Hervey Bay Gossip

Today’s Courier Mail is carrying a story surveillance cameras and how a number of regional councils are investigating the possibility of having their cameras monitored by staff from Ipswich City Council. And of course our Mayor Mick is interested in having the security cameras in Hervey Bay and Maryborough monitored from Ipswich “… if the price is right”

Just what is the “right price” Mick? With at least three security providers here in Hervey Bay isn’t there at least one here that could do the job just as well as someone over in Ipswich?

Wouldn’t it be better to keep jobs here in the Fraser Coast Regional Council area even if we did have to pay a premium Mick?

I hope someone from the Council can explain why it’s better to send money out of the region than to employ people within the region.

Jim MacKellar ponders the meaning behind the words the Mayor used in  comments to the Fraser Coast Chronicle last month.

I have finally had time to fully digest the Mayor’s comments in the paper (FCC 20JAN10) and I find them much more disturbing the more they are understood.

The first half of the article has the Mayor describing a consistent and worrying interference in the free flow of information to the Councillors. He even mentions the possible negative effects this interference may be having (most probably is) on the morale of the officers who write the reports. But then he says, “But at this point I am not going to do anything because I’ve got a couple of other problems to take care of first”. Which raises a couple of concerns. Firstly, can the Mayor only deal with one issue at a time? If this is so it is no wonder that he is not being pro-active in his role. He is far too busy trying to catch up.

Secondly, is the issue of priorities. A Council makes decisions giving primary consideration to the information presented to it by the qualified staff. If there is consistent interference in the flow of information, with the intent of influencing the decisions made, all the Councillors should be gravely concerned. Any interference with the integrity of the reports must have an end effect on the integrity of the decisions Council is making.

Thus the Mayor is saying that he has a couple of other problems that are of greater importance than ensuring the integrity of the decision making process. How drastic must these problems be?

“What I really want to do is get the Councillors motivated,”  the Mayor then goes on to say. Get the Councillors motivated? The inference is that we have a Council made up of elected members who are not motivated. Is it the Mayor’s job to motivate the Councillors? I think not. The paid staff may need to be motivated during difficult times but Councillors should come as a fully motivated package from day 1 to day stop.

These are not teenagers or members of the local footy team. They are well paid representatives of the people who put themselves forward for the position with a full understanding of all it entails. Everyone of them was an experienced Councillor when they stood for election.

The only possible reasonable excuse for lack of motivation is that they realize that they have been almost totally sidelined by the executive and have become only figureheads of Council to rubber stamp the executives decisions. If this is the case then they need to get together as a team and fix the problem, because they are the only people who can fix it. The solution lies in their hands, do they have the courage to grasp it?

Self-assessment is always fraught with danger so I’m sure that many of us who saw what our representatives on the Fraser Coast Regional Council thought of themselves a few weeks back was almost funny.

If you missed it, most of our esteemed councillors thought that they were doing an absolutely wonderful job and gave themselves an A or 10 out of 10 for the effort they were putting into the Council. They were so happy with themselves that I bet they all thought that they deserved a raise.

But now we’re discovering that if that’s their best effort then it just isn’t good enough because we’re sinking into a very deep financial mess. It seems the Council budgeted for receipts of around $7.7 million from developers … after all the Council knew that every developer and his dog wanted to build something in Hervey Bay.

Unfortunately … while they might have wanted to build something in Hervey Bay … they weren’t prepared to pay the sort of money that the Fraser Coast Regional Council expected so they didn’t. Instead they stopped their developments and went off to places where Councils didn’t want to kill the goose that layed the golden egg.

So now … instead of sitting on a cash pile worth $7.7 million dollars … the Council has only received $300,000 and that means that we could be broke and the Council is running around looking for excuses … almagamation costs is a good one to trot out at times like this and that’s what Mick did today in the Chronicle. But I’m not quite sure what amalgamation costs have got to do with developers fees so maybe there’ll be some more excuses coming in the next few days.

I wonder what those report cards would have looked like if they had been written by someone who really knew what was going on inside Council. How much longer are we stuck with this lot?

When we first moved to Hervey Bay in 2003 we were told that the extensions to Centro Hervey Bay were “coming soon” and seven years later the extensions still haven’t been started.

Obviously some of that delay has been caused by the developers … there was a financial hiccup back around the time the global financial crisis looming but that’s been overcome and the developers are now eager to start. But now the Fraser Coast Regional Council wants to fiddle … they want more money from the developers … another $3 million according to today’s Chronicle … and quite understandably the developers have had enough.

While Hervey Bay cries out for jobs the Council wants someone who can provide those jobs to cough up $1.1 million for a public art levy and another million dollars for roads that already exist.

Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned and now it seems that the Fraser Coast Regional Council wants to emulate him while Hervey Bay goes down the drain.

Jim Mackellar takes a look at the Fraser Coast Regional Council and suggests that they’re doing the best they can … but is their best really good enough?

Despite the rising tide of criticism concerning the performance of our Fraser Coast Regional Council, we should not consider this as a failure of effort by our incumbent Councillors.

Don’t be too harsh on the Councillors. They are doing the best that they can. It is just that the job at hand is beyond the knowledge and skills of most of them. But despite this most are still putting in their best efforts to achieve good outcomes for the region. But they are not attaining these outcomes.

Evidence of their endeavour can been seen in many fields of Council activity, but so also may evidence of their limitations be seen in the outcomes being achieved. Lets look at some examples.

Capital Works.
In the face of the Global Financial Crises the Council, last financial year, put in place a capital works program of over $70million to provide a much needed stimulus to the local economy. However at the end of the financial year they had managed to complete only about 66% of their planned projects. Over $20million worth of projects had to be carried forward. In many areas less capital works was achieved than by the previous administrations.

This failure was blamed on the inability of Council staff to get projects out to tender and to obtain suitable tenders when they were called for. So, to remedy the situation, the created a new executive position (with new executive salary costs) of Director Capital Delivery, whose role is to expedite the process of completing capitol projects.

Result? So far this year Council is already over $6million  behind in its capital project deliveries. And most of these projects are much needed by the community and every delay means that we fall that much further behind in providing the infrastructure needed by the people of the region. No change in approach, just more of the same.

Economic Development.
In times of economic hardship across the region this is a very important sphere of Council activity. And we have seen much of this activity. We have had studies done, working groups formed to study the issue and finally a standing committee of the Council and community stakeholders formed. And what has been achieved?

The backbone of the economy of any region is small and micro business. The mum and dad local business people who provide the basic services to the community. And how do they find dealing with the Council when they wish to expand to create more employment and economic activity? Very, very difficult because the Council is geared for dealing with the big applicants and applies the same process to the small as to the large.

Thus we still have a stagnant economy with falling employment while we continue to look for the single ‘silver bullet’ large investor while neglecting those who are the very foundation of our economic wellbeing. Once again still trying the same means to achieve a different outcome.

Marketing and Tourism.
Well that sign says it all. Great idea, shocking execution. Only three small problems. It does not welcome our visitors, it merely informs them that they have reached the vicinity of Hervey Bay. It cost an absolute fortune and then our Council, in their great wisdom, locate it in a position where it is invisible until one is almost on top of it. One would think that they were actually ashamed of the sign and tried to hide it behind the trees in the hope we would not notice it.

And so the list goes on. They are trying, there is much activity, much money being spent, but are we going forward or backwards?

In a town that’s spent the last few years bursting at the seams it’s no wonder that we have problems with our roads … and I’m not talking about potholes.

You only have to look at Main Street between Boat Harbour Drive and the Old Maryborough Road intersection on an average week day to see what I mean. There are times when the traffic is almost banked right back to Boat Harbour Drive and there are several other busy stretches of road around Hervey Bay where traffic backs up throughout the day.

So what is the Fraser Coast Regional Council doing to alleviate the problem? Not much it would seem - even Councillors Muckan and Dalgleish and their measuring tape seem to have disappered - and so the problem is only going to get worse. Right now we need the Council to do something positive about the traffic around the centre of town and, as Jim MacKellar points out, they need to be doing something about another east-west arterial road too because Boat Harbour Drive is becoming clogged with traffic too.

As Jim suggests below, it’s time the Council built the missing link.

Both sides of the recent debate on the need to construct the missing link in Boundary Road, Hervey Bay, are, unfortunately, correct in their arguments. Unfortunately because the Council will use the debate as a reason to take no action.

Anyone who has traveled Boat Harbour Drive during a reasonably busy period will not deny the argument that Hervey Bay desperately needs a proper east-west arterial road. Especially given the projected population increases of the area.

The argument that building the missing link in Boundary Rd as a single carriageway urban street will, however, do little to relieve the situation, is also demonstrably true. Are motorists going to travel the extra distance involved in using Boundary Road if they are going to experience the same congestion that they do on Boat Harbour Drive?

The same argument can be employed when considering the proposal to build a lateral further to the south, around the present urban footprint. Is the internal traffic of Hervey Bay likely to travel the extra distance involved to use it? Most likely not.

The answer lies in a synergy of the two arguments. The Boundary Road link needs to be completed as part of the construction of an east-west arterial built to motorway standards. That is dual - carriageway with interchanges not intersections.

Ideally this motorway would begin at the Boundary Road/ Elizabeth St/Booral Rd intersection and continue through interchanges at Bideford St, Denmans Camp Road, Main St and Maryborough Hervey Bay road to connect with the Piabla Burrum Heads Road in the vicinity of Sorrensons Rd.  As a motorway it would have highway traffic conditions.

Even the planning of the project will take considerable time and money. Council has given no indication of their intentions and no money has been set aside in the current Capital Works Budget. So does this mean that we will see no action in this term of Council.

It is a large project which will not come cheap. But Hervey Bay is rapidly growing, an east-west arterial road is becoming more vital as growth continues and the cost will increase over time even as the need also increases.  The time for Council to act is now.

Dissatisfaction with the Fraser Coast Regional Council continues to grow … and not just in Hervey Bay. Here Jim MacKellar voices some of that dissatisfaction that ratepayers who live on the fringes of the council’s area are feeling. 

At the time of the recent FCRC budget we were assured by the Mayor that people who experienced a rate increase in excess of the average 6.2% were compensated by the extra services they are receiving from the Council.

An examination of the budget documents shows that the largest rate increases are in the rural townships i.e. Tiaro, Bauple, Glenwood,  Broweena etc. In many cases the overall increase for these properties is between 15 and 20%. So it is fair to ask about the extra services these townships are receiving under the new regional Council.

One of the most important concerns for rural people is the improvement of the roads. It is both a service and a safety issue. Much has been made in the budget publicity of the $2.6 million to be spent on upgrading rural roads throughout the region. Lets put that into perspective. During the last year of Tiaro Shire our capital road works budget was $4 million. Now, $2.6 million for all rural roads in the region is seen as an improvement?

Previous to this budget we had free rubbish dumps in the rural areas. You paid your annual levy and you went to the dump whenever you wanted. Now you pay your annual levy and you are welcome to pay to visit the dump whenever you want.

Before amalgamation, in Tiaro shire, it was possible to speak with a member of the Planning department by simply ringing up for an appointment and driving to Tiaro at the appointed time. And it was free. Now you must drive to Maryborough, or even Hervey Bay, and it is going to cost you over $300 for a few minutes of their valuable time.

We had a pharmacy in Tiaro, supported by the Council. Now you have to drive to Maryborough or Gympie if you want to visit a chemist.

It was possible to talk to the building inspector, plumbing inspector, EHO, the works department etc. etc. just by ringing Tiaro and, if necessary, making an appointment. Now you must talk to someone in Maryborough or Hervey Bay and if you need an appointment once again, you are driving to them.

We used to get our rubbish picked up once a week for just over $100 a year. Now we get our rubbish picked up once a week for just over $200 per year.

So the question must be asked – what extra services were those, Mayor Mick?

Jim MacKellar

… and who gets the best value from their councilors

Although we’re a relatively small web design and search optimization business here in Hervey Bay we have a global reach. We have clients in Europe, Canada and the United States and a lot of our business comes through word of mouth as one satisfied customer goes on to tell their friends of the good service we gave them. So we weren’t surprised when we were approached by a small town council in North Dakota in the US to build a new website for their town.

While talking to the town councilor who contacted us I began to get an interesting insight into the town and the way it’s run by the people that the residents of the town elect. In that small town councilors are paid a total of $300 a year … that’s not a typing error … they get just $300 a year for the time they put in to managing the affairs of the town.

There are no car allowances for the councilors in that town. They get nothing for their phone bills and no one has ever suggested that the residents should pay for new computers for the councilors, any fuel for the councilor’s cars or anything else for that matter.

Most of the councilors are local business people and if the residents want to talk about a local problem they don’t email their representatives … they just walk into the councilor’s business and talk to them over the counter.

There are no endless meetings, committees and stalled decision making in that town. Instead the councilors work for the whole community and they work hard at keeping the community informed.

Their old website is simple and easy to use because the councilors know that not everyone can handle all the bells and whistles that are included in some council websites. The new site is going to incorporate features that allow locals to post local news and discuss matters of local importance and give them a chance to have even more input into the way the town is run.

Compare all that to the value that we get from our highly paid councilors. Imagine what it would be like for for Hervey Bay and the everyone else in the Fraser Coast Regional Council area if things went back to the way they used to be … when councilors where paid very little but served on council out of a sense of civic duty. That didn’t seem to impede local growth back then.

Not a great deal in Hervey Bay or anywhere else by the looks of it.

Over here (opens in a new window)on Bring Back Strewth several people are reporting that there’s a great deal of unhappiness in the ranks of the staff of the Fraser Coast Regional Council and people are being shown the door. Yet, as Jim McKellar reports below, the council is claiming that it can’t spend it’s capital works budget because it lacks the staff.

How can you not have the staff when three councils were amalgamated to for the Fraser Coast Regional Council? Maybe it’s time that our elected representatives who supposedly run the council actually started earning the exhorbitant salaries we’re paying them!

FCRC Capital Non-Works Budget
A major plank in the FCRC response to the global economic crisis was the bringing forward of over $70 million of capital works to provide its own stimulus to our local economy. With the financial year drawing to a close it is timely to examine the Councils performance in delivering these works.

The latest figures available are for Year To Date (YTD) at the end of April and they do not make encouraging reading. The financial report shows a Capital Works YTD budget of $70.2 million but actual expenditure of only $22.5 million.

The reason the FCRC has given for the massive shortfall in expenditure is the lack of availability of specialist engineering support. But closer examination of the budget does not bear this out as a reasonable excuse. Let me explain.

Organizational Services, one department in the FCRC, had a YTD Capital budget of $5.8 million but has only used $1.3 million. Their Capital Works program consists of administration building upgrades, computer network equipment and the consolidation of the former councils’ records into one homogenous set of administration systems. It should be noted that Hervey Bay and Maryborough are still not using the same computer systems for financial recording despite this being a priority. How has this budget been effected by the shortage of engineers.

Community Services are responsible for things that directly effect the quality of life in the Fraser Coast. These include our parks, libraries, community buildings and boat ramps. The Community Service Capital Works budget YTD was $13.7 million but they have managed only $3.2 million of improvements to our community infrastructure. It would be fair to assume that most of the engineering work required for work in our parks should be able to be completed by ‘in house’ engineering staff. If they are still there.

Which leaves external services with a YTD Capital budget of $52 million and an expenditure of $17.5 million. It is safe to assume that this is the area hardest hit by the engineer shortage. But only $20 million of the $52 million was for road projects that require specialist engineers. The remainder is for buildings, risk management studies, waste transfer stations and similar projects.

While it is true that most of these projects can and will be rolled over into next year it leaves two major problems. Firstly, we are now one more year behind in our program of Capital Asset renewal. If we were unable to complete more than one third of the program this year how is the FCRC going to do it all next year as well as complete that year’s program as well. It won’t be done and our community assets will continue to deteriorate.

Secondly, the FCRC still has $47.5 million in its coffers that was supposed to have been injected into the local economy generating a much greater flow-on through the community. A stimulus that would have benefited many people in these difficult times. Are our Councillors really doing the best job they can or are some along for the free ride.

Jim MacKellar
15.06.09

Jim MacKellar asks the question but will we ever get a straight answer?

From a snippet in the local paper this week about the FCRC portfolio committees – “each committee will meet on a three-month basis instead of monthly’.

This means that Council now meets for 3 to 4 hours each month, the Planning & Development Committee for 2 hours a month and all other standing committees only each quarter.

Binding decisions can only be made by resolution of a formal meeting of Council or one of its standing committees. So we must ask ‘who is making the decisions’?

A review of meeting agendas reveals that Council is covering little more than the statutory requirements in its public meetings. If the Councillors are making the decisions then they are making them behind closed doors and not in the accountable arena of an open meeting. A majority of decisions made in private (secrecy) has no place in an open and transparent administration.

The only other credible scenario is that our Councillors have abrogated their responsibility and control of the FCRC is vested, almost completely, in the employed executive. If this is the case why do we have Councillors? Who is representing the residents?

It has to be asked – Who is running our Council?