These people who dictate council policy are transparently desperate for the affection of those they are elected to serve. Not at all unreasonably, they reassure themselves that there are good things that they have done. Yet, simultaneously, they are acutely aware that rarely do they win a spontaneous round of public or media applause. They whinge, instead, that all they get is constant harping, constant criticism.
During an enthusiastic round of mutual backslapping at the June 20 monthly meeting, Mayor Robert Armstrong grumbled that council needed to “get all the positive things out there instead of all the negative stuff that has been printed”. Fellow members of his Futures Team (or whatever the council’s controlling political group calls itself these days) are in wholehearted agreement. All of them seem perplexed by the mean-spiritedness of the media.
It cannot be disputed: kind things should be said about the work council does. And few would argue that, if council were a private enterprise, it would at least get kudos for:
— Generally tight management.
— Attention to forward planning.
— Asset management.
— Staff courtesy, in the office and in the field.
— Thrifty handling of cash reserves (well, at least since council discovered in 2008 that it had gambled away $4 million, more than a quarter of council’s cash reserves, on highly speculative, exotic, collateralised-debt-obligations investments, $4 million that by today might have become — had it been conservatively invested in, say, fixed-term deposits — nearer $5 million, a sum that might have staved off much of the need for that 4.8% rate rise this year).
— Practical, if boring and unimaginative, infrastructure projects (for examples, take a walk along Huonville’s Esplanade).
— Its general maintenance of roads, bridges, parks, gardens etc (though there is, of course, that lumbering, expensive and largely inefficient, limited-use and highly mechanised street sweeper that, as well as costing unskilled employment opportunities, sucks up $200,000-plus a year in running expenses).
— Developing, at long last, an ‘arts and heritage strategy’ that has substance.
— Efforts, again at long last, to seriously tackle waste-management.
Not a bad list of achievements, eh?
Yet, despite all these, in the less tangible areas of local government, Huon Valley Council:
— Fails to communicate or connect with large sections of the communities it serves.
— Operates like a secret society and is excessively selective in the information it publishes.
— Fails to remember it is a servant of — rather than a dictator to — its electorate.
— Ignores views it doesn’t want to hear.
— Restricts membership of its governance committee exclusively to the six-man political grouping that controls meeting decisions.
— Appoints largely puppet township committees, some members of which, at times, display sickeningly severe symptoms of sycophancy.
— Gives not much more than lip service to the built heritage of the valley, even less to the natural heritage.
— Makes decisions on issues that have a profound impact on communities — economically, psychologically, environmentally, historically, aesthetically — before consulting with the people (rather than doing its planning the other way around) . . .
And there is yet another glaring problem, one that council refuses even to acknowledge or speak its name, let alone do anything about. This is the municipality’s obvious, but rarely spoken of, social gulf between the valley’s Old and New communities. It is a sad, and economically sapping, condition that is simultaneously easy to see yet difficult to put one’s finger on.
The Sirolli Institute — commissioned by the State Government to spend two years trying to help lift the Huon Valley’s economic fortunes* — should by now be well aware of this unfortunate barrier to progress in the Huon.
It is a problem that warrants serious analysis. Is there an intrepid Ph.D aspirant out there in search of a fascinating assignment?
