The Peninsula Chamber of Commerce is right to oppose Central Coast Council’s latest rate hike application (“Chamber says NO to 10 year rate hike,” PP047).
Those who earn their revenues in competitive markets don’t have the luxury of imposing large price increases on their customers in return for worse services.
The Chamber is therefore well placed to recommend other options.
These should include lower internal costs and greater efficiency.
We were told the main reason for extending the Council’s administration was to allow time for the current administrator Rik Hart and new CEO David Farmer to liberate cost savings through completion of the merger.
Yet none of the 190 projects in the Council’s recently approved Delivery Program relate to completion of the merger.
Any savings achieved appear ad hoc rather than driven by a focused integration plan.
This is in marked contrast to my own experience of bank mergers where dedicated integration projects, each with quantifiable targets for benefits realisation, are given high priority and relentlessly tracked to completion.
The Council has now been in administration for 16 months and new CEO David Farmer in post for almost a year.
Yet, neither has launched a major change program to improve the Council’s culture and performance.
Productivity is still lower than before the merger six years ago.
The only way this Council will ever be forced to reform itself is if IPART stops offering ratepayers money as an easy fix.
Rates have already increased well above inflation, but services have still deteriorated.
That’s why everyone should follow the Chamber’s example and object to this latest rate hike application on IPART’s website: IPART.nsw.gov.au
Email, Feb 22
Kevin Brooks, Bensville
I fully support Kevin Brooks’s Opposition to the Rate Rise and his tireless work in doing so and
now Matthew Wales for the Chambers in Opposing this Unconscionable Rate Rise