Carol Altmann – The Terrier

This is a budgetary fairytale based on fact. The numbers are real, the names are not.

Once upon a time, in the town of WooBoo, there was a town leader, Snow White, who was paid more than $310,000 a year to work for the seven dwarfs who had been elected by the people of WooBoo to look after WooBoo and help it prosper.

Exciting things were happening in WooBoo under Snow White’s leadership.

There was a big, money-losing festival for children, there was a maritime museum with few boats but a new $3 million sound-and-light show that promised to lure carloads of tourists, there were parties at the racecourse, new public toilets, new parking meters, pretty roundabouts and still lots of money left over for the WooBoo Council to spend on consultants, credit cards, conferences and staff development.

Most of the seven dwarfs were ecstatic, except for Grumpy. Every council has a Grumpy, and Grumpy was seen as a troublemaker.

“Can we afford all this?” Grumpy would ask. “Does this all add up? Why don’t some of these figures make sense?”

“Of course we can,” said Doc and Happy in unison. Unlike some of the other dwarfs, they had represented the Town of WooBoo for many years and had grown fond of Snow White and her team of highly paid helpers.

Mayor Sneezy was equally as enthusiastic: “WooBoo is aspirational, sophisticated and cosmopolitan and I wish people would stop being so negative!”

The spending went on. Sometimes it was on necessary but boring things, like $5.5 million for a drainage system to avoid parts of WooBoo flooding.

And sometimes it was for sparkly things, and the biggest of all was the $15 million upgrade of the main street of WooBoo, with shiny new pavements, new trees, new lights, drinking fountains, more flowers and planter boxes and a much narrower road with so many pedestrian crossings that WooBoo drivers could no longer take their eyes off the road for a second.

The people of WooBoo were happy to see their tired main street being given the full Ritz treatment, even if they privately wondered what was going to happen to the other town streets with their peeling buildings and broken footpaths.

Don’t worry, they were told, celebrate the rise of wonderful Justice Von Liebig St!

Meanwhile, in the MelBoo office of the chief money watcher, the Victorian Auditor-General, a little red light was flashing.

It had been flashing quietly every year since 2014-15 and it warned a “high risk” situation was developing. This high risk was that the Town of WooBoo did not have enough money of its own to fund its operations, once it removed all the one-off gifts and grants from Grandma and Grandpa Government.

In particular, the Auditor General found WooBoo might have trouble paying to repair and replace things once they wore out, like footpaths and playgrounds and bridges.

The red light blinked, but in the town chambers of WooBoo the party went on until, one day in late 2018, it stopped.

By then, Grandma Government had put her foot down and capped rates so councils could not just keep asking ratepayers for more. Instead, annual rate rises would be capped at between 2% and 2.5%.

By then, the money-losing WooBoo children’s festival had been axed abruptly. By then, it was becoming clear that the carloads of tourists were not going to the maritime museum.

The seven dwarfs had to absorb some hard truths.

One of these was that the WooBoo capital works budget for 2017-18 had blown out by a whopping $6 million from $17.6 million to $24.6 million.

A big part of this was dressing up Justice Von Liebig St, the cost of which had grown from $15 million to around $19 million, including $8 million that would need to come from the citizens of WooBoo.

The big drainage project had also been in trouble, with the first contractor going broke and the final cost still not known until it is all finished.

On top of this, recycling fees had skyrocketed, the cost of keeping a pet had shot up, parking in WooBoo was more expensive, rates would still rise, and there was still not enough money for all the old roads, pavements and playgrounds to be repaired.

Things were suddenly not so good.

Grumpy thumped the table and yelled “I told you so!” and this time Mayor Sneezy agreed with him.

Happy and Doc, being astute in the art of public relations, told the people of WooBoo that they were committed to tackling a crisis that they had “inherited” and the only way to do this was to ask the people what they thought, ignore that, and then seek to bust the rate cap anyway.

The three other dwarfs, who were still trying to get their heads around it all, nodded in agreement.

And so, dear reader, hi-ho, hi-ho, off to the Essential Services Commission we go.

And what of Snow White?

Ah, she sensibly retired early to her castle by the seaside, from where she watches the hard-working people of WooBoo rise up and prepare to march past the empty grounds of the maritime museum, and down the glittering, gridlocked avenue of Justice Von Liebig St, named, as it so happens, for the German industrial chemist who invented fertiliser to replace cow dung.

The End.

[For those who want to go deeper, you can find the Auditor-General’s red light here on the WCC’s adjusted underlying result, page 79. The WCC 2018-19 budget is here. You can find the capital works details at item 4.5.1 on page 45.]

The Terrier – Carol Altmann

LAST DRINKS: Tonight (25/2/19) the W’Bool City Council voted 5/2 to try and raise rates above the cap because we are apparently in deep financial do-do.

It is just three months since W’bool City Council CEO Bruce Anson retired – he spent 11 years at the helm, passing each performance review with flying colours, and earning a salary package that toward the end was close to $320,000 a year.

You earn this kind of money for a reason – to keep the ship in shape.

By Carol Altmann

Local construction giant Graeme Rodger has taken a rocket to the Warrnambool City Council for a tender process that will see ratepayers pay at least $328,000 more than they could have for part of the Simpson St drainage project.

At a time of rate capping and tight spending, you would think the WCC would be aiming to save every dollar it can, which is why a story about tendering becomes so interesting.

Mr Rodger’s company, Rodger Constructions, was among those who in August bid for a multi-million dollar contract for a stage of the Simpson St stormwater drain upgrade – a 725m long tunnel that directs stormwater from East Warrnambool out to the Hopkins River.

Rodger Constructions put in two tenders: one for just under $3.213 million and another, called a non-conforming tender, which suggested a cheaper option that would have cost $3.116 million.

The council went on to award the tender to another local company, despite its price of $3.542 million being higher than both of the Rodger Constructions’ tenders, which begs the question of why spend more ratepayers’ money than you need to?

As Mr Rodger pointed out in no uncertain terms in a letter on Oct 4 to council CEO Bruce Anson and councillors, the selected tender will cost ratepayers almost 10% more – $328,530 – than the one submitted by Rodger Constructions.

And if the council had considered the alternative, ‘non-conforming’ option, it could have saved almost 12% – or $424,630 – which is no small potatoes in a tight council budget.

According to Mr Rodger, the extra cost to ratepayers is due to a flaw in the tender process and it is this, rather than losing the tender, that he wants to blow open. As a former city councillor (with Warrnambool and Colac) and a chair of South West Water (now Wannon Water) for 12 years, he knows a bit about tendering – from both sides.

I know what you are probably thinking at this point, because I thought it too: Rodger Constructions is peeved at not winning the tender and maybe its tender was just way off course, so let’s look at that.

While a $3 million-plus tender is a big project and Rodger Constructions no doubt wanted the job, it is not a make-or-break deal for a company that has several huge contracts on the go at any one time including, at the moment, the site works for the new Warrnambool Special Development School and the Hopkins Ridge housing estate.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this success that Mr Rodger can speak out publicly although, like so many others, he has been advised against it.

(If I had a dollar for every time I talked to someone who said I can’t use their name in a story because they feared a backlash, I would be basking somewhere in Barcelona).

So what about the tender submitted by Rodger Constructions?

Well, it was robust enough to made the council’s short-list.

As part of that short-listing process, the council highlighted specific parts of the tender that need tweaking and then Rodger Constructions could submit its “best and final offer”.

Rodger Constructions did just that: they tweaked the parts highlighted by the council and put in a best and final offer.

Mr Rodger said it came as something of a shock, then, when the council later rejected the tender for reasons that he says were never raised in the shortlisting.

As Rodger Constructions wrote in a letter to councillors, the main reasons given for rejecting the tender had never been issues in the past – the company has done contract work for the council for five decades – and they could have been resolved easily with a one-on-one meeting. (Such a meeting is allowed under tendering rules.)

One of the reasons for rejection, for example, was Rodger Constructions’ failure to demonstrate its financial capacity to do the project.

Others were concerns around quality assurance and meeting the project completion date.

“We are a pre-qualified company, with national accreditation, to complete contracted works for any single job up to $15 million,” Mr Rodger said.

“We have been performing similar contracted works for WCC for over 52 years. If we had been asked, then these concerns would have been alleviated. This could have been done via a simple post-tender meeting, which once again is normal practice and is in the WCC Procurement Policy.

“Not having this meeting has cost the ratepayers of Warrnambool,” he said.

In a letter to Mr Rodger on October 26, council CEO Mr Anson said it was “discretionary” for the council to ask for more information from tenderers, to have any further talks or negotiations, or to allow a tenderer to amend their bid.

“In this instance, the council elected not to exercise any of these options,” Mr Anson wrote.

“This decision was made based on the specific requirements of the tender process in question, and also in light of the council’s obligations under its Procurement Policy,” he said.

Mr Anson then outlined the need for transparency, fairness, and judging each tender on its merits, which includes council staff not relying on information they already know about a company.

Of course Mr Anson is right, such an approach is necessary and sound, but if the council could have saved more than $300,000 on the final contract price, why not also use its perfectly legal discretion to meet with a tenderer to flush out any missing facts?

Mr Rodger has since asked for a copy of the tender audit trail to nail down that – expensive – question.

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By Carol Altmann

The Warrnambool City Council’s handling of racehorse training at Levy’s Beach is turning into a trifecta of trouble that should have us all seriously concerned about how the council operates.

Let’s check the form guide as the council prepares to meet tomorrow night (26/10) to revisit a decision it made just 11 days ago to – illegally – issue permits to allow commercial racehorse training at Levy’s from December 1.

Race 1: The Law-Breaker Stakes

The WCC broke the law and has been breaking it for years.

This may sound dramatic, but it is true. The Warrnambool City Council has enabled racehorse training at Levy’s for years without ever checking if it was breaking its own planning laws.

It was.

The entire Warrnambool Planning Scheme is a serious document. It is enforceable by law and its whole purpose is to make sure that we all know the rules and we abide by them. We trust our council to make sure this happens regardless of who we are, how much money we have, or what influence we might bring to bear.

Despite this, the council did nothing when racehorse trainers started to turn up at Levy’s Beach well before trainer Darren Weir’s Melbourne Cup success in 2015 and well before anyone started to talk about a Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan.

These trainers, we now know, were breaking the local planning laws and the rules around what is allowed in a coastal reserve, and they continued to do so until so many of them began turning up along the beaches between Killarney and Warrnambool that it was impossible to ignore.

Council CEO Bruce Anson has tried to justify the WCC’s ignorance of its own laws by saying when Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio stepped in in late 2016, giving an order to say the council could issue licences to trainers, they blindly followed. (You can see Ms D’Ambrosio’s order here).

Nobody at council checked? Nobody challenged this? Nobody thought that perhaps the Environment Minister didn’t have the power to ignore the Warrnambool Planning Scheme?

(I wonder if the WCC would be so subservient if the Minister granted free car parking across the city? Hmmmm.)

A planning scheme can be altered one of two ways: by the council (a process that can take a year), or a Planning Minister declaring the matter of such importance that they change the planning scheme. Ms D’Ambrosio is not a Planning Minister.

It is not a decision to be made lightly, which bring us to the second leg.

Race 2: The Who-Gives-A-Stuff Cup

The council knew it was breaking the law, but raced on anyway.

Word has been leaking out of council this week that concerned council officers tried to raise the alarm back in February this year about the legality of racehorse training at Levy’s and nobody listened.

I absolutely trust my sources on this and I trust them even more in light of what happened at last Monday night’s council meeting.

That was when we saw, in unprecedented scenes, four of the seven councillors vote in favour of issuing training permits for Levy’s despite being warned they were breaking the law.

That warning came from the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) to Mr Anson in late September and directly to councillors via email on Sunday night.

The council’s own legal advice arrived this week, confirming it was in breach of the law.

As Shannon Hurley, from the VNPA, said today, the VNPA’s legal advice confirmed “commercial racehorse training has never been allowed within the reserve and so should have never been allowed to explode”.

“It is (also) not a ‘balanced use’, it is the opposite, because it was never allowed in the first place.”

Crs Kylie Gaston, Tony Herbert, Sue Cassidy and Mayor Robert Anderson didn’t care about any of this, it seems, because they cracked the whip and pushed through the vote on Monday night.

Which brings me to the final leg:

Race 3: The Nothing-to-Declare Handicap

The conflict-of-interest rules in Local Government are pathetic and because they are pathetic, our councillors need to be stronger.

We saw just how pathetic the conflict of interest rules were on Monday, when Cr Gaston was able to sit at the council table, move the motion on the Levy’s permits and vote on those permits, all while being an endorsed Labor candidate.

The racehorse training at Levy’s is being pushed by the State Labor Government and Cr Gaston wants to be a Labor MP, yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

The week after Monday’s vote, Cr Gaston was campaigning in Portland with Minister Lily D’Ambrosio (mentioned above), yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

Cr Sue Cassidy’s partner runs sign company Cassign, which is a sponsor of the Warrnambool Racing Club and has sponsored several races, yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

The council hosts a hospitality marquee (which we pay for) each year at the May Race Carnival and yet there is no conflict of interest under the Local Government Act.

It stinks, yet not one councillor at Monday night’s meeting raised any of these concerns.

Nobody leapt to their feet and challenged Cr Gaston on how she managed to wear two hats within 24 hours, or how it looks when Cr Cassidy’s family business is a supporter of racing, or how the council can hope to make an impartial decision on racehorse training when it hangs out at the May races.

As we know, there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, and right now the council is running dead last on both.

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By Carol Altmann

What the heck just happened?

Our Warrnambool City Council chief executive officer Bruce Anson earns a salary package of around $320,000 a year and yet it was left to a group of volunteers to reveal to us this stunning fact: racehorse training at Levy’s Beach is illegal.

Had Mr Anson not bothered to have his staff check this possibility before? Why not?

Why was it left to volunteers in the Belfast Council Reserve Action Group (BCRAG) to do all the leg work, which they did?

Even if Mr Anson hadn’t bothered to check the legalities since this whole racehorse issue blew open more than two years ago, he certainly knew about the legal issues by September 20.

That was when the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) contacted Mr Anson to tell him that the council was breaking its planning laws.

Mr Anson definitely got that memo, because he emailed a response to the VNPA soon after, saying he would ask the city planners to investigate.

(The city planners confirmed today that yes, it is illegal.)

Mr Anson was contacted on September 20 – almost a month ago – and yet he did not pass any of this critical information onto elected councillors, who found out about it last Sunday via an email from BCRAG.

The BCRAG email arrived just one day before councillors were to vote on whether to allow racehorses back in to Levy’s and it warned they were in breach of the law.

The vote went through 4/3 – Labor candidate Cr Kylie Gaston made sure of that – and the council agreed to once again issue permits to allow 60 horses a day on Levy’s beach and 40 on the dunes.

Let’s be super clear on what all of this this means.

It means elected councillors turned up to an urgent meeting called for Monday night to decide whether to allow dozens of racehorses back on to Levy’s Beach without having all the facts.

Facts that were already known to the CEO who seems determined, for reasons unknown, to make sure that what the Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Minister Martin Pakula want, they get.

If this is not a red-hot scandal, I don’t know what is.

The thing is, it comes on the heels of so many other examples of information being provided to councillors or the public that is either wrong, mis-leading or incomplete.

Just this week we saw an attempt by council to chainsaw two 115-year-old Australian banyan trees from Raglan Parade this weekend because of false suggestions they were causing car accidents.

Last month we saw a mass correction published in the council papers when wrong budget figures were included in an earlier agenda.

Before that we saw rubbery figures provided to the public about how well Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village was travelling, when in fact it is going backward.

And that is just the stuff we know about.

Ratepayers – and councillors – rely on being given accurate information by its very well-paid senior council officers, with Mr Anson at the top of that tree.

We shouldn’t have to work this hard to get to the truth.

It shouldn’t be the case that every time a major issue arises, we have to strap ourselves in – volunteers, ratepayers, journalists, councillors – for another exhausting wade through the reports and fine print to see what is really going on.

But this has become the culture within the WCC and it is the culture that has developed under Mr Anson’s watch.

As BCRAG member Teresa O’Brien shouted out at Monday night’s meeting, “We just want to be told the truth”.

When the stakes are so high – wild beaches that will be trampled, or ancient trees that cannot be replaced – never has this plea been more important.

[Note: What happens next with the racehorses on beaches? Now that the WCC has been found in breach of its planning laws, the State Planning Minister Richard Wynne may intervene and grant permission. If not, the WCC can amend its planning laws, but this is a lengthy process. The State Government moves into caretaker mode on November 1, before the state election on November 24. The Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Minister Martin Pakula are desperate to have this resolved before then.]

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