Carol Altmann – The Terrier

The Warrnambool City Council offices were buzzing yesterday as dozens of staff were seen piling into the Lighthouse Theatre studio for what some passers-by thought might be a mass union meeting.

But no, it was not a union meeting, but a meet-and-greet with new CEO Peter Schneider who still remains a bit of mystery man since starting the new job in February.

According to a somewhat embarrassing movie-style internal flyer that was, I guess, a bit of fun from the council’s public relations team, the sessions were a chance to MEET the CHIEF.

“He’s a man with a plan and he wants to meet you.”

Heavens.

This blockbuster event was a chance for staff to be introduced to Mr Schneider and “talk about culture, values and the way forward”.

The flyer “reviews” said it was a presentation not to be missed and a real “game-changer”.

This all sounds positive, even if the flyer scares me with its machismo, slightly Trump-esque tone.

Hopefully there are plans for a a public screening of this “blockbuster” so we can all hear about Mr Schneider’s culture, values and the way forward too.

An update on last night’s Facebook post about $985,000 being spent at Aquazone this year to improve water treatment and air quality at the pool.

I wondered out loud where the money was coming from, given the 2018-19 budget set aside $540,000 for the water treatment works and next year’s budget makes no mention of any Aquazone works at all.

The answer came today from council spokesman Nick Higgins who said the rest of the money dates back to the 2017-18 budget, when $420,000 was set aside to fix the roof, but was never spent.

Further investigations, he said, revealed the roof was being ruined by an old air handling system, so it was decided to fix the roof AND the air circulation problem in one.

So this is why, as we speak, the whole she-bang adds up to close to $1 million.

Pools are expensive to maintain and it seems heated, indoor pools are even more expensive: in 2015, the council spent $178,000 re-tiling the changerooms at Aquazone and the pool is not yet 20 years old.

Hold your breath, because I sense the $985,000 this year is just the beginning.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Hang on, where did the W’bool City Council just find a cool $1 million – okay $985,000 – for major works at the Aquazone?

The 2018-19 budget set aside $540,000 for a new water treatment plant at Aquazone. That’s on the record.

But the proposed 2019-20 budget – the one we are chewing over now – doesn’t mention Aquazone works at all.

I also don’t recall major Aquazone works being included in any council conversations around raising rates next year by 4.5%, as it hopes to do.

Despite all of this, the paper today says $985,000 will be spent on water treatment and improving air quality at the pool.

So where is the extra $440,000 coming from?*

It is also worth mentioning that the council has flagged that Aquazone, which is less than 20 years old (it opened in 2002), is almost at capacity and will need to be expanded and seriously upgraded in the near future.

By contrast, the old pool it replaced (warning: nostalgia alert) was built in the 1960s and served tens of thousands of Warrnamboolians.

Our original old pool needed updating, and pools are expensive to maintain, but I have a sinking feeling that the $1 million plunge into Aquazone this year is just the beginning. Do you?

(*I will attempt to get an answer to this tomorrow, it is my birthday today. Don’t ask how old I am in dog years, it is scary.)

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

There are so many wasteful decisions being made in our city at the moment that I’m going to throw it all into one big bowl for you and call it a dog’s breakfast.

First, the Warrnambool City Council has just advertised three new senior management positions at around $100,000 a year that will add, roughly, at least another $300,000 a year to its wage bill.

This comes, of course, as the council awaits to hear whether it is allowed to raise rates above the 2.5% cap to 4.5% for the next three years because it needs to save $700,000 a year.

Hiring more senior staff…while trying to save money. I can’t work that one out.

The three new positions include not one, but two management positions to work on developing Reid Oval so that it can host AFL practice matches, even though council-operated childcare and home care services may have to be cut and the art gallery (still) gets just $15,000 a year to spend on buying new art.

Welcome to the spending priorities in the city of WooBoo.

The third position is a project officer who will help develop the new joint library with TAFE.

All three positions run until 2022, which means a total salary bill of at least $300,000 x three years = $900,000.

This comes on top of the current contingent of senior council staff already earning over $100,000 and any consultants that, no doubt, will also be brought into the mix.

In 2016, the council had 21 staff earning a total salary package of more than $120,000 and, last year, it spent $900,000 on consultants. Let’s not forget the CEO position also attracts a salary of more than $310,000.

My eyeballs are watering.

Any day now the Essential Services Commission will rule whether the council has done enough to cut its discretionary spending, which brings us to the Sharp shimmy…

As we know, Sharp Airlines is shimmying off stage and ending its passenger service from Warrnambool to Essendon.

This is not a shock. In fact, it was entirely predictable, given the airline planned to close the route in January, but was offered $300,000 of public funds to try and turn things around by May: an almost impossible task.

Should Sharp have taken the money? Should it have just said “no thanks, we’re closing and that’s it”?

That is up for debate, but the bigger question is why did our council – our financially strapped council – provide $78,000 of that money? Why?

Sharp didn’t ask for it, but the council – apparently via former CEO Bruce Anson – handed it over anyway.

It is this sort of waste that makes ratepayers’ hair stand on end. Which brings us to chopping down trees for more bitumen.

As we know, the council recently and reluctantly saved two 115-year-old Moreton Bay fig trees from being axed to make way for a new footpath, only to last Friday cut down an 80-plus-year-old New Zealand Christmas tree in Kepler St…to make way for a new footpath.

It did so without consultation or notification, which means its tree policy is not worth the paper it is written on.

A council spokesman told the newspaper (I didn’t get any answers to my questions on this topic) that the tree had to go because the public was baying for a high-quality roundabout at the corner of Timor and Kepler streets.

Did you hear any baying? I didn’t.

Did you see any petition with hundreds of signatures saying please build us a high-quality roundabout on Kepler St? I haven’t.

What I have heard is person after person saying please stop wasting our hard-earned ratepayer and taxpayer dollars.

What I have also heard is people saying please stop turning our CBD into an urban wasteland of cement and concrete and pavers, where trees are seen as a problem, not part of the solution.

Other cities, truly cosmopolitan cities like Hobart and Sydney, value their trees.

In Hobart, they put rubber matting over the roots to protect the pavement and the tree.

In Paddington, Sydney, they let the trees grow right up through the pavement and people go around them or use the path across the street. Radical, hey?

The revitalisation of the CBD started out as a reason for celebration, but after a $3 million cost blowout and an ongoing obsession with building enormous pedestrian crossings and new roundabouts, it has turned into a financial nightmare.

We can only hope that we all wake up soon.

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

An enthusiastic volunteer for Wannon Liberal Party candidate Dan Tehan caused a few ructions last week after she assisted elderly people to fill out their voting cards at a mobile polling booth in a local aged care home.

The volunteer entered the polling area several times to help the voters, showing them how to complete their ballot papers to, no doubt, put Dan at the top of the tree.

How-to-vote Liberal cards had also been distributed to the residents’ rooms, just to make their decision making that little bit easier.

Apparently once the Australian Electoral Commission became aware of what was happening, voting was temporarily suspended at the mobile booth and Mr Tehan’s office was contacted, with the volunteer told to cease and desist, or words to that effect. (I contacted Mr Tehan’s office today, but am yet to hear back.)

Unbelievably, all of the above has since been found to be perfectly legal under our election laws, despite the voters in question being among the most open to manipulation.

In fact another Liberal Party volunteer was also reported to the AEC last week after he helped at least a dozen residents fill out their Senate voting papers at a mobile polling booth in a Melbourne nursing home.

Normally, no party campaign workers are allowed within six metres of a polling booth.

The AEC investigated the Melbourne case and found that this rule did not apply to mobile polling booths, so the volunteer had done nothing illegal.

A spokeswoman for the AEC also told me today that if any voter wanted help with filling out their voting paper, they could ask for it from either an AEC worker or a party campaign worker, it was their choice.

Woah!

I can see a giant hole in the rules here with the words “POTENTIAL RORT” flashing in psychedelic red, blue and green.

There is nothing like having a party candidate schmoozing up to the elderly with some helpful how-to-vote tips when, potentially, that elderly person is not entirely sure who is running for which party, or what party they wish to vote for. (I speak from experience here, as my old Mum swung from Julia Gillard to Pauline Hanson, and back again, because she liked red hair.)

Surely such “help” should only be provided by an AEC worker?

This potential rort might not matter as much in a seat like Wannon, where Mr Tehan sits on a 9% margin and is unlikely to ever lose, ever, ever, ever, but in a tight marginal seat, a few “let me help you dear” votes could make all the difference.

The same applies to the Senate, where a few votes can determine the balance of power.

Watch this space, I reckon, for a change in the rules before too long, now that campaign workers are showing up right inside nursing home polling booths and only too eager to “help”.

(By the way, it is compulsory for everyone over the age of 18 to vote in federal and state elections in Australia, unless you have specifically applied for an exemption because of medical issues, dementia, mental health etc.)

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

It’s amazing what falls out of a budget when you give it a good hard shake, like the 100 per cent fee hike over four years for the use of Warrnambool’s public sports grounds.

Ouch! How is that for a whack in the cahoonas?

Just like the big whack to register your dog in 2019, the new fee structure started as part of an earlier Warrnambool City Council budget (2017-18), but the full impact is only starting to bite as sporting clubs receive their second batch of bills.

With my stellar sporting career now well behind me – (err, cough) – I had no idea this fee crunch was happening.

Local clubs certainly do.

Having paid 25% more last financial year, clubs are now paying another 25% on top of that, and will do so again, so that by the end of 2020-21 the user fees will have fully doubled.

You can see the fee increases for yourself in the snapshot below, but, for example, a District League, Category 2 sportsground that was costing a cricket club $2581 per season in 2016-17 was bumped up to $3226 the following year, and by the end of the next financial year will cost $5041 per season.

The change is all part of the council’s move to a stronger “user pays” system to off-set the costs of maintaining and operating its 14 sports grounds, which cost around $635,000 a year.

Before the major fee hike, only about 10% of this cost was covered by the clubs.

The council is now moving their share of the cost to 25%.

This might all make sense financially for the council, but for small, not-for-profit sports clubs, it is proving a big pill to swallow.

As one cricketer said to me, we have to remember that the $5000 fee for his club is for only the length of a cricket season, not a full year, and that many clubs already rely heavily on volunteers, sponsors and donations to survive.

Back when the idea of a major fee hike was first raised, at the end of 2014, club representatives piled into the Lighthouse Theatre to listen to council recreation and culture manager Russell Lineham explain the council’s thinking and, at that time, he assured clubs that nobody wanted to see them go out of business.

Now that the 25% a year increases are actually here and starting to hurt, it appears that some clubs are worried about just that. It also appears that some councillors are worried too.

In a letter to clubs earlier this year, Mr Lineham said the council had received both written and verbal feedback from clubs and, as a result of their concerns, the fee structure was now under review.

“Council officers will undertake a review…to determine whether any changes can be made to improve the equity of fees levied to the various tenant clubs,” he wrote.

In the meantime, however, the winter season bills are due and must be paid.

So if you see a sporting club out turning sausages at Bunnings, be sure to buy one…or two…or even three.

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