Each Ward had two Councillors. Last time I checked they were entitled to $15,000 a year (and that is probably out of date). So that is $30,000 per annum per Ward. There are also the costs of providing services to Councillors, which may include phone, mobile, fax, postage, computer, internet, photocopy, travel, accommodation and similar.

Plus the share per Ward of the Lord Mayor’s package and running his office (with an assistant).

Let’s say, for conservation ball-park figures, each Ward required over $60,000 for effective democratic representation.

Between now and September 2012, when elected Councillors return, these funds should be committed to each Ward by way of:

1. dedicated Council officer based in each Ward to serve as a Community-Council Ward liaison officer (part-time if funds are short), and as a support officer for the Neighbourhood Forums
2. resources to assist the Neighbourhood Forums and their Convenors to be able to properly live up to and discharge the obligations placed on them by Council’s Neighbourhood Forum Charter.

What about it?

AND A POST SCRIPT

No douby those who are opposed to empowering our local communities will point to how much money Council is spending on other aspects of ‘community consultation’. We should never be fooled by this red-herring. Council is required to do most of those forms of community consultation even when we have elected Councillors.

The question to be asked, when presented with this argument, is what is the different between what the Council would spend on communicty consultation if we had elected Counicllors, and how much Council is spending now. Then add the ‘savings’ from not having Councillors for a real picture of the financial situation.

“Southern Gateway: the tourist centre nobody can get to?
BY LAUREL-LEE RODERICK 13/07/2009
Illawarra Mercury

The Bulli Tops tourist information centre, which has cost $11 million to build, could become the Southern Gateway nobody can get to.”

Full story:

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/southern-gateway-the-tourist-centre-nobody-can-get-to/1565514.aspx

How come heads don’t roll when these bad business decisions are made wasting our precious ratepayer money? Our Council should not be involved in this kind of commerical enterprise in the first place!

I have made some answers to Ray’s question, and it is clear he is thinking something through.

In some (many) of my replies i have gone off at tangents and know i may not have answered his exact question.

Readers are welcome to frame their own answers. Mine are largely off the top of my head, but drawing on my knowledge, such as it is. More time for reflection might produce better considered replies, but i think there is plenty there for going on with for a wider community conversation.

cheers

Bruce

Read more for Ray’s questions and my replies:

Read the rest of this entry »

In reading the WCC Neighbourhood Forum Charter I was particularly taken by one of the conditions relating to membership:

“The members of the Neighbourhood Forum will encourage residents within the geographic boundary covering that area to attend meetings, including those from hard to reach communities such as young people, families with children, people with a disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.”

This jumped out at me as, during June, I had taken part in an online national human rights consultation. After dealing with the main issue (for me) of ending ethnocide towards Australia’s First Peoples I added some secondary concerns regarding the right to be democratically represented at all time in local government and the need for Precinct Committees to enable this.

The one person who responded raised the issue of the role of marginalised people in our communities and how they could be ensured a voice. (There is a link to that Open-Forum discussion at the bottom of this posting).

For many years I was involved in the local reconciliation process in the Northern Suburbs of Wollongong and I know that it requires an enormous organisational and personal amount of energy to reach local Koori (Aboriginal) peoples in order to encourage their participation in Gubba (non-indigenous) organisations. Enormous.

Previous to coming to the Illawarra in 1991 i had lived in the Northern Territory for a decade and worked, from time to time, as an anthropologist on land claims and as a community development worker in the town camps of Tennant Creek. I have a real working knowledge cross-cultural communication and what it takes to engage with First Peoples in a meaningful way.

I can’t begin to think what it would take to reach those groups of people who are even more marginalised than Koories and to support and encourage them to engage in meaningful participation in a Neighbourhood Forum type of process.

So, while it is very easy to add that provision to the Neighbourhood Forum Charter, what actual resources are required to make it meaningful and effective?

On the face of it, no serious attention has been given to this issue by the Administrators when they endorsed the Neighbourhood Forum experiment.

And yet we can be assured that every time they are questioned about community consultation they will invoke the name of “Neighbourhood Forums” as proof of the fact they have these matters fully covered.

Not so – and a long way to go until it is so.

—————-

Link to national human rights consultation Open Forum:

http://www.openforum.com.au/NHROC#comment-1543 )

We shall see, over the coming months, what problems emerge for the ability of Neighbourhood Forums to carry out the task which Wollongong City Council has placed upon them via-a-vis the resources provided to them by Council.

Council is ‘saving’ considerable amounts of our ratepayer dollars each year with the absence of elected Councillors and Lord Mayor ($200,000 plus?) It must have also ‘saved’ a large sum as a result of not having a Council election last year ($ditto?)

These ‘savings’ are that part of our money which is ear-marked for ensuring a democratic voice in the way our local Council makes decisions. They should not be used for other purposes since that reneges on a fundamental principle of why we pay rates in a democratic system. No taxation without representation.

With the absence of an elected Council until 2012 those same funds should be fully committed to providing an alternative means for our communities to have meaningful participation in Council business.

I have argued before that, during the period until the return of elected Councillors, there should be a dedicated position of Council-Community liaison officer for each Ward (and based in the Ward) to serve as a Council contact point and to provide full administrative assistance to Precinct Committees.

In the absence of Precinct Committees, we have to make do with Neighbourhood forums. At the moment, the tiny amount of support provided by Council to NFs presumes that the shortfall in resources will be made good by the volunteer effort of committed community workers.

It will be interesting to see, as the Neighbourhood Forum experiment progressively takes on community issues, just what problems are encouraged by the present lack of real financial support from Council, and what the Administrators propose to do to prop up what was always their favoured option – not ours (and, from what I was told, not that of Council officers).

2 What is a Neighbourhood Forum?

A Neighbourhood Forum is an independent community group that:

•operates within a geographic boundary covering an area with common interests and is located within the Wollongong Local Government Area;
•its members live and/or work within the geographic boundary covering that area;
•complies with the Neighbourhood Forum Charter;
•is formally recognised by Council with a Certificate of Recognition;
•has the general support and confidence of the neighbourhood community to:
- distribute information
- facilitate discussion
- represent fair and balanced views of that community.

A Neighbourhood Forum provides an opportunity for the community and Council to work together. A Neighbourhood Forum also provides an opportunity for community members to meet other people in their area and discuss local issues.

Neighbourhood Forums are independent from Council, however will receive Council support as outlined in this Charter. Neighbourhood Forums are coordinated by a Neighbourhood Chair and assisted by a Co-Chair.

There will be eight Neighbourhood Forums across the Wollongong Local Government Area. There will be one Neighbourhood Forum per area. The boundaries for these Forums are outlined on the map attached as Appendix 1.

3 Role of Neighbourhood Forums

Neighbourhood Forums provide an opportunity for members of the community to:
•meet, raise and discuss local issues;
•find solutions to local community problems;
•promote community development within their local community;
•discuss issues and ideas with Council;
•develop and maintain communication and understanding between the community and Council;
•encourage social networking and participation within the local community;
•provide Council with an opportunity to inform the local community about its services, facilities and projects.

Council will provide the following information to Neighbourhood Forum Chairs:
•promotion of Council’s Website and Advertiser Column for the list of Development Applications, new plans and public notices for the boundary area;
•a response to issues raised at previous Forum meetings;
•invitations to provide feedback on Council business as required.
Council will consult with the Neighbourhood Forums in accordance with the Community Consultation Policy, Customer Service Charter and the provisions of this Charter.

11 Membership of Neighbourhood Forums

The Forums will be free to join and attend and will be open to anyone who lives and/or works within the Wollongong Local Government Area.

The members of the Neighbourhood Forum will encourage residents within the geographic boundary covering that area to attend meetings, including those from hard to reach communities such as young people, families with children, people with a disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

When attending a Neighbourhood Forum participants will adhere to the conditions set out in this Charter.

For some months I have been trying to get some clarification about a local Coledale matter which, while nothing major, is of relevance both to me and others near where I live.

It involves trying to find out about compliance with the consent conditions on a Development Application for quite a large project on an adjoining community title area of land.

I have had to go into the Council office in Wollongong (twice) and search through files for what is a large and complex development – with limited success in finding an answer to the key matter of interest.

When we had elected Councillors (Dave Martin and Alice Cartan) we used to take these kind of matters to them. They understood both the workings of Council (in relation to the processing and monitoring of developments) and also how to obtain speedy and accurate answers from Council staff. These can be complex matters for the layperson.

Feeling I was getting nowhere I took my local matter to the CCNF2 (Neighbourhood Forum 2) in June and requested that they provide the same sort of assistance as I would have got previously from our hard-working Ward 1 Councillors.

The members agreed and, with the help of the Council Officer (Diane) who attends to liaise with Council, I had a reply to my questions by the next (July) CCNF2 meeting. And, after digesting the new information, it cleared things up nicely.

This was a lot quicker than my letter about the same issue to WCC which I posted in mid-May and i still don’t have a reply or acknowledgement of it even being received.

So, based on my experience, I highly recommend that people make full use of their local Neighbourhood Forums as a replacement for elected Councillors (until such time as we see local democracy restored).

With the need for real reform in local governance growing steadily, we simply cannot afford not to make full use of the limited resources we have available.

Council and the Administrators, however, will need to make a lot more resources (i.e. – from our ratepayer funds) available to NFs if they are to be reasonable substitutes for hard working Councillors we formerly had in Ward One.

Cheers

Bruce R
July 10

For locating the NF in your area visit:
http://www.wollongong.nsw.gov.au/contactus/neighbourhoodforums.asp

Note that Neighbourhood Forums operate under a Charter, which can be downloaded from “Related Documents” on that page of WCC’s website. You can also access the minutes and action sheets for each NF.

There are a couple of further points that I would like to submit to you for consideration and discussion.

1. Even as an Economist, I have maintained that the ‘free’ market is a greedy animal that
exploits, disperses egalitarianism and is not necessarily efficient in resource allocation.

2. Secondly, untrammeled intellectualism by the ‘young turks’ has allowed them to explore
and create ‘new’ products / processes / procedures that serve self [+company] interests at
the expense of others. The particular example was someone explaining ENRON in the
USA.

3. Similarly with political democracy. Deregulation and self regulation in the financial and
other sectors contributes significantly to the economic and litigative morass that we find
ourselves in today. In politics it is the expensive legal and need for ‘evidence’ that provides
a protective wall for party politics.

4. The power of the ‘moneyed’ to lobby to buy ‘off’ far outweighs the strength of simplistic voter
democracy every few years.

5. Section 14 of the Local Government Act provides for application by voters for poll on a
given issue. Nobody in Council that I have spoken to knew anything about it. However it is
Council that says yes / no to a poll. So voters are again locked out of the democratic system
by the protected and ‘walled in’ employees and Councillors.

6. That is the voters should / could be empowered to challenge the party political excesses at
any time by taking it to a vote – as the issue arises – voting should include specific issues -
referendum if you like. Yes voting is expensive but not as expensive as the current level of
unconstrained excesses of politicians.

Regards

Ray

When Ted Mack was Lord Mayor of North Sydney (way back then before he went into Federal Parliament) he made great progress with the use of Precinct Committees.

It seems they continue in some form.

Here is some info on Precinct Committees and North Sydney

cs10_precincts_policy

Try a google search on Precinct Committees for more.

“You may or may not have read my letter published in the Mercury recently about ‘failed democracy’.

I submit to you the following thoughts that may be worthy of developing, debating, discussing:

1. Democracy is served by allowing the community to ‘participate’ in the development of policy, income and expenditure.

2. ‘Participation’ requires an interactive forum between council staff and the community.

3. As we have discussed previously, and is operational in England [or is it Scotland?] where the internet is used to facilitate ideas and priorities.

4. Clearly the ‘community’ brings both ‘ends’ of town together which does not happen now, or nor is it likely.

5. Under the political democracy model the ‘separation of powers’ allows the resourced lobby to fraternize closely and profitably with governments [political party democracy]

6. NF’s while, well meaning, they still assume ‘consultation’ which is authority versus community.

7. As you highlight in your column, governments are lead into all manner of debt, diverted expenditures, and corruption under the current model.

8. The next player, for want of a better expression is the ‘Administrators’. In the Mercury letter I used the term ‘qualified’ advisedly and cautiously.

9. Taking IHAP as a reference model in terms of the ‘administrators’ may well work, but clearly with considerable more interactive participation and transparency with both community and staff.

10. ‘Qualified’ could mean people who were ones with appropriate disciplines and or with strong community support. These would be elected as non political party persons perhaps.