Council has released its draft budget for the next financial year together with its 10 year Strategic Resource Plan. The community is now being asked to put in their submissions.
Sounds good, but the reality is that year after year residents take the time and trouble to express their views and fundamentally nothing is changed. The submission process remains a smoke and mirror exercise needed to fulfil legislative requirements.
No one is ever asked:
- Should ratepayers’ money be spent on $280,000 for concrete plinths? (ie last year’s budget)
- How much money should be spent on ‘improvements’ to open space as opposed to the purchase of new open space?
- Is enough money being spent on hiring staff for the planning department as opposed to say ‘corporate services’ (ie the current figures reveal that staffing costs for the ‘corporate’ sector amount to $9m+ whilst ‘Planning and Place’ barely exceeds this figure at $10m+). When the community is screaming out for some speedy strategic planning, especially for our neighbourhood centres, does this represent the best use of our rates?
In short, Glen Eira City Council has never asked its residents the most basic of questions:
- What are your priorities?
- How should $xxxx amount of revenue be distributed and spent?
Thankfully other councils have started operating according to what is called ‘participatory budgeting’. Melbourne city council was the first to introduce this practice in 2015 we believe. This involves the establishment of a citizen jury who basically go through the available funds and determine their priorities as to short and long term expenditure.
Other councils have now instituted their own panels. Here are some examples. The last screen dump comes from a recent Monash resolution. Submissions in the end mean nothing unless residents have been provided with the opportunity to come in on the ground floor as it were and to determine what the priorities should be. That has never happened in Glen Eira!
Glen Eira Debates 
May 11, 2019 at 11:11 AM
I don’t think Council is interested in what residents think.
May 11, 2019 at 1:01 PM
Spot on. You can’t have, god forbid, residents having a say in how their money gets spent. What I would like to see as well is some register of how much money this council saves year after year. Bet it would be blank. Waste is probably running at millions. Two examples that some mates told me about recently. There’s some infection or mould in a local park. They put up signs telling people to be careful and not step on the mulch because this could spread it elsewhere. The writing was so small and the signs put up so high that two weeks later they were replaced with bigger writing. They also put up a keep left sign nearby on a narrow intersection. They did the same years ago but the sign was knocked over about 4 times and they kept putting it back up. This new sign lasted about a week and was knocked over. It’s gone now. That’s what I call waste big time. How much did the signs cost and how much were the new ones in the park. Why couldn’t they get it right first time around. You don’t have to be raving genuises to know that if small writing is put up about 8 foot off the ground no one without great vision could read it. Useless lot we’ve got.
May 11, 2019 at 5:41 PM
People have a right to make a submission about the proposed budget, and theoretically Council or the committee making the decision must consider all submissions, but there is no requirement to show that they have actually considered submissions. They do have to provide reasons for their decisions but they could be so brief as to be useless. Ultimately the onus is on us to elect councillors that believe in accountability and transparency.
May 11, 2019 at 9:41 PM
Remember the controversial discussions regarding use of much by residents and the consequent shame on Frank Penhallurak a few years ago. There is proof that bark/compost carries dangerous diseases (life threatening respiratory) as wise council then warned bark collectors in Neerim Road Park but employees still spread it in parks. Even Cr Magee said he has the lifetime need for a puffer as a result of his employment stating that all trees carry a poisonous chemical just below the bark. This fact is now being ignored and it is all around parks… so we always should be very careful…like asbestos if disturbed then the dangerous spores are airborne.
May 12, 2019 at 10:08 AM
My wish list for how the rates are spent is very simple. Get planning under control to start with. Next comes traffic and then making sure that developers cough up enough money so that we don’t keep subsidising them. All of these keep getting put on the back burner. They are far more interested in prettying up streets every few years. All that should come after the basics are in place.