Forum –
According to the Community Housing Industry Association, Central Coast has a backlog of 3,000 affordable housing units (“3,000 households on the Coast waiting for social housing”, Chronicle p15 June 23).
One might doubt the exactitude of the figure, but, in response to the problem, the Council proposes to rehabilitate two (yes, two) cottages, as its contribution to a solution (“A range of positive outcomes on affordable housing achieved”, Chronicle p3 June 23).
In order to manage this mammoth undertaking, the Council proposes to hire an Affordable Housing Officer who will also be responsible for implementing the Central Coast Affordable and Alternative Housing Strategy (phew!) which was adopted two years ago, shows no sign of having had any impact on the situation and is highly unlikely to have any more impact in the future.
Housing is not a local government responsibility, and Central Coast Council has neither the expertise nor the financial resources to play a part in any solution to the housing problem worth speaking of.
The current action is the worst kind of tokenism and typical of the footling endeavours of the Council to become involved in matters that should be left to more competent authorities.
This kind of inappropriate behaviour is one of the reasons that we are in the mess that we are, and it might have been hoped that our Administrator Mark 3 would put an end to these aspirations.
Instead, he is squandering our money to add another unneeded Council employee to an already top-heavy roster, when what we are looking for is operational economies.
It is all very well to spend time attending the Harvest Festival, visiting Full Circle Farm, meeting the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council, participating in a Central Coast economic breakfast meeting and presenting the Volunteer of the Year Award: perhaps, these might be considered worthy ways for our Administrator to use up his time.
However, we want to hear about his knuckling down to the hard work of restoring our budget, apart from selling off our community assets and recklessly closing libraries.
It is depressing that the Administrator is determined to waste a significant sum of money on a pointless referendum, and we seem to have no assurance that other worthless expenditures aren’t still being encouraged.
It is commendable that Council has completed a Davistown and Empire Bay Climate Change Adaptation Study and that this study was carried out using expert Council resources.
This is the sort of action we should be encouraging, but could we have shorter titles in future?
Email, June 21
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy
I agree totally with Bruce Hyland . We cannot afford worthless expenditures being encouraged
Housing is not a Local Gov,t,issue and the Administrator should stay well enough away from it.The introduction of an Affordable Housing Officer ie which was 2 yrs ago something like this had no impact anyway. Transfer that to the Govt. The council should not be touching this as its not their responsibility. More money wasted. We need to see productivity
Administrator should be looking at saving money with less people on the roster to “help” we cannot afford them. Where possible one person should be allocated to a job per se as an example This person should be advised by a senior person that is the way it goes.
Bruce Hyland well said . We cannot afford worthless expenditures being encouraged
Housing is not a Local Gov,t,issue and the Administrator should stay well enough away from it.The introduction of an Affordable Housing Officer ie which was 2 yrs ago something like this had no impact anyway. Transfer that to the Govt. The council should not be touching this as its not their responsibility. More money wasted. We need to see productivity
Administrator should be looking at saving money with less people on the roster to “help” we cannot afford them. Where possible one person should be allocated to a job per se as an example This person should be advised by a senior person that is the way it goes.