Launceston, Rubbish and Bureaucracy

Click here for the council link

Launceston Council is apparently totally dedicated to growing the ‘council bureaucracy’ rather than servicing its constituency. Ratepayers are becoming increasingly aware that the Local Govt. Act is being perverted to the benefit of the bureaucracies involved rather than the constituency. 

Why? Notably, SECTION 62 of the Act allows the General Manager and thus her/his underlings, “may do anything necessary or convenient to perform his or her functions under this or any other Act” and dam the constituents. Increasingly the consequences of this legislative folly become clearer and clearer.

Serially the aldermen are sidelined it appears and if they advocate on behalf of their constituents all too often they find that everything has been "stitched up well away from the table” for this or that reason – and of course because SECTION 62 allows for that to happen. Its rubbish, but not of the kind sent to Launceston’s ‘WASTE MANAGEMENT CENTRE” where there is a predisposition to waste resource rather than recover them albeit that some recycling goes on there.

This week ratepayers received in the post marketing material for the ‘kerbside FARO' (Food & Garden Organics Kerbside Collection Service) and the standard of performance persists. It needs to be noted that this service(?) has been in gestation since March 2016 only now to be implemented. Difficult stuff this bureaucratic planning! 

The video marketing the service can be viewed b clicking here  So far so good in a way as it does seem that eventually, at operational convenience, a resource might well be recovered but there is no mention of the intentional dividends and their anticipated level. 

Likewise, there is no mention of the fact that this ‘waste’ is being diverted from landfill while council continues to build more and more landfill cells. If there is a contradiction here its not being explained – or possibly its not being acknowledged. Interestingly, entrepreneurial Councils in other jurisdictions reward their constituents for providing organic material for their RRCs – Resource Recovery Centres – via loads of compost or mulch and a side benefit being that their ‘operational costs’ are contained rather than expanded as it appears is the case at the ‘Lonnie Tip’.

The Launceston FARO ‘Green Waste Collection’ hardly passes the ‘pub test’ and especially so compared to and contrasted with local jurisdictions that mean business, offer a service and are they entrepreneurial. It seems despite ratepayers paying the highest rates in Tasmania they cannot expect to get commensurate services or even a commitment to delivering ‘a bang for the bucks’.

But there is more! It seems that the two free entry vouchers come with conditions. The word is that the ‘gate keepers’ at the ‘waste centre’ are photographing number plates and if your doing your parents a favour taking their surplus resources to the waste centre twice you cannot do the same for your elderly neighbour, Uncle Jim, your Gran or anyone else sng the same vehicle. Neither can your hired help use your vouchers it seems. If you imagine that handing over the ‘FREE ENTRY VOUCHER” is enough bureaucratically forget it!

Yet there is this other question hanging in the air. Is it actually legal to photograph people’s number plates? Is this an evasion of privacy? OR does the General Manager under SECTION 62 have the authority to do anything convenient to him? 

But the big question is as follows, is there an alderman who will take this issue up and represent their constituency? It’s understood that there is a book being run on this with quite a few dollars invested.