Forum –
The latest in the financial fiasco saga is that Central Coast Council, meaning our Administrator, plans to make the just approved three year rate impost permanent (“Council flags plan to make temporary 15 percent rate hike permanent”, Chronicle p6 June 30).
Anyone who didn’t foresee this happening must be feeble minded, because it was obvious that the Council, once it got its hands on our money, wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.
It’s much easier to charge the ratepayers extra than it is to operate an efficient organisation and effect money saving economies that will only benefit the ones bearing the cost.
There is no reason why the Administrator should care, because he’s not paying and he won’t be around long enough to defend this change, when it comes into effect.
This is, of course, the point.
The Administrator, we hope, isn’t going to be here in three years’ time, so it is totally inappropriate for him to be tying us into long term decisions that should be left until we again have an elected council to make them.
It is bad enough that so much decision making goes on in secret and that, if news does leak out to the community, any objections are brushed aside as unimportant.
In this case, there was a deliberate intent to mislead residents into thinking that rate levels would revert to normal in three years’ time, when it was obviously always the long term goal to maintain the rate levels at those that have been put in place now.
There is patent bad faith here, and we should be warned to watch out for similar intentions in the future.
Email, July 3
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy