ALDI versus YORK

As the York & District Co-Operative Ltd, whose Board is chaired by the brother of Shire President, David Wallace, registers a disturbing loss of earnings and asks for local support, the Shire of York appears to be flush with cash under the Wallace & Martin regime and is hiring like it has just won Lotto.

The latest acquisition will be a Development Services Coordinator with a salary of between $85,000 and $95,000 which actually equates, in salary packaging terms, to between $120,000 and $130,000.

It is assumed he or she will be answerable to the Executive Manager Infrastructure and Development Services, Darren Wallace (just a coincidence) whose package would be around $160,000 -give or take some loose change.

So around $300,000 is earmarked for development services in employee costs only- prior to any new development services being developed.

The shire vehicle supplied to the lucky candidate comes with Commuter Use- whatever that means- but it sounds good. But then maybe the shire employee, or contractor, tasked with creating the advertisement actually meant Computer Use and forget to check the text.

This does not sound like the Shire of York Administration even if it could not spell its own address, Joaquina Street, about six years ago during the Hooper years .

Also there may be some local concern with the potential ambiguity of the meaning of ‘Public’ in the legal sense?

So the Shire of York, as an alleged mechanism for its own protection, is creating the Local Government Property Amendment Local Law 2018; to restrain activities that could be reasonably argued to be inappropriate on or in local government property- in this case the Shire of York Offices.

This is highly commendable.

David Taylor.