Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Ding! Ding! It’s last drinks at the Warrnambool City Council as we have known it for the past decade, with fresh faces stepping up for the election and the old crew failing to fire.

We may see, at last, a permanent end to what I will call the Anson era (aka, the dark, old days).

In this past fortnight we have seen a flurry of exciting new candidates – Jim Burke, Otha Akoch, Tracey Togni, Ben Blain, Cassandra Prigg – with more names yet to come before the 22 September deadline.

By sharp contrast, the announcement by veteran councillors Kylie Gaston (8 years/twice Mayor) and Mike Neoh (16 years/ five times Mayor) that that they will both run again went down like a lead balloon.

(Strangely, Cr Neoh also announced he would run for Mayor, for a sixth time, before that part of the newspaper story online suddenly disappeared.)

That’s because the ratepayers and residents of Warrnambool have wised up.

To put it bluntly, they no longer fall for spin, gas lighting, or the lack of taking any responsibility whatsoever for poor decisions and costly mistakes.

For while Crs Neoh, Gaston and the other five sitting councillors have all made a contribution to public life, they have also overseen a period where the councillors have completely lost the trust of the people – and for good reason.

You can’t talk about being open and upfront and then have four councillors knife a CEO behind closed doors just three months before an election, with no evidence or explanation as to why, and install a person from within whose five-year contract was about to expire.

All of this was done, of course, without telling ratepayers how much the coup will cost them in legal fees and payouts.

And who could possibly describe the rorting of ratepayers’ money through the abuse of council corporate credit cards as a “blip”?

Who does that?

Cr Gaston did and, in my mind, it is both unforgivable and so telling, because it reveals a mindset among councillors where public image is more important than public accountability.

It’s this mindset that has plagued our council for at least 10 years, at enormous expense to ratepayers and residents.

The current batch of councillors, except, perhaps, for Cr Sycopoulis who spent years challenging the dominant forces, have been part of this.

We know, for example, that the Liebig St upgrade – trumpeted as a huge success – blew out by almost $5 million.

And poor old Flagstaff Hill has cost more than $10 million to keep afloat since it began to die in 2009, including $3 million for a sound and light show that was doomed from the start.

Instead of telling us the truth, the council reports on Flagstaff Hill told us fibs, before they stopped telling us anything at all.

Ratepayers also spent more than $6 million propping up the Fun4Kids festival because the council had nothing else in the wings to replace it.

And just last year, there was no money to spend on repairing and maintaining basic things like footpaths and bridges, yet the councillors agreed to spend $775,000 on two toilet blocks and almost $500,000 on a single roundabout in Kepler St.

Many of the current councillors were part of all this.

Rates had to be increased by double the state cap, because we were so broke, yet Crs Neoh, Gaston and Anderson, as Mayors, kept reassuring us that the budget was strong.

It wasn’t. It was weak, and it’s going to get much weaker.

This year’s budget already has a $10 million hole from the impact of Covid-19, which is far from over, and the blowout will most likely get worse before it gets better.

We are potentially facing a devastating financial and social crisis in the next 12 months and yet what do we get from most of our councillors? We get more fairytales.

First we are told the council is considering selling Flagstaff Hill, but it’s prime Crown land and it can’t be sold – nor should it be sold – without good reason and special permission from the state.

The ink had barely dried on that fairytale before Cr Gaston, in announcing her candidacy, said she wanted to keep Flagstaff Hill, reopen the pub and…drumroll… link the whole place to Lake Pertobe.

This “new idea” has been around since 2013, when it was raised as one of the ways to stop Flagstaff Hill from bleeding to death.

At that time, the majority of councillors  – including Cr Gaston and with Cr Neoh as Mayor – pushed for the sound and light show…. and blew another few million dollars.

Cr Neoh, meanwhile, recently announced as his big new idea a walking/bike path from Lake Gillear to Childer’s Cove.

As candidate Jim Burke discovered in his research, this “new idea”  has been around since 2005,  a year after Cr Neoh was first elected – 16 years ago. (See above)

Nothing happened.

It’s all just more spin, more puff and more distraction from a legacy littered with waste.

Even if we wanted to believe in these fairytales, we can’t afford them, and the people of Warrnambool know it.

We are wide awake to what is going on.

Despite the attempts to keep us in the dark, we have been turning on the lights and we can see an entirely different future to one that is just more of the same.

That future, if Warrnambool really wants it, starts with choosing an entirely fresh council in October.

I’ll drink to that.

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The Tip Jar

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Three interesting things and a question:

Titibit #1: If you were wondering why a series of red bars have suddenly started popping up on intersections around the CBD, here’s the answer: the introduction of a 30kph speed limit.

The new, slower speed limit was one of the many things bundled into the now $18 million upgrade of Liebig St but, as far as I can see, it hasn’t been mentioned or discussed widely since it was first raised as an idea for Liebig St in 2014.

From what I have found, Warrnambool is the only place in Victoria outside certain parts of Melbourne to introduce a 30kph zone and the idea, of course, is to slow the traffic down to make life safer for pedestrians. 

There is nothing wrong with that concept, but given the amount of traffic controls now in place in Liebig St – with more zebra crossings, roundabouts and speed humps than you can count – is it really necessary?

And is it necessary to extend it from Liebig St to other parts of the CBD where the limit is 50kph?

I haven’t seen any statistics on the number of pedestrian injuries around Kepler St/Raglan Pde, for example, or Banyan/Timor St, which are just two of the intersections now getting the red stripe treatment.

Driving at 30kph really is snail’s pace – it’s 10kph slower than for school zones – and I can’t see people sticking to it outside of the main street where the speed is already restricted by design.

Titbit #2: The draft Warrnambool City Council budget/s and its submission to the Essential Services Commission to ask for a 4.5% rate rise contains so many gems, I am not sure where to start, but I will list a few during this week, starting from today.

First, according to the ESC submission, Flagstaff Hill – my old hobby horse – and the Visitor Centre ran at a loss of $1.79 million in 2016-17 and $859,061 last financial year.

It is expected to run at a loss of around $750,000 each year for the next three years, which is $100k more than anticipated and getting close to double the losses of around 10 years ago.

This is eye watering.

By the way, it is worth mentioning that Colac Shire Council is raising its rates by a mere .5% this year. They were thinking of going for 2%, the same as last year, but that was knocked back by a majority of councillors. It is also worth mentioning, again, that out of 79 councils in Victoria, only two are applying to break the rate cap and we are one of them.

Titbit #3: Enormous public pressure and several thousand signatures on a petition saw council staff recommend recently that the two 115-year-old Moreton Bay figs at the corner of Banyan St and Raglan Parade be saved.

Yay! Sanity prevails.

But wait…

No, they are not saved, yet, because the councillors deferred making a decision so they could – once again with feeling – look at the whole Banyan St streetscape and – once again – try to find out how much it would cost to plant coastal banksias down the southern end because Infrastructure head Scott Cavanagh had no real idea.

Good grief, the people of southern Banyan St have been waiting for five years to get this sorted. Five years.

Worryingly, as part of the debate Cr David Owen – he who loves trees – described the two Moreton Bay figs as “freaks” because of their bad pruning and said should be removed.

Why, as has been said elsewhere, do councillors ignore most petitions unless they give them the answer they wanted in the first place?

And a question….

Speaking of petitions, how ironic that the WCC is part of a petition for better roads in our area.

Judging by the years of neglect in road funding so far, the council might find its own petition efforts are also ignored.

Unless…unless…we will actually make Wannon a marginal seat at the federal election on May 18.

Are we brave enough?

Over to you….

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Terrier Tip Jar

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

How to save $700,000 in seven days: the final instalment.

Two words: Flagstaff Hill.

I have been writing since 2014 about the steady decline of Flagstaff Hill and the picture never gets any better – it costs ratepayers at least $500,000 a year to sustain.

This year, the deficit will be higher than last year, and is expected to be at least $600,000.

The Warrnambool City Council says it must save around $700,000 a year from its budget, yet Flagstaff Hill is costing it $600,000. Am I missing something?

At least $6 million of ratepayers’ money has been used to prop up the maritime village since it began dying around 10 years ago, but it is not mentioned in any of the council’s material about rate rises and service cuts.

Instead, the WCC pushes out misleading information and media puff pieces about how well it is all going up on “the Hill”.

It isn’t going well and we shouldn’t take that personally: tourists tastes have changed and they changed a long time ago.

What we should take personally is the complete lack of any accountability for the huge amount of taxpayer and ratepayer money that has been thrown into Flagstaff Hill, all on false promises.

In 2017, the Warrnambool City Council sunk another $1 million into a $3 million taxpayer-funded revamp which included a new sound and light show, a re-styled entrance and changes to some of the exhibits.

The promised spike in tourists didn’t happen and visitor numbers have gone backward, so far backward that, this past summer, Flagstaff Hill volunteers were urged to invite family members to the sound and light show, just to help plump up the crowd.

Despite all of this, nobody has been made accountable for the decision to throw good money after bad.

Not one person within the WCC has stood up and said, sorry, we really got that wrong and this is what we plan to do about it.

Not all council-funded facilities have to make a profit, of course, because they serve a greater good, like libraries, art galleries, museums, playgrounds and recreation centres.

But Flagstaff Hill is a tourism operation that is owned and managed by the council and, as a tourism operation, it should be turning a profit, surely. It used to, but that was many years ago.

So what is the council’s plan for the future of Flagstaff Hill, other than to keep expecting ratepayers to foot the growing deficit?

Mayor Tony Herbert told the February 4 council meeting that the council was “monitoring the situation” and looking “quite stringently” at its options, which might sound comforting, but tells us nothing.

He then went on to reassure us that Flagstaff Hill still made a significant impact on the economy by encouraging overnight stays in Warrnambool.

Really? I thought people stayed overnight in Warrnambool because they were tired from the long drive down the Great Ocean Road.

And so on it goes, around and around, with no real answers and no obvious plan.

If the council presses ahead with its bid to break the rate cap of 2.5% or cut essential services, then it must explain to ratepayers how Flagstaff Hill fits into the picture.

And it surely needs to also explain the use of council credit cards for wining and dining.

And its annual expenditure on consultants.

And the more than $770,000 spent on two toilet blocks last year.

And paying $300,000 more for a Simpson St drainage tender than it needed to.

And the $450,000 it will spend on beautifying just one city roundabout this year.

And its corporate marquee at the May Race Carnival that costs at least $17,000 for the day.

Because if we have to save $700,000 a year from the budget for the next three years, this is where we need to start.

Thankyou for hanging in here.

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By Carol Altmann

New, full-year figures for Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village confirm that despite a $3 million upgrade, the village is in a death spiral.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the reality is a lot worse than the pumped up picture given by adding free visitor numbers to the totals.

Earlier this week Warrnambool City councillors were told that only 50,000 people paid to visit the site or attend the revamped sound and light show in 2017-18. (Just for comparison, Sovereign Hill averages more than 450,000 visitors a year).

I can almost hear their jaws hitting the table.

Another 8500 people, roughly, turned up for free events in 2017-18 and while that might make us feel good, it is not helping to pay the bills. In fact it adds to them.

To be super clear, 50,000 paying visitors is not sustainable. The village needs at least 80,000 to break even, and more if it is ever – ever – to turn a profit like it used to back in the 70s and 80s.

As it stands, the council is paying more than $500,000 a year to keep the village afloat. This financial year and next, it expects to spend a total of $1.1 million.

What an absolute waste of money and what really grates my wick is that all of this was so utterly predictable.

The council knew, tourism experts knew, and even Blind Freddy Down The Street was on top of it, that sticking a $3 million BandAid on top of a weeping wound is not going to fix it.

Four years ago, Flagstaff Hill was seriously weeping.

An expensive masterplan commissioned by the council concluded that to make any real difference, to actually turn the place around and give it a whole new lease of life, it would have to spend close to $15 million.

We didn’t have $15 million to spend.

So what do you do? Like a home renovator who has run out of money, do you keep trying to patch the house up, or do you cut your losses and move on?

Our council decided to keep patching: Maremma dogs, Oddball, a new light and sound show about hunting whales, hologram characters instead of real people, a new entrance, stuffed toys…patch, patch, patch.

And meanwhile the poor volunteers – without them we would be in even deeper trouble – and the exhausted council staff just kept trying their best while avoiding the bleeding obvious that the cobblestoned pathways weaving through the village were mostly empty.

Ratepayers and taxpayers have every right to be outraged by this waste of money.

We have been let down by our leaders and decision makers and fed a steady, fatty diet of bullshit and spin and now, here we are, with no plan for the future of Flagstaff Hill.

That clear-eyed planning should have started at least five years ago, when the numbers began to slide and the writing was on the wall that Flagstaff Hill has had its day.

It is not Sovereign Hill – which operates under an entirely different structure and system – and it is not IMAX. It was great, once, but times have changed…dramatically.

Now we know the truth, we need to ask our council to set out a new vision for the Flagstaff Hill site.

What does it have in mind? What are the possibilities? What are the limitations? (Being on Crown land is one of them).

The Flagstaff Hill site is magnificent. The views are spectacular and the lighthouse section is authentic, historic and already showing its appeal as accommodation. What’s next?

Whatever happens, we can’t do it on our own. It will need partnerships or investors or entrepreneurs to not only help set the course, but to fund it.

We only have to look across at the revitalised Fletcher Jones site, currently being transformed into The Warrnambool Motor Museum, to see what is possible. A decade ago, that site was almost given up for dead.

The same can happen with Flagstaff Hill, but we need to ring the bell and start turning away from the rocks now, or the greatest shipwreck of all will be itself.

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The Vault:

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]his little gem of an anecdote about losing the key to case holding the precious Loch Ard peacock at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village gives an insight into some of the problems that have beset the museum in the recent past.

The Minton porcelain peacock – valued at $4 million in 2010 and no doubt worth even more now – is considered the jewel of the crown in the Flagstaff Hill collection.

Despite this, finding the key to its case can be a problem, not to mention moving it, because it is quite heavy.

Here is the anecdote in full from Flagstaff Hill manager Peter Abbott’s report to the Warrnambool City Council for its March meeting:

“Peacock turntable:

The unit that the Loch Ard peacock sits on stopped rotating. Whilst we don’t open the Peacock cabinet regularly it is quite an operation to do so.

The first attempt found that the key we used was not the right one – 2nd attempt found the peacock weighed a great deal more than we expected so we didn’t move it off the turntable, the third attempt we successfully moved the Peacock with a trolley donated by Matko hire.

The turntable will be sent to Bendigo for renewal with the company that built it 13 years ago.”

Why does this reading this make me shiver? Matko trolleys? Lost keys?

On another note, Bluestone often wonders if all of the missing Loch Ard lead ingots that were believed to be in the water under the now demolished Rowitta ever showed up? To date, the FHMV has not released an update.

And regular readers will also remember the FHMV will spend $2 million in state and council funds on a new sound and light show.

According to Mr Abbott’s report to the council, the tender for this project had been awarded, but council spokesman Nick Higgins told us this was not the case and a final provider was yet to be chosen. (Update: a tender has been awarded and is the same group that developed the current Shipwrecked show at the village).

Either way, the project was expected to start in July last year. It is now expected to be completed by early 2017.

Other good stuff:

Fun4Kids costs $450k but provides no report

Trees, transparency and truth

The big shed schemozzle: we follow the money

Wilma Wright, FOI and more