The Non-visible Councillor Bell - Another Tool

Regular contributor Slim adds another to the Townsville's 'Bag of Tools'

I really can't recall the last time the ratepayers heard anything of any substance from the Non-visible Cr Deanne Bell. Well, other than outrageous travel and hospitality expenses. Every year.

Must be my recall facilities because surely the marvellous salaries we pay really bring out the best in our representatives, don't you agree?

The poor dear must be thinking she can get back the deputy dawg's spot if she can stick the boot into someone while David Crisafulli is focussing on Mundingburra and Dale Last is just looking for his next media opportunity.

So, who does she choose for targets in a newspaper article on 31 March but the city's landlords? Boom - one shot in the foot. But really it's a double barrell and a shot in the other foot as well - Boom. Landlords are ratepayers too, just like the most of the rest of us ratepayers.

Has this person actually got out of her office and had a look at the extreme drainage problems? In most cases caused by poor council planning decisions and poor council policies and requirements about stormwater.

We know we are having one of the wettest seasons on record and we know when we are being patronised and when arrogance shows its long nose and ugly face.

Has this person had a look at Deschamp Street; at McHardie Street; at Wotton Street; at Laura Court, just for a few examples - I have and I can see many houses abandoned for the duration of The Wet.

It's not such a bad idea to abandon your house and go and live with relatives in another state, for example, because the city is rapidly running out of land with reasonable drainage.

Nobody should be building houses on reclaimed swampland or river flats.

Here's an idea for the Councillor, if that's the best she can come up with to get herself noticed, it is time. It is time all right for her to go and live in another state and leave us to look after our residences in the best ways that we know.

The Townsville City Council is not capable.
Cheers, Slim.

So many tools you could open a workshop!!

There's something fishy in Townsville's water

Click to open full-size

Today's report in The Townsville Bulletin on the federal Government's response to Townsville City Council's request for clarification about it's powers to change local water pricing answers one question but raises some serious others.

Clearly from the federal Department's response (right), that power rests with the Council.

Equally clear but far more revealing, the Council has failed (consistently since 30 June last year) to meet federal guideline requirements for them to submit a pricing implementation plan.  Of course, why TCC failed to submit their plan is totally unclear.

The other thing that is very unclear to me is why exactly the CEO of a Council would write to an Assistant Secretary over a matter of some significant financial and political import. 

These days, Assistant Secretaries are between 4 and 6 on Departmental food chains. So why would a CEO write to No.4 in the opposite structure?

Would Clive Palmer write to a TCC Exec Manager (No.3 in the food chain) to get an issue resolved? I don't think so!  In fact, given that Palmer is Owner and Chairman of the Board, he would write to his opposite number, the Minister - just as Mayor Les should have!

Or perhaps they were hoping for some wriggle room in the response they would get from some clerk down the pecking order?

All-in-all, a big c*ck-up and a very fishy tactic in response if you ask me.  It will be interesting to see how fast the want-to-be Member for Mundigburra, David Crisafulli, and the want-to-be Mayor, Dale Last, run away and hide from this one!!

Jenny Hill has her own questions too.  I reproduce her Press Release below because I don't expect it to get a run in the Bully:

The letter from the Assistant Secretary of Urban Water regarding Townsville City Council request for water pricing changes should raise the eyebrows of every rate payer in this city.

If this letter is correct and I have no reason to doubt its content then the Director of Water Ken Diehm, the CEO, the Mayor, his Deputy, and other councillors involved need to be accountable for the deception they have perpetrated against residents of this city.

It clearly shows (see second paragraph of letter attached) council failed to supply any information to the Federal Government on how it would charge for water as per the agreement. "The government can not tell council what to do or how it can charge because council failed to provide the required information to the Federal Government." Cr Hill said.

The questions that need to be asked is

1. Why didn’t council staff prepare a full report on water pricing options and discuss it with the Federal Government as per the agreement? What was the direction given by the CEO regarding this matter?

2. What did the mayor and deputy mayor know?

3. Was the pricing structure implemented more about revenue to pay our massive $400 million rather than complying with the agreement with the Federal Government?

4. Why weren’t council staff directed to look at charging methods and options and prepare a report to council on these options?

"We are paying our CEO and some of our directors more than the Prime Minister, hence not only myself but the community deserves better than the trite we have been dished that ,Its the Federal Governments fault. The Mayor needs to stay home and work this out, travelling to Canberra isn't the answer."

There is nothing in National Water Initiative pricing principles that states council had to implement the current tariff and methodolgy to its water and wastewater pricing.

No it’s not the state government, its not the Federal Government, Council determines its own fate in these matters. We have borrowed too much and now the only way this council can manage its massive $400million debt is to hike its rates and water/wastewater charges to the point that they are pricing people out of this city.

End.

Yasi repair priorities

The Erosion Patrol article in today's Townsville Bulletin about repairing the city's beaches says heaps about both the Bulletin's ability to critically appraise the spin that comes out of Council and Council's priority setting for its Yasi clean-up efforts.

From the article we learn that:

• Rich idiots built/brought a house on a foreshore sanddune in the city's northern beaches
• The sea persistantly tries to reclaim it's dune
• Nobody is responsible for approving the developments or choosing to live in them
• All taxpayers are responsible for restoring these front yards (and property values)

You'd also assume that, after the Strand, these were the only beaches damaged by Yasi's storm surge.  Mayor Tyrell (or should that be Mayor-in-wanting, the very quiet Dale Last) and the Bulletin would be much better informed if they actually visited that other suburb, Magnetic Island.  If they did they'd see damage like this on the Nelly Bay foreshore:

By my reckoning, this part of Nelly Bay has lost about 15 metres of beachfront!
 
I would have thought that Tyrell or Last would have worked out by now that:

1. Magnetic Island is Townsville's prime tourism asset and as such produce an economic benefit for the whole city,
2. Part of the Island's sales pitch is it's 23 beaches,
3. Beachfront mansions in Bushland Beach are of no productive benefit to the city or its economy

Naive me! 

I also learn in the Bully's hardcopy that Mayor Les has actually flown over the Island in a helicopter.  I wish I'd known - I'd have given him the finger back

Footnote:  I should also point out that, while the damage in the pics was caused by Yasi's storm surge, the reason for the damage is the reshaping of the Bay when the western end was blow-up, bulldozed and filled-in to make the Nelly Bay Harbour which you can just see the beginning of in the bottom two pics.

Townsville City Council finally gets something right - maybe

News just in that Council seems to have finally conducted a post-amalgamation restructure, including cutting 16 management positions.

While I received this on my rss feeder, I can't open the feed or find the story on the Bully's website or the Council's media page

As someone who's had a bit to do with Council professionally, I gotta say that this is not before time - it has been patently obvious since their last restructure that, by modern organisational and management standards, the organisation was bloated at the middle and particularly senior management levels.

Of course, the big question will be - have they 'sacked' the right ones.

More to come as I get the details

Update:  The Bully's link is now working here. 

It seems that the cuts are confined to Council's two comercial Waste and Water units.  A good start but still way too much deadwood at the "Executive Manager Level" - Cafe Bambinis @ Woolies WILL be happy

Of Malls and Convention Centres

I finally had a wander down the 'finished' section of the Townsville Mall (or Flinders Street as it will soon be instantly recognised as around the globe).

Seeing no one is game to publicly bucket Council's latest little adventure in urban design (remember Flinders St East), let me be the first:

• It's gonna be a bloody wet place to go shopping in the wet season
• It's gonna be a bloody hot place to eat your lunch when it's not raining

On the plus side, some of Townsville's ugliest buildings are now fully exposed for the world's architecture tourists (and American boat people) to truly 'enjoy'.

More to the point, it seems that Council and the developer class about town have worked out that the renovation ain't going to work, ain't gonna make the Mall one bit more competitive as a shopping destination and ain't gonna be the $57 million incentive to potential investors in Lancini's Flinders Plaza development that it was designed to provide.

The building 'campaign' for Townsville's much mooted Convention Centre to be located within the CBD (read Lancini's Flinders Plaza ghetto)  is a great study in how these guys play the game (with the help of The Bulletin of course):

• You simply start by someone with profile raising the suggestion - as CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack no doubt did in a call to Tony Raggatt who pushes the idea into play.  The same day the Bully's anonymous Editor does a support piece in his editorial - not too strident, gently, gently, place it second.
• The next day you run a page-3 story (complete with front page header) in which, according to Raggatt, "the idea has been supported by Townsville Mayor Les Tyrell and CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack" (the previous day he had reported Stack and Tyrell as saying that the idea should be considered). 
• While we're about it, let's introduce Lancini into play - carefully though, you wouldn't like to look too eager at the prospect of a $140 million key-stone tenant to kick your stalled development along.
• And let's add a bit a bit of weight to the proposition by quoting an economist - and none other than local developer Carey Ramm
• And for good measure, why not give Raggatt a 'Business Desk' opinion piece on the same day when he can invoke the ghosts of his father to argue that Lancini should have the subsidy Convention Centre.

In one sense, of course, they are all right - the only thing that will make the Mall work is more people!  However, no one is going to open a shop in the Mall on the promise of maybe lots of people attending a 2 or 3- day conference once a month for maybe nine months of the year.

And of course adding a few carparks (even at the expense of the hundreds that come to the precinct every day by bus - how dumb is that) is not going to make the CBD any more attractive or convenient or, therefore, competitive against Stocklands, The Willows etc

I'm afraid that population density in the CBD (both residential and office) is the only thing that will save The Mall and Council had their chance when they considered a proposal for the development of an Arts Centre (that could have also accommodated conventions) and office/residential complex on what is currently the carpark between Council and the Law Courts.  Instead, they chose to use the available funds to build the tack-on to the Civic Theatre which (coincidentally, of course) gave Les and the big boys a perfectly oriented balcony from which they can gaze down on Pitt Straight during the annual Ried "Park" dinosaur race.  Perhaps Raggatt should chase down that story.

A convention centre to save Flinders Street is a dumb idea - just like putting a road down the middle will prove to be.  But now that they've started the play, I'm afraid that we're all gonna have to watch it unfold over the quite holiday period when no-one is paying any attention to politics. After all, it might just lead to an extra $140 million subsidy support to the failed Flinders Plaza ghetto -on top of what is fairly obviously the failed $57 million subsidy Mall 'upgrade'.

Oh, did I remember to mention that Lancini is a gold advertiser with the Bully and probably the occasional supplier of free drinks to Tony Raggatt?

Playing the race card in Townsville - again!

Dale Last moved his Mayoral campaign up a notch today just as it looks as if Lez will have to do a humiliating backflip on water rates.

And what a better way to move your campaign along than by playing the race card - it's an old trick, 'sucessfully' deployed by Mooney for years after he'd learnt it from the old CLP in the Territory.

Last's latest effort here in today's Bulletin shows him and his tactics for what they are:

• " ...investors were raising serious concerns about developing in the city." Last claims!  Of course, the investors are unnamed and, as such, the claim should be treated as nonsense.  I defy Last to produce one investor who's pulled-out of the inner-city (or any other part of the city) because of small groups of parkies - because of the lack of speed in increasing population densities in the inner-city or because of the lack of parking or simply because the inner-city can't compete with suburban shopping malls maybe, but because of a few parkies - no way.  If there was money to be made, they'd be there, parkies or no.



• The "...Urban Quarter (is) on its knees with businesses going broke because of the public disorder and the problems associated with this group of people there, constantly harassing people." Last proclaims.  This is not just nonsense, it's bullshit.  Businesses in the Urban Quarter are going broke because if its location.  Completely predictable before it opened, until the redevelopment of the old rail yards is complete there is not the population to support two supermarkets in the city centre.  With Coles (the most poorly located of the two) not able to attract enough punters into the building, the rest of the tenants in the Urban Quarter have been pushing it up hill ever since it opened.

Blaming bad planning and business decisions on a few parkies is laughable simply playing the race card.

As for the reporting of Last's campaign launch, the Bulletin could not have made him happier than with the headline "Shops 'go bust' in city of drunks".  Of course neither the Bully or Last were game to admit that if the city deserves such a tag it is because of what happens in Flinders Street most nights.

Had they looked at the source of most serious alcohol related crime and hospital admissions in the city - you won't find a few parkies - you'll find middle-class kids and boy soldiers (predominantly white) behaving badly and a few club owners (and supporters of Last and major advertisers in the Bully) getting rich! 

And of course they wouldn't see any irony (or is that contradiction) in the Bulletin running at least 1 1/2 pages of liquor adds today while also running Last's latest little race-card play

Council charges - no wonder you're feeling more broke than usual

Councillor and Mayor-in-waiting Jemmy Hill is circulating some calculations on increases in Council charges since amalgamation.

Just in case you’re wondering why your household budget is getting tighter, the following might explain:

Just to be clear, between Feb-07 and Aug-10:

• Sewerage charges have risen by 66% and discounts for payment on-time have been removed.



• Water charges have increased by 125% (assuming usage of 772 kl pa). If in response you reduce your water usage by -68% to 250 kl pa, charges will still rise by 45%. Discounts for payment on-time have also been removed.

 You have to wonder whether King Les really understands numbers like these.

Could this happen in Townsville?

Homeless people in Darwin have been given the opportunity to get a meal, haircut and even a pedicure at a free community event

Darwin is a city of some 70,000 people (about 44% the size of Townsville) and yet according to the Darwin City Council (as quoted in the article) they have about 3,000 rough sleepers or long grassers (the equivalent of our parkies) - about 50 times more than Townsville’s 60 or so. 

If Townsville's 'problem' was of the same order of magnitude as Darwin's, our parkie population would number about 5,000!

If Darwin City Council can recognise that “"Every … city is facing these sorts of problems of the number of people who are sleeping on the streets," how come Cr Dale Last and the rest of Council and our own member for Townsville can’t (see other posts here and here).

And how is it that Darwin can respond in such a positive way and all Townsville can rise to is talk of punitive action?  Puts us to shame really

Of Jeeps and jilted workers

Questions need to be asked about today's story in The Bulletin about TCC workshops doing work on Manager's cars while (real) work vehicles have to wait in line.

The line spun by the "council spokesperson" that one of the vehicles was simply there for a safety inspection doesn't ring true.  If I buy a new car, I don't mediately take it somewhere else for a safety inspection (unless it's a Toyota perhaps). And if the manager's cars are brought (or more probably, leased) as part of a salary package, all responsibility for the vehicle (including converting it from a soft-top to a hard-top) rests with the staff member and/or the leasing company and not with Council.

But I suspect the real story behind this headline lies in how ready Council staff are to rat on their bosses. As I've pointed out before - my sources tell me that morale in Council is at rock-bottom at least in part because the organisational re-structure that is currently under-way is being handled abysmally by Management (and their Brisbane-based consultants) and, while creating enormous angst among workers, is doing nothing about (and in fact is increasing) the already bloated management layers in the organisation.

You can expect many more such leaks from Council workers - particularly as the new structure gets rolled out

The economic benefit in TCC paying Robbie Fowler’s wages

The TCC report (apparently purposely leaked to The Bulletin, before today’s Council Meeting to consider how to meet David Crissafulli’s promise to his mates to bail-out The Fury) speaks some truth and some complete nonsense.

It is unquestionably true that, as the report states, ''Over a period when council is seeking to reduce its operating deficit from the current year estimate of $14.7 million to break even this sponsorship commitment makes the end goal that much more difficult to achieve''

But it is arguably nonsense to claim without any supporting evidence, “…that the money would benefit the city and its residents in two major areas including:


•   Promoting or contributing to economic development of its area or part of its area;

•   Promoting or attracting commerce, industry or tourism in its area or to part of its area”

The Fury is a business – pure and simple. What other business in this town does (or should) TCC subsidise to the tune of $1 million – certainly not mine! (and please, don’t suggest The Cruise Ship Terminal)
Exactly how will the economic development of the town benefit from the subsidy? – Surely not from supporting Spotless to further develop their game-day junk-food franchise (at the expense of local community groups)?

As for attracting tourism to the town (the most often cited reason for public subsidies to sports events such as this and the V8’s) – when was the last time you decided to visit Perth as a result of watching a Fremantle Dockers game at Subiaco on the box?

See also this post by John Quiggin on the subject.

We may all have to pay for this nonsense but I suspect that, as a result, Les and his apprentice will pay at the next Council election.

The answer is in what’s not said

Jenny Hill’s assertion, as reported in today’s Bulletin, that ratepayers and the TCC are now paying the price of the former Thuringowa Council’s failure to keep up with that city’s infrastructure development needs is, I believe, spot-on.

That failure was either a result of incompetence or, as Hill asserts, a deliberate ploy by team Tyrell so that they could enter the amalgamated council race claiming to be debt free managers.

The truth of the matter is in Les’ inability to answer Hill’s argument that the current council has to play catch-up for his past failures and/or election strategy.

Actually, Les does give it way in his “From the Mayor’s Office” piece later in the Bully (page 15 – not available online) - $323.6 million being spent on infrastructure catch-up in the old Thuringowa compared to $83.8 million being spent in the old Townsville city boundaries (all on facilities that, it could be argued, the whole of Townsville/Thuringowa will benefit from/use - Murray stadium, Civic Theatre and Flinders Mall)

It’s a bit late for that

Today’s front place splash in The Bulletin “Let’s get this one right” is wrong on two counts:

• The closing of the Mall to traffic in the early ‘80s wasn’t wrong – it was in fact incredibly successful - until the rise of the suburban (car-centric) shopping malls.
• It’s a bit late to hope that TCC has “got it right”

Mayor-in-waiting David Crisafulli’s comment in the page four article that follows is a bit of a giveaway:

“What we’re doing is a catalyst that will lead to investment for private enterprise”

I’m sure he meant “…by private enterprise” be he’s actually right as quoted – it’s a subsidy to the profit sector (and Lancini’s planned some-day Flinders Plaza Development in particular).

It’s $56,000,000 worth of business welfare, pure-and-simple.

Finally! Townsville gets a uefull racing venue

Great news today that, having realised that the $30 million Reed Park race track has within a year turned into a white elephant, Townsville City Council has decided to invest in a race track that is likely to be used 365 days a year – much better value-for-money than the 5 days a year that Les’ memorial dinosaur racing venue used.

Townsville Council - leaders in change management? I don't think so

Expect yet another reorganisation within Council soon – probably around budget time.

It seems that staff are beginning to learn of changes to their jobs and positions in the organisation but in typical Council style it appears that it is being managed appallingly.

I hear that staff are one day learning that they are to “lose their job” and are then being left hanging for a few days before it is explained that they are actually being shifted to a new function or position in the organisation.

Has Crisafulli cooked Les’ goose (and maybe his own as well)?

News that debt-ridden Townsville Council has put $1,000,000 on the stump to help rescue the North Queensland Fury won’t go down well with ratepayers forking out the highest rates in Queensland.

Those who regularly drive past Council’s $5,000,000 “investment” in the V8 dinosaur racing track and see it vacant and disused for 360 days of the year will be livid – along with the 164,484 or so locals who don’t go to soccer matches.

And it seems from the reports that this was a decision made solely by mayor-in-waiting Cr Crisafulli – apparently without reference to full Council, any committee of Council, possibly any official of Council or even the Mayor.

Perhaps it was all part of a clever strategy to sink Les’ re-election chances if he’s game enough to stand again? If so, I don’t think young David thought it through very well. I suspect that he’s cooked his own goose along with that of Les.

Rumours heard this week

Heard around town this week:

Rumour #1
Mayor-in-waiting David Crisafulli has put the kybosh on any of his “independent” Councillor colleagues putting their hand up for the LNP preselection race for Herbert.

It’s not that he’s particularly concerned that the punters will twig to the fact that the “independents” were actually a LNP ticket all along. Rather he’s worried that if someone like Cr Dale Last (just for the sake of argument of course) were in the Herbert race and lost, as Crisafulli and everyone else (including Peter Lindsay) expect they will, the profile they would gain in the process would provide a platform for Dale them to run against him in the Mayoral race and he’s determined to keep that one for himself.

In a similar vein, I bet Crisafulli is pis*ed of at the Bully’s parking ticket story today – despite ¾ of the article quoting his press release, Dale Last gets the three-column photo!!

Rumour #2

Either Mooney is desperate or Crissafulli is running scared

Spotted in today’s NQ confidential section of the Bully (hat-tip to renown socialites M&C) is this little gem (see scan on the right - no pun intended).

By my reckoning the only two sitting councillors who also sat on the previous TCC are Jenny Hill and David Crissafulli.

If I’m right, either Crissafulli is a closet member of the ALP or scared of having to run against Mooney at the next Mayoral election if Mooney fails to get preselection for the Herbert race.

Either way, if Mooney has to rely on Crissafulli’s support in the race for Herbert, he’s in deep sh*t!

The power of the blog

Having claimed that this blog helped embarrass The Bulletin into not running their Mooney/Hill poll on the front page as we might otherwise expect, dare I be so brash as to claim success in achieving the opposite and embarrassing Council into action?

Following this story about the state of the parks and verges on Townsville’s major tourist attraction on the eve of a visit by 80 tourism junketeers from all over Qld, the grass got mowed today - as the picture at right show.

All power to the bloggers!

TCC - Just busy, just saving money, or just dumb

Today’s story in the Bully about the dangers of walking to Rasmussen State School is of course a bit of a worry for any parent whose kids use the overgrown goat track. But I can understand Cr Last’s response if it is indeed private land that is involved (although you have to wonder who is responsible for the walking track sign that is shown in the hard copy version of the page two pic).

The pic attached here though is most certainly Council land – right on the main strip from Nelly Bay to Picnic Bay and across from the Childcare Centre.

In previous wet seasons Council staff would be out on their mower at the first sign of the grass getting any higher than a few centimetres. In fact the Parks Department always made a point of saving their overtime until this time of year so that they could ensure that the Island’s parks and verges were kept pristine.

Could it be that TCC are on a savings drive this year? Not a smart move given the importance of the island to the town’s tourism industry.

I’m sure that the 80 tourism industry types from around the State who are visiting the island today will be as impressed at the ratepayers who’ve coped a 32% increase in their rates since the current council came to power.

Cr Last will have to lift his game if he really expects to be a contestant in the next Mayoral race

Crisafulli is gonna have to learn to do better

With all the talk around of Cr Crisafulli replacing Peter Lindsay as the Libs candidate in Herbert (if the missus agrees), it’s time that the pretender refined his political skills bit.

The gross hypocrisy he has displayed this week has been just a little too blatant, too obvious – On Monday he bashed the State for its ``blatant disregard'' for the city’s Town Plan when it comes to the location and building of social housing.  On tuesday he aggressively spins the Council’s decision to vary the Town Plan to enable the Railway Estate Boat Ramp to go ahead over-riding the wishes of local residents.

The art of successful hypocrisy is a key ingredient in political success. When it comes to hypocrisy Crisafulli is a natural, but he is a long way from mastering the art.

More broadly on the social housing issue, I thought that Housing Minister Struthers’ response to Crisafulli was excellent but not as to-the-point as this article by Paul Syvret in the Courier Mail