If the Council Administrator thinks that his “explanation” of the rate rises clarifies the matter or satisfies the community, he is naive indeed ( CCN 377).
The idea that the fact that we are spending more than we’re earning is all the justification that is needed for a rate rise is ridiculous.
The obvious question is why, when infrastructure is inadequate for requirements, community facilities are in a dire state, and council services are abysmal, are we spending so much?
One answer that immediately suggests itself is that the Council is so incompetently run that everything costs more than it should and that the first line of action should be to improve efficiencies, rather than throw more money at the problem.
When it takes six months to get a response from Council to a simple development application, something is sadly amiss.
Two months is supposed to be the standard time for determination of a development application, but the Council comes nowhere near this timing, for even the smallest of projects.
Similarly, when letters to the Council are just ignored, not even warranting the courtesy of an acknowledgement, there is a bad culture at work.
Council servants are employees of the ratepayers, and ratepayers deserve to be treated accordingly.
My experience (admittedly, from many years ago) is that Council servants prefer being under an Administrator to being under a Council, because it allows them to follow standardized bureaucratic processes, without ever being queried about it.
However, it can also engender an attitude that ratepayers really don’t have any leverage, because they have no recourse to a representative who can intervene on their behalf.
For this reason alone, return to a representative Council should be as early as possible.
It is obvious that Kevin Brooks is absolutely correct when he says that “Mr. Hart has still not fixed the underlying causes” of the Council’s problems.
Selling off property and borrowing money to “balance the books” is just a mechanical exercise that almost anybody could undertake.
The great defect of the Administrator Mark 1’s term was that he did not leave a functioning administrative mechanism in place for the elected Council that took his place, even though that was his principal responsibility.
It looks very much as though an incoming Council, if ever we are allowed one, might face the same problem all over again.
However, how does this leave us for the next two years, when we are virtually powerless to influence any decision that the Administrator makes?
Email, Feb 13
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy
I’m in Lake Macquarie Council area, my elderly patents are in the Central Coast Council area. One idea might be that no-one on the Central Coast to pay their rates & then see how long it takes for action to happen. Demand all the State Government members on the Central Coast to fix this problem A.S.A.P. Isn’t that why you voted them in in the first place!
No taxation without representation – I like it!