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| Image: Fine Art America. |
A very well written letter by Peter Bishop of "Wootton," Scone appeared in the letters to the editor of the Land on Thursday 23 August, 2012.
NO TIME FOR COUNCIL
Nine rural shires in NSW are not holding
elections this year because they have either not enough or the bare minimum of
candidates. Life on the land is
increasingly hard and fewer farmers can spare the time for local
government.
I have put my hand up for
the Upper Hunter Shire Council. I served
on the Merriwa Shire Council and the Upper Hunter Development Board and given
Merriwa is a rural shire, farm land its main source of rates, I thought I knew
my way around.
But 8 years ago Merriwa,
Scone and Murrurundi Shires were amalgamated into the Upper Hunter Shire. Merriwa lost the valuable litter corner that
contained Ulan Coalmine but kept all its Council’s staff. Murrurundi transferred more or less half its
land and half its staff to the Northern Council.
The carrot of economies of scale was dangled by State and Local authorities when
promoting this amalgamation. For
example, if three different people were doing the same job in different Shires,
then maybe one person could do that job in the amalgamated shire. The State Government then legislated against
the very economies of scale it had promoted, introducing “employment
protection” – in local government areas with populations under 5,000 no local
government jobs could be lost – indefinitely.
So now the new Upper Hunter Shire had the same number of staff as the
three previous Councils had before (less the Murrurundi transfers), and three
sets of council chambers.
So what did
they do next?
They built a fourth set of
Council chambers, the super chambers, in Scone, at a cost of $5,000,000.
Of course they did. But there is more.
Rate pegging by the Independent Pricing and
Regulatory Tribunal was introduced, holding annual rate rises to a maximum of
around 3pc. This maximum allowable rate
rise immediately became the minimum rate rise levied by Councils.
Farmland still produces more than half the
rates in the general fund of the Upper Hunter Shire - $4.5m out of $8.4m. Council has increased this by the IPART limit
of 3.6% this year while farm incomes are recovering from several years of
drought and the high Australian dollar works against farm exports. The general fund rate pool of $8.4m no longer
covers the wages and salaries of Council staff which come to $12.967m.
Even with the addition of annual charges, the
rate pool only rises to $12.7m. At a
time when dairy farmers are going out backwards, with wool and meat producers
not far behind, the Upper Hunter Shire Council has proposed a rate rise of 10pc
for the next year – 3 times the IPART limit.
The Upper Hunter Shire Council is becoming a Frankenstein monster,
consuming the very ratepayers it is supposed to serve. It’s time someone pulled the plug.
h/t Bill Pounder
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