borrow now, pay later

Well, other levels of government may be making a fuss about their levels of debt but our own municipal council is not reluctant to ask the bank for a loan.

As I interpret the budget that Mitchell Shire Council is proposing, our long term borrowings will go from $8.5 million as at 30 June 2013  to $24.9 million by 30 June 2017. In those four years, our council’s indebtedness will increase about 300%. Borrowing costs (interest payments) will rise from our present level of $0.5 million per year to about $1.5 million per year. This means that we are currently paying about $14.5 per man, woman and child each year to service Council’s debt, but in four years time we will all be paying about $32 per year to pay what Council owes. (This calculation is based on a current Mitchell Shire population of about 36,000 people, rising to about 46,000 people in 2017 according to official estimates.)

Still, interest rates are currently pretty low….

Still invisible

Hands up all those who went to the official opening of the school buildings the other week.

Well, we read about it in the paper so I suppose we know what is going on. But here we are with one of the biggest public works the town has seen being opened (or part thereof) and we general hoi poloi (and taxpayers) hear about it after the event.

Some schools are important and respected institutions in their local towns. They are centres of community activities. They encourage the involvement of the local community. They are seen as community facilities, well used during weekends and holidays and evenings.  Indeed, government policy encourages this involvement. After all, we the people paid for it.

There used to be organisations in the old days before school councils called ‘Parents and Citizens Associations’. The citizens bit was important. It recognised that the whole town, not just the parents, had an interest and a stake in the school. The kids that go to our school will become our citizens and we want to know that they are getting the best education to equip them for taking part in our town. There is a lot of sense in that old saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’.

So let’s hope there is a change of attitude at the school and it invites the community into its school. The school might discover there are benefits in doing so.

…….

Oh, and is it just my computer that, when I Google search for Seymour College, I get “This site may damage your computer”? That sort of underlines my comments, I think.

How much military is enough?

Well, it is only when you return from overseas, as we have now, that you appreciate what we have here at home.

Seymour is a complex town. It has an unusual geography, surrounded on three sides by a river (almost invisible and largely ignored by the locals), with a large hill on its southern side. It has a complicated history involving a range of industries – pastoral and farming, railways, army, government services and general commerce. And it has an equally diverse population of farm or hobby farm owners, army personnel, small business people, retirees, public servants or social service providers, and welfare dependent people.

And this little complex town of ours is not doing so well economically. The population is not increasing, jobs are scarce (In fact, the job agencies in town – those organisations that are supposed to find jobs for people – seem to be one of the few growth industries.), and development is glacially slow.

But here it seems is where the cavalry gallops to the rescue of Seymour. Well, maybe not the cavalry, but the army will apparently be our saviour. We now have a large Vietnam veterans memorial, a tank at the entrance of the town, a Light Horse park, a couple of sites around the outskirts of town commemorating various long gone military units, and a memorial in the middle of the median at another entrance to the town. And, wait, there are plans for more! There is talk of all of Australia’s conflicts down the years being memorialised all along the main shopping street.  We will be immersed in military memorabilia.

It doesn’t matter that most of Seymour’s diverse population doesn’t give a fig for military history, and that many in the town think the idea of memorialising wars is somehow obscene or uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter that the natural assets of the town are ignored or considered irrelevant. And it doesn’t matter if the other important industries that Seymour was built on are forgotten. We are going to develop as a military heritage centre because somehow this is going to encourage entrepreneurs to set up businesses here. Military history is the yellow brick road to economic development.

Let us hope that the cost of providing and, more importantly, maintaining into the future  these various memorials does indeed help our town.

 

 

Transparency in local government

The Manningham City Council annual report makes interesting reading. The council has aimed to be recognised as the most transparent municipal council in Australia and have introduced a number of practices that are worth pressing for up here in our neck of the woods.
One is a formal report on senior staff entitlements – just as is reported by responsible public companies. For each of the most senior staff, Manningham shows the term and duration of their contract of employment (when contract commenced and when it expires), their total remuneration (their salary, superannuation contributions paid to them, and the value of the motor vehicle supplied), and any other benefits (salary sacrifice arrangements, professional memberships, paid, etc.).
This is a very welcome initiative and should be pressed for here at Mitchell. There can’t be too much transparency in local government.

Going, going, gone.

Included in this year’s Council budget is income of $1 million from sale of Council land. This is a bit unsettling for ratepayers as it is just an overall money target, not a disposal plan with clear and transparent criteria for identifying land that might be disposed of. It doesn’t give much comfort that the right long term decisions will be made because it is always much easier to sell land than to later buy land. And the property market at present is not exactly booming so it might not be a good time to sell.

So, what parcels of land might be sold off? One obvious property is the High Street land where the Council office is/was located. It’s currently in a small Residential Zone that is squeezed in between the Industrial Zone to the east and the Business Zone along Emily Street.  That particular area of residential properties along High Street is a bit of an anomaly and presumably when Seymour gets a decent town plan, the zoning will be changed – and the value will change accordingly. It might be worth a whole lot more.

(Of course, when the multitudes come to visit the Vietnam memorial in High Street, parking will be at a premium.)

Will the sale of properties like the High Street site be like Kennett’s sell-off of schools back in those days? The lesson from that little exercise in asset stripping was that there are downsides later on. Many of the school sites that were sold off for a quick buck closed off important options for future good public purposes. In fact, with population changes over the years, many of those school sites now covered in housing for families with kids are now needed for schools.

So the decision to ‘rationalise’ our public land holdings needs careful thought and a long term perspective – not just plucking a dollar amount out of the air and flogging off enough properties to meet some budget figure. Selling our land holdings is the sort of action that should be taken on the basis of an agreed structure plan.

How will the Senate report influence VCAT’s deliberations on the wind farm proposal?

I doubt that the people who are showing the film on the perils of windfarms on Saturday night will hand out copies of the report of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee that was tabled in the Australian Parliament on Wednesday. Some of our local opponents are listed among the 165 submitters (for and against) to the enquiry so they presumably will have read the report.

If they choose to not provide the Senate report, they may want to refer the film audience to the article by Mike Seccombe in yesterday’s Global Mail. He wrote about the report:

There was “no evidence to suggest that inaudible infrasound (either from wind turbines or other sources) is creating health problems’’.

In contrast, there was evidence that the reported health problems were “psychogenic” — that people were, in effect, worrying themselves sick.

The committee expressed concern that health complaints were being generated by “the reproduction and dissemination of claims about adverse health impacts — claims not grounded in the peer-reviewed literature currently available’’.

It cited some interesting work in which people were presented with information “designed to invoke either high or low expectations that exposure to infrasound causes specified symptoms’’.

Then some were subjected to infrasound and some were subjected to “sham infrasound”.

Those who expected to suffer symptoms did so, whether the sound was real or not. Meanwhile, the report noted “there were no symptomatic changes in the low expectancy group’’.

The senate report conceded there probably were some people experiencing real problems with wind turbine noise, but that “potential adverse health effects appear confined to the audible sound range…”.

Furthermore, the bogus claims were “obscuring the focus on assisting properly the small number of people whose cases do need attention’’.

It analysed the various regulatory regimes applying around the country and found they were adequate and broadly consistent with those operating successfully elsewhere in the world.

…..

So-called think tanks with historical connections to the Liberal Party and the fossil fuel lobby have played a big part in drumming up opposition to alternative energy in general and wind power in particular.

All things considered, the senate report amounts to a big win for reason and clarity over fear and obfuscation.

But I’m guessing there will be no mention of this report at the pub when the film is shown.

It’s all happening

Well, work seems to be proceeding apace on the Vietnam Walk memorial in High Street.

Our memorial will be one of many throughout Australia – and perhaps one of the most ambitious. The Australian Vietnam Forces National Museum in Canberra was officially inaugurated in 1992. Located in Anzac Avenue just down from the Australian War Memorial, it is an impressive structure. Other significant Vietnam memorials are located in Wollongong, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle, Broken Hill, and a number of other towns. The National Vietnam Veterans Museum at Phillip Island capitalises on the substantial tourism trade there. Let us hope that our mock rubber trees and helicopter and the names of about 61,000 people who served in one way or another in Vietnam will attract the number of visitors that Council expects.

It is an odd place to locate such a memorial. Properties alongside the site are zoned Industrial and Residential and a bit of Public Use for a police station. Perhaps the site and its surrounds lacks the gravitas that such a memorial deserves, but it could be argued that it is well placed in an ordinary (very ordinary?) small town environment.

 

 

Failing to plan usually means planning to fail

You could be forgiven for asking what the Planning Department of our Council has been doing in recent years. The recent review of the Municipal Planning Scheme notes that every town in the shire has an outdated or dysfunctional structure plan.
Structure plans are the fundamental ‘map’ of land uses for each town. They are the basis of the future and orderly development of a town. Without an agreed structure plan, planning decisions are ad hoc and non-systematic, and generally lead to poor results and grief for residents who don’t know why particular planning decisions are made.
Yet, for every town in the municipality the consultants who reviewed our planning scheme wrote:
The current structure plan is outdated and of little relevance.
The councillors that permitted this situation to arise must take the blame. Let us hope the matter will be addressed as a matter of priority.

Radical new approach to local government

Well I must say it was a very pleasant Special Meeting of Council a week or so ago with the outgoing mayor providing a summary of her achievements in leading our council to great things in her year of reign. And then the incoming mayor announcing a very radical approach to local council procedures. Bill Melbourne is proposing an apparently entirely new procedure of (wait for it) talking to the local businesses to see what they think of the Council services and how Council might assist them. What an extraordinarily novel idea! Imagine, an elected representative actually consulting with the ratepayers to find out what they need. Well, aren’t we lucky to have such creative councillors looking after our interests? We will be the envy of other communities when word gets out that our councillors are consulting with us.
Oh, and the jolly tone of the Special Meeting was helped along by the councillors voting for the 2.5% increase in councillor allowances which brings ordinary councillor allowance to $24,421 and the mayoral allowance to $75,564 (and of course the mayor gets a car as well).
And the supper was nice, too.