In today’s Examiner Alison Andrews paints a pretty bleak picture in respect to Launceston ratepayers' lot. The picture seems to get bleaker and as each day passes … click here to make a link to Alison’s article
The city's GM is curiously absent in this story. Possibly he is trying to work out what spin he can put on the news that costs seem to be running away.
Two of the city’s sporting and recreation facilities, the Aquatic Centre and Aurora Stadium, that Alison Andrews curiously calls “attractions”, are, it seems, failing to be just that given their non-performance and the losses they are generating.
$415K in three months is big bickies in anyone’s book! Lumped on top of the $410K budget overrun for the QVMAG, well Lonnie’s ratepayers had better start bracing themselves for a rates increase that will most likely be predicated on the needs to “balance the books” and/or “maintain service levels” or some other weasel words equal to the bureaucratic tosh ratepayers keep on being fed at times like this.
If the good aldermen give this kind of non-performance a tick they will be ignoring all the signals that they need to get proactive, and now. They must take back the reins and ensure that ratepayers do not continue to be relentlessly slugged. If they don’t, no doubt we will remember them in October.
Launceston City Council seems to be plagued with these ubiquitous “cost over runs”. Also, it is rumoured that LCC is awash with fly-in consultants. If this rumour has any veracity, who is doing whose work for whom and at what/whose cost?
The only people being penalised in all this are the hapless ratepayers, not the perpetrators of ‘lost plots’ who are, it seems, mindlessly allowing bad management practice to slip under the wire, and without penalty to anyone except ratepayers by all accounts.
Looking at the size of some these losses they begin to look like the size of some of the city’s high fliers’ salaries in excess of a factor of two. For the GM that’s probably only a factor of one point something but there you go. However, always remember that these figures are only quarterly and the salaries are annual.
Launceston’s ratepayers were slugged with a rate increase this year even if the level of services LCC are delivering was reduced with water reticulation moving away from Council.
And as for the QVMAG high farce being administered by the GM, well it continues to astound. $777K for an outsourced exhibition is way out of line albeit that it was the previous GM, and apparently the aldermen as well, who gave that one a big tick. The sad thing about this show is that it was planned in the wake of large staff cuts and delivered employment opportunities to people elsewhere not to mention the losses now being exposed at home. How was this allowed to happen?
Yes it seems that it was GAME ON and Launcestonians copped it every which way. Employment opportunities in the city were lost, so apart from being slugged with a loss that will amount to a rate rise, or a loss of services, Council’s management seems to be operating within an outsourcing environment that sends income opportunities to almost anywhere except Launceston. This is economic rationalism in action big time.
Who is actually minding the shop?
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