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A cut too far

1/8/2018

3 Comments

 
Councillors have to make some tough choices, but shaving 30 local jobs would diminish our community, argues Neil Rankine. 
By Neil Rankine
 
WHY would the council be considering a shared service model that could lead to the loss of up to 50 local jobs?
 
Fundamentally for the same reason I pursued “efficiencies” while I was on council. The State Government has capped rate rises to an inflation figure that is lower than the inflationary cost of the services and materials a council buys – concrete and bitumen prices are rising faster than bread and milk.
 
Exacerbating this is that Bass Coast’s rates were in the lowest quartile of similar-sized rural councils when capping came in, leaving us with less wriggle room. The combination of these two means without “efficiencies” we fall further and further behind each year, reducing service levels or cutting some services altogether and selling property.
 
If you’re sharing services across shires, why not ask the question “Why have local councils at all”? I’ll tell you why: because it means locals, with local knowledge, are making the decisions. Genuine assessments of priorities can be made and addressed. Overheads ought to be able to be kept to a minimum (bar government red tape).
 
When I came to council, however, there were a lot of staff working there who really didn’t understand why they were doing what they were doing. Efficiencies could be found in the streamlining of processes, and to a lesser extent cutting dead wood, of which there was an element. Staff became accountable, some leaving of their own accord, and some positions disappeared. Thirty local jobs were lost from our economy but we began to rebuild infrastructure and handed a $2.5 million unallocated surplus to the incoming council.
 
Rates rises have been kept low and things are starting to get done. Although I don’t believe this joint procurement model will mean the loss of more than another 30 positions, I’m not sure I support this scale, or nature of “efficiencies”. Thirty “quality” jobs removed from our local economy, and the local knowledge lost, is probably a stretch too far.
 
When we don’t attract or keep professionals in our shire, it has adverse flow-on effects. Some of those with these skills will be forced to work away, having less time to contribute, for example, as a footy club treasurer or a community group IT/website geek. Others will move away altogether and we won’t be attracting people who build the capacity and resilience of our community.
 
It’s also instructive to look at what this would mean to the rates we pay. A rough idea is that each rateable property would save less than $2 a week. Is it worth the loss to our community? The rates won’t go down but this dollar or two a week will help address rate capping and perhaps add a bit to available capital. Just one example of the tough decisions councillors have to make!
 
Neil Rankine was a Bass Coast Shire councillor from 2012-16. 
3 Comments
Frank W Schooneveldt
4/8/2018 06:27:12 am

Neil, I agree with you that a shared services model is a step to far.
I always worked on the theory that in an expanding economy you decentralise and in a contracting economy you centralise.
We have been told by our current lot of Councillors that we are one of the fastest growing Shires in the country therefore it is extremely important to have highly skilled staff on hand to support our community and economy.
This appears to be another example of economic madness by this Council especially when some of our current lot of Councillors say we are living beyond our means and piling on heaps of debt onto our kids which is utter madness.
Cheers





Reply
Christopher Eastman-Nagle link
4/8/2018 12:28:32 pm

Neil, Bass Coast Shire, as with a lot of the sector has come out of a bad period of bureaucratic bloating and make-work that has cost the real infrastructure it was supposed to be serving very dearly.

Even now, core departments like the town planning one can cause huge headaches for anyone who has the misfortune to deal with it because the shire cannot afford to fund enough people or pay enough to get and keep competent and experienced operators. I speak from bitter experience, both current and historical..

While the shire has welfare functions, it will in the long term serve them best by keeping internal costs of delivering services to the minimum level possible commensurate with adequate service delivery standards.

My rates and yours are not designed to support local job welfarism. Their job is to effectively and reliably deliver core functions to the people who pay for them and to drive those dollars and the ones coming out of state government funding as far as possible to the services councils are supposed to provide.

In the longer term, cost effective and efficient governance encourages capital into the area. If the core functions work well and the people working in them deliver good quality service and governance, it will encourage more new economic activity.and deliver a milieu that has the capacity to produce private technology service competitors who can tender for and win contracts for the shared service model.

An adequately funded town planning department that has enough people who want to stay for the long term to provide the highest quality, consistent and timely advice, service quality and authoritative regulation enforcement.will do wonders. And the news will get around the building industry that Bass Coast is good place to do business and does not share the filthy reputation the rest of the sector still wallows in.

That is the priority and that will deliver optimum wealth spread into this municipality...and the jobs that flow from that.

Reply
Felicia Di Stefano
4/8/2018 06:10:37 pm

Thank you for your article, Neil, with which I fully agree. I would happily pay more rates for council employees to keep providing important, localised services and keep their jobs. As well, there is a considerable increase in new housing for which the council will collect rates. Will that not be sufficient to keep essential council staff employed?

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