See also
“Misleading CEO report against councillor — Cr Walkom, 2014.04.04”
“KIpolis will not be drawn in the censuring and silencing of Cr Walkom — G. Bittar, 2014.02.08”
Submitted by Kangaroo Island councillor Graham Walkom, 2013.09.22
The article by Shauna (she didn’t really leave) Black in last week’s edition [of The Islander], Sept 19, gave coverage to the several organisations pleading for council’s grants program to continue and in effect to ignore the plight of those who were and remain cut off by heavy rains this year and the condition of Kangaroo Island roads generally.
Council occasionally sees such organised responses from a few when those few see the possibility of “their” handout or interests may be re-allocated or affected because of unforseen events.
I responded to one of these submissions prior to the council meeting as follows: “Thank you for writing.I wonder if this is the resolved position of (your organisation) duly arrived at following a convened and informed meeting?
You do not say it is. I hope it is not, as it would be a very dark side of island groups I was not aware of: the “we would not piss on that mob if they were on fire” disposition.
The McGillivray mob appear to be a very self sufficient district of the Island. They do not have sports clubs and progress associations that demand benevolence from their council. Obviously, the people living in this area will suffer huge financial loss as a result of this severe weather event, but I suspect they will not ask for a dollar from council’s community grants and obviously will not be receiving any from your organisation.
Council sets its budget by prioritising the work it must do. To get a budget listing a works project needs to rate as ‘high’ priority when compared to all others. None of the community projects submitted and approved to date would, if this scale was applied to them even with the community contribution, rate above ‘low’.
In recent years, council has accumulated a deficit of circa $23 million. This has essentially resulted from not spending on and maintaining our roads. Without this sort of extreme weather event council started this year adding to this deficit at over $12,000 every calendar day ($4.6million for the year 13/14). The disruption to council’s set works and maintenance programme for this year to deal with the macgillivray floods will be significant. IF council was fortunate enough to gain 100% of costs to repair the roads from disaster relief it would still be significantly out of pocket from this flood event.
Despite council’s increasing deficit it has decided to allocate “roads money” to provide assistance to local communities by providing some grant funding; thus, whilst making a few of many groups happy, will make many unhappy when they miss out and accelerate our deficit increase.
I would point out that the item before council this week is “That council suspend further community grants this Financial Year and reallocate those budgeted monies to unsealed road repairs and drainage works following the unprecedented wet season to date.”: it is not to scrap them altogether.
Normally, any councillor attending a meeting is required by statute to “bring an open mind” to debate and the decision process. That would probably preclude me corresponding to you on this indicating my position but in this case I will not be attending this meeting.
I hope I have provided some aspects you may not have been aware of, but particularly that local government should be providing the things we genuinely need, not the things we would like. And then there is always the case that despite the very commendable self-help efforts of your organisation there sometimes appears unexpectedly an event that clearly makes someone else’s need a much higher priority.
Regards
Graham Walkom
Elected Member”
I made these observations to one person after I spoke to some of those affected by the floods and the quote within is a remark from one of those affected. As this correspondence now appears to have been distributed much wider without my permission, I submit it here so that not just a few have it for their own mischief.
My own views, and not necessarily those of council.
Graham Walkom
Graham the biggest problem in LG is repair of existing infrastructure. The next biggest is development of your community. The greatest opportunity is staff reduction.
I would suggest that you get your money from staff reduction rather than from attacking the capacity of your community to grow and develop and participate.
Just a thought. How many kilometers of road do you get graded for the salary and on costs of your average employee. Find the least productive and work your way up the food chain.
“Jim”,
* Agree that the primary function of local council is the provision of basic infrastructure (ie roads).
*Strongly disagree with your second – “development of your community”.
In a free society it is people who individually, or co-operatively that carry out the role of development. Fifty years ago this island was growing, developing and participating very strongly, but that was before the “bread and circus “ mentality overcame us.
When governmental bodies micro manage their constituents they are variously known as Socialist/Communist/Fascist (etc) dictatorships, and apart from the resulting social anguish are financially unsustainable. We are experiencing similar now.
* Agree with your concept of staff reduction. In the last generation we have witnessed a massive increase of pen pushers to the extent that they are swallowing up a major portion of rate revenue.
Could it be that the least productive are at the top of the “food chain” (salaries well over $100K) ?
Crs Walkom and Liu are showing great wisdom in their approach to financial management, and not attacking as you seem to suggest, but they are a minority in council.
Big Jim perhaps the little black ant at the councils front desk is earning its pay. So lets start slashing at the senior staff where the big bucks are going, and put that money into the roads would be more productive. Hand the surplus office staff a shovel to clean out the culverts and drains so the water runs off the road not down and over it destroying the road would also help
Have been away the last week and just got this info. Councillors Walkom and Liu continue to do a remarkable job against the other lot on Council. The ever growing Council debt and the unreasonable growth in office employees, not to mention unnecessary CWMS for Penneshaw and stupid airport development proposal are all indictments of extreme mismanagement. I heartily endorse Graham’s letter. Well done.
Councillors are now required to comply with any resolution that demands an action by them and council requires me to remove my original post and apologise. To this end I have written to the webmaster and advised of council’s resolution and their requirement.
In accordance with their requirement for an apology a include the same apology I formally made in council; “That in full accord with the resolution I unreservedly apologise to ……………….”
I have not included the name as I did not include it on the original post above.
Cr Graham Walkom