SHIRE PLANNING MIRE: / THE MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR MOUSE:

THE MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR MOUSE: -The Shire of York’s Strategic Planning Scheme strategy!

The kettle boils, a cupboard door is opened and a scream ‘Mouse’ shatters the silence of the Shire office coffee break. A distraught employee racially abuses and physically assaults two co-workers then falls to the floor in a dead faint before being sent on stress leave.

Six-month’s later the Shire’s Occupational Health & Safety Committee, after paying a psychoanalyst $50,000 for the customary report, concludes that in all probability the viewing of a mouse, in cupboard situ, feasting on the shire’s biscuits, was sufficient cause for the actions of the employee who will remain on indefinite, fully-paid stress leave.

A Confidential Workers Compensation payout of $300,000 each is negotiated with the two staff that were abused and assaulted. 

Three months later the Financial Audit Committee finds that over a three-year period, said mouse may have consumed $2000 worth of shire ‘Tim Tams’ which is changed to $200 worth of cheap assorted biscuits on the official audit report.

Within a month an emergency Senior Executive meeting is called to mouse-debate a strategic planning scheme for the removal of said mouse. However, prior to any decisions being made, legal advice must be sought from McLeod’s Solicitors’, specialist rodent legal team.

Within nine-months, and $130,000 later, McLeod’s respond, advising the Shire not to advise ratepayers of the presence of a mouse on shire premises and that said mouse can be legally removed, alive or dead.

Almost immediately, within four weeks, an executive decision is made to set up the special 2016-2056 Strategic Rodent Removal Planning Scheme Committee consisting of three sub-committees, ‘The Cheese Selection Committee’,’ The Rodent Removal  Ethics Committee’ and the Rodent Asset Committee.

Each committee is granted twelve months and $400,000 each for the obligatory approach to three separate experts on Mouse Cheese Evaluation, Mouse Removal Methods and whether the mouse should be accounted for as an asset or a liability on the Annual Financial Statements for the 2032-3033 Financial Years.

Then, for a further four-years, lots of mouse-debating occurs as the decision to engage an employee or a contractor to remove the mouse is made. At the same time an independent Compliance Probity Expert is hired at a fee of $150,000 to analyse the ethical conundrums of whether the mouse should be alive or dead when removed from the shire premises. The opinion of a Risk Management Expert is also sought for a further $50,000.

The final decision, made on July 1, 2032, is to use the open market method for the delivery of capital punishment works at an agreed fee of $3.9 million which unfortunately is $2.3 million more than the shire has in bank or asset reserves.

On December 30, 2033, a former shire employee opens a cupboard door, screams ‘Dead Mouse ‘racially abuses and assaults two former co-workers and falls to the floor in a dead faint, before being sent on stress leave by the shire liquidators.

Apparently the mouse had been dead since 2017 from diabetes related obesity caused by eating too many Tim Tams. Animal rights activists are now seeking legal advice.

This is an allegorical synopsis of how the Shire of York has acted in the past and continues to act on even the most fundamental of strategic plans for its community.

In his response to the letter to him called ‘Shire Planning Mire’ (below) regarding financial and statistical irregularities that could affect future progress and prosperity, the CEO Mr. Paul Martin, confirms his commitment to the long term financial sustainability of the Shire but completely ignores the question of its current fiscal status and extremely inaccurate estimates of its projected population growth.

The Shire is currently working to find out what assets it actually has. This is information Mr. Martin concedes the Shire does not have. This despite the fact that the demand for a regulated Local Government Asset Management Policy and Asset Management Strategy was made by the Minister for Local Government, John Castrilli, in 2011.

However we do now have funding for an assets officer to develop asset management plans for each of the six asset classes once they are found. This should have been done six-years ago.

And of course at great expense to the ratepayer, one of the world’s most prominent accounting firms, Moore Stephens, will once again conduct a financial systems review into risk management, compliance and internal controls which you would expect highly paid CEO’s and their executive staff to provide.

In the end it appears that these executive officers are here to write out the cheques for hiring experts to give advice on open market economics and tendering processes for non-existent capital works programs- at great additional cost to the ratepayers!

David Taylor. 

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2 November 2016

QUESTIONS REALLY ARE THE ANSWERS? - Let’s hope not.

A letter has been sent to both the Shire President and the CEO explaining the reasoning for the ‘Shire Planning Mire’ article and requesting suitable public responses to the financial and statistical questions raised including a potential massive over estimation of population growth.

It contained an assurance that everyone wishes York to succeed, but that there is a large portion of the population who have seen their towns’ finances and assets infrastructure virtually destroyed by past incompetent, vindictive, local government morons, ably supported by a few councillors.

Taking a jaundiced view of the Shire’s financial situation as it now stands is no- one’s idea of having fun. However it does give the Shire the golden opportunity to advise the community, in writing and/or via radio broadcast, that these assumptions are incorrect, set the official financial record straight and allow the town to feel confident it will move forward rapidly.

Confidence will not be achieved through the release of Strategic Planning Scheme documents filled with nebulous proposals for entry-level action coupled with rhetoric on ethical behaviour. It requires actual number crunching, showing focused reasoned expenditure for future projects with forecast net returns to the community.

The Shire was reminded that six- months ago it was told of the possibility of attracting important WA
Museum exhibits to York for the next four years. Also of the popularity of modern lighting projection art forms being displayed on iconic buildings. Since then both the City of Perth and the City of Joondalup have jumped on the art-lighting band wagon.

Did the Shire of York know that the Avon Valley was being investigated for its suitability to be the site for an open plains zoo? Did it ever express any interest in having it located near York, not at Chittering?

The all-encompassing question is has anything of this, progressive, nature been investigated by the Shire recently or has time stood still until the last Shire executive arrived on Monday October 1, 2016?

It is now up to the Shire of York to find the time to respond, publically, by providing quantified and qualified reasons why York is not in serious financial difficulty or if it is- what immediate remedial actions are being taken?

If the questions being asked really are the only answers- then the people of York deserve to know.
The previous Shire’s judgement that the community was only to be told what the Shire wanted it to know is way past the used by date for public acceptance.

David Taylor.

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Monday 31 October 2016

Why the exorcism of the 2012 York Strategic Community Plan may not work effectively to improve its future! 

Nowadays many residents of York are asking each other difficult questions on the town’s future that may not have definitive answers and a favourable outcome.

Attempts at reasonable answers are often based on supposition because of a lack of conclusive evidence caused by the withholding of and/ or a dearth of relevant publically accessible information on financial problems.

In addition most local government strategic planning documents are full of platitudes, inanities that suggest local government officials have the ability, understanding and progressive entrepreneurship to deal with major economic issues of which they may have little grasp of- and certainly no ability to control. (Nice words-but no real formula for positive economic stimulus.)

Based on socio-economic statistics, Western Australia is now judged as the poorest performing state in Australia over a range of economic criteria including the issue of the faltering economy- causing rising unemployment, debt default and poverty.

In the end this situation is largely the responsibility of the WA State Government through its underperformance in critical areas. This, basically, is its inability to effectively control and improve the economy.

Based on similar statistics, the most underperforming sector within the Shire of York economy is the local government sector, the Shire of York Administration.

As a single administrative organisation it is probably York’s largest employer and by far the largest cost factor to the community and its economy.

The current employee salary payments and associated on-costs component of the annual budget is around $3.33 million to be sourced from the current total outstanding debt of $6.25 million. (Luckily the Shire has $3.6 million in investments and bank accounts that would cover employee costs for 12 months if everything goes pear shaped.)

In 2015 the comparison between total revenue to total operational expenditure showed a negative differential of nearly $270,000. A loss that should not occur!

Around the same time that the Shire incurred this loss it placed an added total impost over two years of a 16% rate-hike on ratepayers-five times above the annual national inflation rate. This burgeoning levy will provide up to an additional $800,000 based as a percentage of projected rate revenue of around $5 million per annum.

This amount will only help cover the annual cost of essential road maintenance and little else. This annual cost is estimated as being $1 million. (It should be remembered here that all economic modelling shows that a quality local road and major road transport system is a vital component of commercial development.)

Furthermore, based on Gross Rental Value on which rates are set, it suggests the York Real Estate market is booming with a median rental return of $400 per week and an average sale price of around $450,000 which could not be further from the truth.

It is also an economic disaster, forcing a community that has a low average household income, to pay similar rates to the well-appointed, leafy, middle income suburbs of Perth. (And last, but by no means least, it has pissed a lot of people off. So currently $5.9 million in rates remain unpaid by disgruntled ratepayers.)

Of York’s total revenue in 2015 of $9.1 million, around four million would have been government funding that in the future could be reduced or withdrawn given the current economic circumstances.

The Shire’s overall tangible assets are guesstimated at $133 million of which nearly $100 million is arguably non-saleable. This substantial figure is highly debatable as there is potentially a vast difference between book value, real market value, ultimately actual sale value and what can and cannot be sold. (The YRCC and the Old Covent School are classic examples of this.)

The Shire of York’s response has been to release its 2016-2026 Strategic Community Plan which, when viewed closely, is often a re-written, planning re-hash of its Strategic Community Plan- 2012 to the Future, overseen by Ray Hooper , Tyhscha Cochrane and Jacky Jurmann. (This was a projected future- which did not eventuate.)

This was also at a cost because an expert was hired to do the re-write.

It also contains elements of the Avon Sub-Regional Economic Strategy of 2013 that contained input from two controversial individuals. One was the Manager Planning Services  maestro from the Shire of York, Jacky Jurmann, now long departed and discredited, and Dowerin’s Mr. TAB himself , Dacre Alcock, whose regional development expertise is going nowhere for the next four-and-a-half years.

The Shire of York’s economic plan up until 2026 is partially based on 2012-13 indicators that included the mining boom, large injections of Royalty for Regions funding and assurances of the development of ‘Super Towns’,  one being Northam.

These economic positives with their affiliated development programs no longer exist- have been reduced or put on hold.

A major precursor to economic growth is population growth that exponentially increases the potential demand for local goods and services.

York’s Strategic Community Plan-2012 to the Future predicted a population of 6300 for the Shire by 2026. In 2002 the population was 3224. At this time it is recorded as being 3486, an increase in population by birth and new arrivals of just 18 per-annum, over the past 14-years.

At the current population growth rate York will fall short of its projected growth target by a massive 1644 persons and there is no current economic indicator to suggest why York’s population will reach anywhere near 6300 in ten years. (At today’s growth the population will be 3666 in 2026 (not 4600 as currently suggested by the Shire) and possibly reach 6300 by AD 2100.)

The required new infrastructure affordability including electrical power availability may well rest on the State Governments attempt to privatize Western Power before the next election.

Another development retardant is the state’s unemployment rate which is at a ten year high in a decade that included the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) followed by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the US NINJA Housing Loan scandal (No Income, no Jobs and a hefty mortgage).

The 2016-2026 Strategic Community Plan brings with it words of comfort such as empathy, respect, courage, aspirational, affordable, adaptable, aligned and accountability.

Unfortunately this is cold comfort without any inspirational revelation of how the Shire will actually tackle its financial problems and achieve goals regarding development targets in acceptable time frames.

All state governments, when in financial difficulty, do one of two things, or both. This is reducing its workforce and/or selling off assets.

In particular asset sales are claimed to reduce debt and provide funding for critical new infrastructural developments.

Whether York, as a local government, has valuable assets that it could sell to rapidly reduce debt and provide sufficient funding to make a dramatic impact on future sustainable growth is highly debatable. (Financial records show it has estimated its saleable assets being property, plant and equipment at $34.5 million.) 

The sale of the YRCC building and its Tavern Licence, if a buyer could be found, would be lucky to gross the original Royalty for Regions grant funding. The Old Convent School would be lucky to gross $400,000. (However it would be remiss of the Council itself not to at least discuss this matter.)

The reduction in staff numbers should be an action of last resort. The impact on a small community such as York can be socially and economically catastrophic as the damage is collateral.

Normally any reductions in York’s situation will come from within the ranks of unskilled or semi-skilled employees. They are the most vulnerable, with little chance of re-employment, and any wages cost saving is comparatively small.

Any replacement will be done through the hiring of contract labour and it is extremely likely that this matter has been discussed by the current CEO and his new executive staff.

Another matter that would have been discussed, if a reduction in employee numbers has been contemplated, would be the Shire divesting itself of any unused property, plant and equipment. (Current economic conditions would suggest that the sale of unused assets would be at ‘fire-sale’ prices.)

All this must be viewed as an article by the Devil’s Advocate, based on a least positive assessment of financial figures and published proposals for developmental improvement-all sourced from official Shire of York documents.  

It does give Senior officials from the Shire of York the right to publically respond to its content and to refute, dispute, even discredit the truth and reliability of the matters raised.

Failure to publically respond may well suggest that currently the Shire of York has few concrete plans of action that will actually directly assist the future commercial development of York.

Rebuttal can be by way of explanation that the current rate shortfall of $5.9 million is because it is only four months into the financial year. Yet it certainly is a massive amount and a financial disaster in the making if 80 percent is not recouped within this financial year.

Although the population growth rate projection in 2012, that it would be 6300 in 2026, is a massive shortfall of some 2000 citizens, the Shire of York’s 2016 prediction may be less than 1000 out.

The Shire may say it has no intent to divest itself of either assets or staff. But if has not discussed these matters it would not be doing its job.

The Shire may claim that its 2012-2026 Strategic Community Plan was not used in the current one, or the amount used and its effect would be minimal. Information suggests that this would be a terminological inexactitude of Churchillian proportions.

Now congratulations to Colin King who has personally managed to drag York’s business reputation into the mire. ‘Serious dishonesty’ and the loss of his Real Estate Licence for life reflects poorly on any rural community he lives in or has used and abused to make his living.

His son Paul is likely to suffer the same fate and it is interesting to note that, in the past, there has been an alleged real estate sale business association between Colin King and former Shire President, Tony Boyle.  

David Taylor.