Central Coast Council is at it again – into our wallets for a 4.8 per cent increase in rates.
Since this shambles was placed in the hands of an administrator we have seen nothing else but increases from this Council, not only with rates but with a range of services that we are compelled to use.
Of course we get all the feeble excuses offered by the Council as to why this is necessary but what we fail to see is clear evidence of what efforts, if any, have been applied to contain or reduce costs.
Productivity seems a foreign word and might I suggest there is much room for improvement in this area which, if applied correctly, will reduce costs significantly.
Only this week I watched with interest as four council employees or contractors took two hours to erect a traffic sign in Terrigal.
If it were my business doing this it would have taken two men one hour maximum.
So we have two hours versus eight; a saving of around $300.
Multiply this by the number of like projects about the region and we start to save many thousands.
And let’s not bother about overhead costs today; that’s for another time.
This Council is a joke and not a very humorous one.
Email, June 28
John George, Terrigal
Your right John, it’s a pathetic state of affairs that all levels of Govt. simply pay lip service to cost effeciencies and always take the path of least resistance. In the case of local councils asking IPART to let them to continually charge more. The temporary rate increase that was to reduce the $500 MILLION debt the last council left us is now being asked to be made permanent! How about some culling of non essential services, starting with Warnervale Airfield that costs us $500,000pa so a few private plane owners can play with their toys! Hopefully at the next council elections voters will educate themselves so as to make sensible decisions. I once had an employee that voted for Paul Keatings govt because she liked his suits!