Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

The Sunshine Coast Regional Council has completed its State required draft Corporate Plan-the definitive document for decision making and actions. It is an excellent plan – one of the best I have seen, doubtless due to Michael Jacobson, Manager of Corporate Development, and the University and public input.
The big questions are whether the elected council and its staff will be able to work within its parameters and whether it is adaptable to external factors. Corporate plans are usually dry documents the community does not get overly excited about and councillors see as a chore completed.
How many of the current population of 300,000 will read the document or note that the population is expected to grow by another 175,000 in the next 17 years!
The Corporate Plan should form the basis of the development plan, the financial plan and the yearly budgets. An honest appraisal of council’s adherence to the Corporate Plan in the Annual Report would also go a long way towards improving its public acceptance. The ratepayers will be marking councillors’ report cards in another 2 ½ years.
On current indications most should fail.
The external factors outside council’s domain are the much politically exploited, global financial crisis, and federal and state legislation and planning. Councils are suffering greatly from reduced developers fees, rate contributions, storm damaged infrastructure, and fiscal impositions from state governments.
The Bligh and Beatty governments have proved adept at legislating responsibilities without transferring funds to local government. The forthcoming council budget has to focus on paying newly transferred costs such as electricity for street lighting; and major infrastructure for water distribution and sewerage treatment that will add millions to their costs.
How council meets this challenge will determine its future. The development industry is already actively lobbying for council (read: ratepayers) to meet all new sewerage collection and treatment costs that the state formerly heavily subsidised, and not add them to their developmental costs.
Other concerns are the new Local Government Act that was promised before Council amalgamation; the next instalment of the South East Qld Regional Planning Act due very shortly; and the Infrastructure Plan also due shortly. In view of the auditor-general’s scathing comments on the abilities of the Queensland government to provide adequate infrastructure and its poor planning coordination, there will certainly be greater cost.
This Sunshine Coast Regional Council was elected 18 months ago. How is it performing? My opinion is that Mayor Abbot, the CEO, John Knaggs, and his directors have succeeded admirably in keeping the ship afloat despite the councillors we residents elected. One internal problem remaining is to bond the staff members from the three previous councils into a more harmonious team.
Intellectual capacity and conceptual thinking appears to be devoid in a high percentage of councillors. The usual problem remains in that councillors are more concerned with re-election in 2012, and that’s affecting their decisions.
Tribal jealousies from the amalgamation of three councils are also hindering the directoral approach needed. Staff and other observers express concern about the in-fighting that’s affecting decisions.
My assessment is that we only have four good councillors.
As an example- the Corporate Plan trumpets “vibrant,green,diverse” – but this council has imposed fees for green waste at its tips. How stupid because experience has shown that most green waste ends up being dumped on the roadside or in the bush.
If the councillors cannot get even this right why do we pay them $100,000 a year plus the new meal allowances?