Shelley

The ‘silent majority’ need a real wake up call.

I no longer buy the argument that ‘our fellow residents’ have so many problems and are so disaffected or marginalised or alienated that they cannot take a little bit of time to attend to local government matters.

I did accept it for a while, but found that that line plays straight into passive acceptance and the maintenance of an unacceptable status quo (Administrators here until Sept 2012).

“Arise like lions from your slumbers …” says the poet

The NSW ALP donkey vote is alive and well as far as i can tell. But it may have been weakened by the disgrace of findings by ICAC of corruption of core ALP Councillors.

That is a good opportunity to change the balance of Councillors on WCC to empower genuine independent community candidates?

Where are they – not far away – we had several excellent Councillors before they were unfairly sacked. They were not corrupt.

Time now running out to September 2009. June, July, August, September. Hmmm.

Bruce
Monday 1 June

Advocates for a return for ‘democracy now’ have not demonstrated that the ‘ALP donkey’ [your words] is dead and buried. Neither have ‘democracy now’ advocates provided a strategy that clearly demonstrates an alternate methodology that is a vaccine against creeping corruption. Developer donations to political parties are now as generous as ever at approximately $4 million to ALP.

Where now are the candidates that have acceptable credentials that will inspire electors to vote for them. Where are the ‘honest and bold’ political party ‘hacks’ who will not obey the party line above / before community interest and who will run for election on publicised policies rather than bring out hidden agendas after elections for which they do not have a mandate?

Where now is the leadership that will encourage / inform the voting public to campaign / debate / discuss / lobby?

Armchair critiques with rigorous analysis and outcomes will gain national respect for Wollongong voters. Armchair criticisms with demeaning words that have little or no substance or validity does not appear to be a correct tactic.

Wollongong City Council general manager David Farmer said his council had made no secret of the challenges it faced to address its backlog in infrastructure maintenance.

Decisions made in the past year had started to improve the council’s financial situation, Mr Farmer said.

“In the last 12 months we have made significant savings in operating expenses and increased the amount of money we’re spending to update and repair basic community infrastructure,” Mr Farmer said.

By reviewing services and the amount of money spent on operations, the council will dedicate $67 million to its capital program this financial year and provide a greater emphasis on repairing and improving roads, drains, buildings, footpaths, parks and playground equipment.

“In our 2009-10 management plan we have reported a deficit of $28 million which shows we still have much work to do to address our ageing infrastructure,” Mr Farmer said.

“These figures may seem grim, but as the report shows we have made a number of improvements in the last year. Council still has very low debt, good cash reserves and is capable of meeting its financial obligations.”

full story
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/wollongong-council-on-road-to-recovery/1523208.aspx

16.05.09

Hi Bruce, thank you for the item on reformwcc.

In response I submit the following for consideration:
1.
‘hard working elected representatives’:
Voters of NSW and Wollongong [hopefully] know that mafia corruption
extends at least as far back as A(names deleted – Admin) through to
today with a well known State minister who has been named in Clive
Small’s book and has featured in a number of press reports.

(Allegation deleted for legal reasons – Admin)

2.
The current opportunity is not about endorsing ‘Administrators’ but
about developing a strong community democracy model with strong
community support, so that people will have a viable alternative – The community have no alternative against political party networks,
resources, and profit motive – at this stage -

3.
At this stage, it is about Wollongong [& perhaps Shellharbour] and
developing an alternate model that may well be driven home prior to
2012, if enough support can be generated. Some people are already
working with John Hatton and the UOW in this field. [early days]

4.
‘Administrators & GM self interest’: Agree. Also however, the party
elected representative has self / community / & party and you know
that a candidate is not endorsed unless they toe the party line -
absolutely! That is one reason why our state reps are so silent -
their careers depend on obedience to party policy and dictates &
strategies.

5.
The aim is not to ban political parties [today?] but to develop a
viable alternative in which the community ‘participate’ -
‘consultation’ is to be erased from the agenda in the community
democracy model – it is about interactive ‘participation’

6.
‘ICAC on not caucusing’: This recommendation would have to be a major insult to the intelligence of Wollongong voters.

7.
I have been taking a closer look at some of these so called ‘economic studies’ on the Mall and Wollongong harbour. Not only is the methodology a nonsense, so are the selective conclusions drawn out by the profiteering ‘leaders’ of our community who have the ear of WCC.

That is they are vulnerable in the rationale of their position. Look
at the Mall result – you know the history better than I – but even at
the last hurrah – IBC [Les Dion] was saying we oppose the decision.
Why was one major car dealer and shop front trader on the Mall wanting the road opening? One alleged rumour was that (deleted – Admin). A Council manager said that was not the reason, but he did not offer an alternative.

The telling point, Bruce, about this example is that it took the
Administrators to break an expensive twenty year journey of elected
reps, allegedly on side with the ‘profiteers’ fighting the preferences of the community. In the most recent Mall study, the consultants said that ‘The Wollongong mall is incorrectly sited because people have to drive past major regional shopping centres. And still the ‘powers that be’ are pouring scarce resources into a CBD that is giving diminishing returns.

8.
Clearly Bruce I agree with you w.r.t to elected representation -
however Wollongong [& Shellharbour] have a unique opportunity to
develop a community democracy model. In the meantime may the community pressure the Administrators to the maximum to listen and respond to the community interest.

Thanks for your comments. I will read them carefully as soon as i surface from some other matters.

In relation to your final paragraph this reformwcc.info website is intended to promote a community conversation regarding reforming WCC and is not wedded to any single point of view. The more points of view the better, in my experience, when it comes to getting the best possible outcomes.

As a moderator, my task is mainly to ensure relevance to the topic and to endeavour to make sure that other people’s reputations are not unfairly damaged.

cheers

Bruce

I ask as I see the date on the open letter from Wollongong Council announcing further consultations was left out of the story by Ms Roderick and the Mercury.

Suspicious because of other things they have been misreporting about this issue, I logged on to the Wollongong Council web site. There was the Council’s Press Release announcing all this – dated Thursday 14 May 2009.

I wanted to verify whether or not the Mercury’s claim in this story that this “move to engage the community comes only days after an exclusive Mercury-IRIS poll revealed residents’ growing unease with having administrators running the city” was justified link or more fact manipulation to suit.

Guess what?

The “exclusive Mercury-IRIS poll” the results of which they repeatedly and aggregiously misreported, was published AFTER the Council’s Press Release announcing these additional community engagement forums.

So it is not possible for the Council to be responding to the pressure the Mercury claims is building up for the Administrators to go.

It is disgraceful that the Mercury is now falsely claiming a link for eliciting this response from Council when they had not yet published the poll or its results.

The Mercury has descended beyond simply being slack and is well into the ethically dangerous area of making things up, claiming false links and deliberately omitting crucial facts [like the date on the Council's Press Release] that would reveal their manipulation.

This is not a one off. The Mercury was so desperate to get rid of the Administrators they spent the bosses money on commissioning a survey and when it did not say what they wanted, they actively misreported the results. The survey the Mercury’s employer paid for shows 70% of those polled want the Administrators to stay for between 1-4 years. A long way from what your front page screamed.

It is not that the Mercury can’t count. It is that they are now trying to the citizens of the Illawarra around like sheep, by feeding us big headlines containing carefully manipulated information.
The Mercury is running a vicious anti-Administrator agenda and cares not one whit for democracy or the real survey results because if they their headlines would accurately report the true percentages, which was overwhelmingly in favour of the Administrators.
Every attempt the Mercury has made to try and discredit the administrators or whip up local fury failed and they are now resorting to this.
I again draw your organisations attentio to the Mercury article stating unnamed developers are expressing concern that Council and the Administrators are taking too long and being too niggling when considering the developers Development Applications. This whole campaign to get rid of the Administrators is not coming from a groundswell from the grass roots as they want you and your supporters to believe. It is coming from the disgruntled developers who are frustrated with the Administrators sticking to the planning rules and want them gone – so with elected Councillors they can go back to business as usual
Interesting to see if you put this comment up or not. I know its not what your supporters want to hear but I think they need, in all fairness, to have this perspective, backed up by facts, put to them.

“The story concludes with a conversation between George Nine and George Ten. Deactivated and placed in storage, they can only speak in the brief intervals when their power levels rise above the standby-mode threshold. Over what a human would experience as a long time, the Georges discuss what it means to be human and decide that in all the ways that matter that they are as human as their makers. Moreover, since they are the most advanced and rational beings on the planet, in any situation where the Three laws would come into play they conclude that any order given by beings such as themselves would take priority over that of a regular human. As such, the attempt to allow robots to decide for themselves which human beings they would apply the Three laws to in any given situation created a situation which would allow advanced robots to place the good of themselves above that of their makers.”

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94That_Thou_art_Mindful_of_Him