A SITE FOR SORE EYES! THE NEW WEB IS HERE.

It is neat, tidy, reasonably easy to access, navigate the menu and so far appears to be devoid of the ludicrous, stomach churning lyricism that won it the World’s Worst Website for 10 years running- and it is now here on your laptop.

Is it brilliant, revolutionary or innovative? No!  Is it particularly interesting? Not yet. Does it seem to potentially have the right amount of ingredients- Yes!  The right amount of information? Not yet!

So far, it appears to have removed the prehistoric demographics that suggested a discrepancy of 1000 people in York’s population between 2012 and now. That means less-not more.

It would be best to source this information from the contaminated Australian Bureau of Statistics than the Avon Sub Regional Economic Group that may have featured ingenious academics like Tony Boyle. The Shire of York then could have a pedagogical leg to stand on.

Personally I believe it should be more interactive to encourage additional community participation and possibly have an educational section to encourage local school participation.

As usual the Shire of York as shown its understanding of parts of its role is at best mediocre. It chose a company called Market Creations, mainly based in Geraldton that created shire websites for Boddington, Narrogin, Kojonup, Dundas and the City of Geraldton.

No real inventive, ingenious Avant Gard ‘Geeks’ at work here, but they do the job that they are asked to do.

One of their promoted contracts was to produce the Shire of Broome Annual Report.  Maybe that is how the Shire of York got to hear about Market Creations, from CEO Paul Martin who was the Deputy CEO of Broome a little less than a year ago.

So the Shire of York should feel extremely lucky that Mr. Martin appears to know so many available staff and contractors to get things done.

Local Government service employees appear to survive very well on two old maxims ‘ it is not what you know but who you know’,  if you are caught ‘you know absolutely nothing’- or just change your name.

Many of you may well know that the Shire of Beverley has a Planner and Acting Manager, Health and Building Services called JACQUI JURMANN who works with someone called TIM JURMANN.

If you Google the name JACQUI JURMANN you get nothing. However if you Google JACKY JURMANN this person  suddenly becomes JACKY JURMANN, one the Shire of York’s senior Planning Managers and Development Managers whose assistance in enhancing the York Recreation and Convention Centre is listed high on her Curriculum Vitae. She was also allegedly sacked from some employment on or about July, 2015.

Obviously JACQUI is an entirely different person.

David Taylor.

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York’s WONDERFUL NEW SHIRE WEBSITE (coming sooner-or much later) 

Friday, 17 March 2017

why?  No-one knows, 49% 0f the population suffering from advanced myopia think it is great.

Otherwise cyber excitement is at fever pitch, York is to have a wondrous new website the envy of everywhere that is rural regional and remote. Not only that- it is going to be full of current accurate information and whimsical odes to its beauty and excitement. (Much sourced from the Avon Sub Regional Economic Strategy 2012, five years ago when York had around 300 more people than it does now.)

This information certainly came straight out of a senior horse’s mouth!

Right at the top will be the famous slogan “Demolishing our history to destroy our Future”.

But they get even better.

a) “A place to visit where there is little work, you may not find somewhere to play. Rest is out of the question because most of the accommodation has closed for good and its best to head off to Northam” to see if the new Dome Café is open.

b) “A place of vibrancy and energy, but one of tranquility and safety” (Lesson one- to the idiot who wrote this, it is either one or the other. It is rather hard to be vibrantly, and energetically tranquil.

c) “A place of growth where local business find opportunities to thrive, but normally die like the Imperial Hotel, The Carriage Diner, Faversham House, Laurelville, the Saints Diner and many others.

d) “A place of relative safety for sleazy entrepreneurs such as Peter Briggs who found some sanctuary in York after being jailed in 1987 for tax evasion. There are more names that could be added to this list.

e)”And of course the best of all- a place is a community and a community is a place. So “A place of community (which means a place where people live- in a community) where lifestyles chosen are important and where community matters” is a place where a community lives in a place that matters because it is a place that is a community. Or maybe the community is the place?

There’s even going to be a “Best Picture of the Week” section featuring “Pavarotti” the Parrot singing “Nessun Dorma” , a one legged sheep called “Almost Legless” and some local deviant  killing his pet kangaroo with a piece of iron pipe.

The current real estate statistics will blow your mind so much you will try to get a bank to give you a deposit. They won’t.

The median house sale price in York is $295,000, average rental value is $200 per week and the current yearly growth rate is -2.5. Affectively this means if you buy a $300,000 house in York tomorrow, at the current growth rate, it could be worth $275,000 in 2027. How lucky can you get!

Obviously if the Imperial Faversham and Laurelville actually sold the median price of housing in York would be$1.3 million. Good luck!

NOW EVEN BETTER WE HAVE THE “MEERKAT” COMMUNITY SCOREBOARD February 2017.
By Catastrophic Pty Ltd.

Unfortunately it is previously documented and signed by CEO Mr. Paul Martin, that he would not use contractors to do surveys. Do you remember that one Paul?

Some of the data cannot be compared to anything that vaguely resembles anything else in other Shire Councils. But there is enough left to choke on your toast over.

As the governing organization the Shire of York scored 43, 13 below the WA Industry Standard.

A lot of the most important ones are worse.

Communicating decisions 20, economic development 27, clear vision 28 and value for money 29 all well below 50% that should be the minimum pass mark.

Ratepayers do believe the rubbish collection regime works well and getting a book out of the library is not that hard.

Does the Shire listen and respond to resident’s questions?- a mark of 31. Do current Councillors have a good understanding of community needs?- another score of 31. Obviously some believe that the silence of the responses are deafening.

Going on this style of statistical information that is usually rabbit out of the hat stuff, illustrated with segmented party pies, there may be some of the York upper local government echelon who should be working at the tip.

However it seems that less than 10% of the population of York helped develop a Benchmark Matrix that came up with an Overall Performance Index Score being + 4.5 out of 95% as the actress said to the bishop.

Then we have the other problem of the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data from the last census that was totally compromised. Who would use it? Someone in Marrakech knows you have a son named Elvis and a daughter named Gertrude.

Based solely on the low scores of communicating decisions, economic development, clear future vision and perceived value for money performance then the Shire of York’s Offices will close on March 17, 2017 and we become the Municipality of York/ The Shire of Northam.

Mr. Wallace and Mr. Martin will both receive their personal copies of this telling them to do what they feel is best for 2,000 people not , 341.

DAVID TAYLOR.