SHIRE OF YORK LG PERFORMANCE CRITIQUE

Date March 26, 2017

Hon David Templeman
Minister for Local Government and the Wheatbelt
Hon Mark McGowan
Premier of Western Australia.

Your Ref : - APPENDICES MARKYT COMMUNITY SCOREBOARD 2017
                      SHIRE OF YORK LG PERFORMANCE CRITIQUE

Gentleman

Firstly congratulations on your landslide victory .  It was totally predictable and showed the former Premier that you need both small and large brush strokes to paint the exorbitantly expensive Barnett ‘big picture” for the average voter to swallow, and the water to a children’s hospital should not be contaminated with lead.

In fact, in part, it could be called a ‘waterslide’ victory because the day Colin Barnett claimed it was unwashed, unclean WA children contaminating the new Elizabeth Quay Water Park was when the underlying  general public loathing of his arrogance and ignorance really set in.

I know some of the churlish acolytes Mr. Barnett closeted himself with in is ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world. One is the infamous Dixie Marshall, his Strategic Communications Director, news reader and football commentator whose actual ability was non-existent and had the foulest language on the planet. If she had ever said to me what she said to some of my former colleagues she would be hiding out in a cave in Nepal.

It is highly likely that the Water Park ‘Watergate” was one of Dixie Marshall’s strategic communications Machiavellian manoeuvres that failed miserably.

It will take at least four years for the “Mitchigan Mauler’ Mike Nahan, to turn the Liberal Party back into anywhere near a cohesive, competitive unit, that may attract more than just public ridicule.  That is if he has the ability- which I highly doubt. Currently the party is too fractured.

As always- it will be the media that will turn news molehills into mountains, especially when Kerry Stokes controls most of it - if you have not got Foxtel or Netflix.

But Channel 7 does have some problems, a scandalous bed-riding CEO ‘Tim Worner’ and Stokes who allegedly had serious open-heart surgery at the Mount Hospital before Christmas,’ This alleged heart valve transplant may have been triggered when Stokes heard about Worner’s ‘long term ménage a deux employee’ who was not his wife.

Kerry Stokes’ who has close to a monopolistic multi-media empire, print media executives have already started to call The Australian newspaper the Rupert Murdoch rag to deflect the fact that Stokes major publications The West Australian and The Sunday Times have an average readership of between 2% and 3% across both print and on-line platforms. Then Tim Worner, head of Channel 7will probably be sacked  when ‘his Fifty Shades of Grey” episode is finally released across the nation.

Seven West Media’s 91% profit drop, the fact that shares are just 70 cents would also tend to make you unwell and no one has dared to  mention how deadly dangerous is a ‘former female lover scorned” with a good QC. It is always nice to know the weaknesses of those who may wish to become your enemy at some stage by publishing low-brow, inaccurate  pap rather than properly researched news.

Over the past years. I have tried to keep you both informed of the sad degeneration of York and the Wheatbelt, much of it caused by Brendan Grylls closest of associates, Mia Davies. Rumour has it that she will be the new leader of the WA Nationals- they would probably better off with Pauline Hanson-Trump.

As you know WA local government has one almost insurmountable problem. There is not enough ratepayers to make many rural, regional and remote shires anywhere near self supporting or financially viable. The predicament is that 2% of Australia’s population live in more than 30 %  of its Shire councils  in 1/3^rd of the continent and over 50 % are administratively and financially incompetent, poverty stricken, or both.

There are 34 Shires with a population of less than 1,000, with an establishment average age of 117 years with up to six generations of families living there within a lot of history.

Western Australian does not have the additional capital to develop a successful demographic algorithm that will solve the problem that Department of Local Government aficionado, Brad Jolly, laughingly called mendicancy.

(Please do not forget the Brad Jolly taught the Lord Mayor of Perth, Lisa Scaffidi, all the gift gathering techniques she knows other than how finally not to get caught.)

One immediate solution is to reduce the salaries, entitlements and gratuities of every Executive Officer in the WA Department of Local Government by at least 30%, including the Chief Executive Officers of every Local Government Area in WA. These people are not going to resign- most in the private sector would not want to hire them anyway.

Colin Barnett publically stated  that senior LGA public servants were grossly overpaid- so you it was originally his decision not yours.

A second suggestion is to the number of elected Councillors in rural, regional and remote WA be reduced to  five per shire and they are each paid an absolute minimum salary of $800 per week which is about $25 above the Australian minimum wage.

They are also provided work-related tools of trade such as laptops and IPhone. And its use, for free as LGA  business necessities only. Also they can claim an additional $15,000 each per annum for legitimate travel to attend LGA training, required conferences and sitting on designated LGA committees. The Shire President and the Deputy will be paid extra.

Each potential council candidate should be able to bring to the table a discipline that bears some relationship to the broad spectrum of council business. Accountancy, business acumen, tourism knowledge, primary and secondary health care, basic due process of the law, required liquor industry knowledge, marketing, promotion or communication skills, necessary domestic and commercial land release cognizance, building codes and a good understanding of the community, its wants and needs including emerging demand for domestic and commercial utilities.

There are to be no gifts to Councillors from any third party of any material thing for any personal gain for either party without clearly defined guidelines, being not for any personal profit or gain, other than for the entire community. I am sure the Hon. John Quigley QC, the Attorney General , can create a legally binding, all encompassing clause that will make it a criminal offence for local government officials to accept private largesse.

The Western Australian Local Government Act, 1995, being over two decades old and delivering poor quality governance standards requires revision and amendments. The Auditor General should now be given full remit to audit LGA  annual financial reports and, when and where necessary, ensure charges are laid against councillors, public servants and council auditors for illegal misappropriation or fraudulent manipulation of municipal funds.

The days of semi-volunteer councillors and cake stalls to try to buy a new fire engine are long gone. You cannot have a board of directors, that Councils really are, running a type of charitable , not for profit organization when it is part of a highly competitive industry and when some towns and shires are dying.

All rural, regional and remote shires should retain their entity, identity, their shire offices and specifically their names and familial culture. Each Shire would have a manager and counter staff to provide for the normal day to day administrative needs, fire safety, ambulance facilities and ensure adequate policing.

The five Councillors would all be part of a larger Municipality (administrative division) were there would be a single Chief-Executive-Officer and management group. All shires within this Municipality with a common socio-economic, community background should have all rights in common and equal access to necessary group funding for socio-economic and community purposes.

The acronym ‘ROC” for Regionals of Councils has left a bad taste. It has the connotation that the larger councils would bully and financially dominate their smaller partners. The York Shire Council had every intention of doing this that caused the South East Avon Region of Councils to fail to develop.

There would be thirty (30) municipalities) with the Chief Executive Officer and all the necessary senior management staff, saving millions in employment cost duplication. A Shire with 1,000 people would no longer have a Planning  Officer on a salary package of $100,000 with no plans to implement, other than re-filling the coffee machine.

At least 284 senior local government officials, including most Chief-Executive-Officers, should be removed from rural, regional and remote shire councils that could release somewhere in the vicinity of $80.million in community, capital, infrastructure investment distributed where most needed. Many of these people have no tertiary or professional  qualifications, even in-depth expertise in their management role and meet no reasonable Key Performance Indicators like their private enterprise counterparts must do.

All shires remain, retaining their name and identity, but with access to far greater finances and managed growth, not closed like Mike Baird in NSW tried to do and amalgamated like Colin Barnett failed to do in the Perth Metropolitan Area.

The Markyt Community Scoreboard 2017 (attached) is self explanatory, especially when you do the percentage math between the York  LG performance Standard, the Industry Standard and the Industry High Standard.

It is best described as a mesmeric witches cauldron, filled with benchmark matrix with a few warts and toads tossed in.

What it appears to show is ,that in the main York, is a tumbling backwards basket-case.

In this you are defining one of the oldest, most historic, most architecturally significant towns in Australia.

I am sure that you gentlemen realize something must be done, including government assistance in destination tourism to an historic icon that is York.

Kind regards
David Taylor