Huon Valley Guessing Games: Light is in the air

ALMOST since the day I came to live in the Huon, just before GFC (global financial crisis) shockwaves rolled out from their Wall Street epicentre and washed away a substantial chunk of Huon Valley Council’s public cash reserves, I sensed something — quite intangible — was askew about the way the municipality was being run. Though I still can’t put my finger on the reason, nothing has happened in the years since to convince me that I have been kidding myself.

I soon started casting around for anecdotal civic stuff about, shall we say, not improper practice but rather stuff that becomes culture in societies that have been close-knit and isolated for far too long — like as far back as early white conquest of Tasmania. You know, the kind of stuff that goes on among tribes — though intermittently warring among themselves — that instantly meld into a wall of solidarity once outsiders poke their noses in and start asking questions.

Every now and then, a solitary someone would run off at the mouth — but only on the condition that the source remained airtight-anonymous. In the past eight years, the anonymous bit has remained fairly rock solid. What has changed is that so many more people are now willing to tell me their tales. Even better, many more are willing to get out there and join the intensifying public debate about the way our municipal leaders (public servants and elected representatives), are behaving. And all this has come about not just because we now have near unfettered social media that allows us to air grievances, make extraordinary claims and drop dark hints. Even conventional media are willing to allow a freer debate.

And, best of all, councillors who once would have thought twice about defying the previous mayor by exercising their democratic right as elected representatives to express their personal opinions, are actually doing so. And the valley now has a mayor who, while respecting council decisions, doesn’t mind letting the people know what he thinks if he happens to disagree with them.

In fact, so much has public input/output grown to help me feel the imaginary debate I seem to have been having with myself, courtesy of Tasmanian Times, all these years, is real at last. I feel for the first time a sense of optimism that someone younger — rather than this day-before-yesterday’s man — may appear and be prepared to take up the reporting of a debate that now has many more participants than this lonely soul who first detected in late 2008 that, at best, incompetence had let $4 million slip through council’s fingers as a consequence of its failure to abide by the unwritten rule that public money should never be invested in anything but the most conservative of securities.

A glimmer of light …

What I’m talking about is a recent spate of glimmers of light, glimmers of understanding. And there is every chance of seeing two more this evening (June 25), when council holds its monthly ordinary meeting at Huonville Council Chambers (from 6pm).

After months of huffing and puffing by the Heart of the Huon majority bloc — playing no-talks with neigbouring councils, and obliquely telling them to keep their noses out of Huon Valley affairs — there is on tonight’s agenda a recommendation (though seemingly innocuous) that at last acknowledges that deliberations with other councils might, after all, be in the best interests of the Huon Valley.

A staff report in agenda documents recommends: “. . . council accepts the invitation [of Kingborough Council to seek State Government funding for ‘professional facilitation to guide discussion and decision making on the scope and terms of reference for a joint feasibility study’] on the condition that scope of the discussions are not inconsistent with council’s previous resolutions on this matter.”

It might not be easy for readers to understand what I’m getting at. Simply put, this recommendation, if accepted by the Heart of the Huon — and I’m fairly sure it will be — represents an about-face by the controlling bloc from “no neighbourly talks” to “neighbourly talks”, something Mayor Peter Coad and Crs Liz Smith and Rosalie Woodruff have been arguing all along.

It looks to me as if the Heart team is doing its best to wriggle its way out of a silly position for which it has only itself to blame. Whatever might be happening, to me this is a glimmer of light.

And another, even brighter, glimmer lies in the simple “motion on notice” of Cr Lydia Eastley that “the general manager prepares a report detailing the estimated cost of installation of audio recording equipment in Council Chambers”. What could be simpler or more rational?

Past general manager Glenn Doyle would be most impressed by such a giant technological leap. I remember him, almost despairingly, earlier this century, imploring council to come into the “20th century” (I’m still fairly certain he deliberately did not get his centuries mixed) on the matter of electronic transmission of planning/development documents to council by applicants. The then mayor, Robert Armstrong (now reclining in the Legislative Council on the few days it meets each year), didn’t like that idea at all. He didn’t seem to trust electronic verity. Nevertheless, as I recall, that was one enlightened reform that did get past the usually implacable barrier of council’s majority ludditism.

Not long back, Smith got short shrift from the majority when she suggested something along the lines of Eastley’s motion to make council meetings accessible to members of the public interested in proceedings but not able to attend. But when, last month, Cr Pav Ruzicka backed Eastley’s observation about recording meetings, one got the feeling that this time, now that the “idea” is coming from the Heart side of the political fence, it will get majority, probably unanimous, support.

It’s been a rough ride these past seven months for Mayor Coad, who Heart candidates and former ex-mayor Armstrong strongly, and I think unfairly, campaigned against before last October’s election. Councillor Mike Wilson and Deputy Mayor Ian Paul have continued the attack since, and General Manager Simone Watson has not always shown Coad the support at council meetings he might reasonably expect. But, if not glimmers of light, signs are that the mayor is determined to hang in there despite frequently being on the wrong end of a 6-3 (at best 5-4) vote on issues where ancient dogma crushes modern good sense.

A troubled council …

It’s a troubled council that Watson and Coad are having to manage, many of the problems inherited. It’s not a council I would want to be devoting my life to running. So many balls in the air. So many rough spots. So much secrecy. So little community consultation. Such fragile finances. So much change to cope with.

Another executive gone. A medical centre that can’t keep its doctors. An $80,000 allocation to cover the cost of simply planning to make a plan about Geeveston Town Hall. Appointments of consultants with a minimum of information coming out (including to the public) about how they came to be appointed. An illegal and unapproved commercial jetty at Franklin . . .

And now a farcical Waterloo Bay business venture on the Huon that a tight majority of councillors wants and a huge majority of valley residents resent. A frustrated Tasmanian Planning Commission — after politely questioning council’s competence to deal with the joint Crown land lease and development permit application — last week announced, after long deliberation, that, on the case provided to it by council, it had decided it didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule on the issue. Now that has to register as a massive embarrassment for the Huon Valley Council’s planning-authority capacity. And project proponent Dennis Bewsher, of Telopea Pty Ltd, has been left to consider his options.

There persists a strong sense of “plus ca change . . .” about Huon Valley Council. There are mysterious council happenings, well, at least mysterious to many residents here in the valley. For example, like how, twice in the past six years, a general-manager selection committee of councillors could decide there was not one person among scores of presumably experienced applicants from outside the Huon Valley who could match or surpass the skills, talents, experience and qualifications of a local candidate.

And like when council didn’t give a damn that its hired bulldozer was crashing into an asbestos-riddled building at Franklin, nary a care for safety rules.

And like how, despite huge local rejection, an expensive, over-the-top, big (and ugly) public toilet could be lumped onto Cygnet’s handkerchief central park when half the money would have adequately refurbished the previous, delightfully primary-student-painted toilet block.

And like how a poorly designed, limited-space car park in Cygnet could take precedence over a back road that would have provided hundreds of new parking spaces as well as freeing up main street traffic congestion

And how that substantial illegal jetty could have just appeared down the bottom end of the Franklin foreshore and nobody from council noticed!

So much to look after. So few resources. So much money needed. So much public distrust to overcome. And so many unutterable unmentionables that have coloured the flow of tales/gossip/folklore/scandal that have assailed my ears down the years.

Maybe, despite the Heart’s worst nightmares, amalgamation down here in Tasmania’s south might just be the way to clear the air once and for all — and drag the Huon into the 21st century. — Bob Hawkins

• h. manning, in Comemnts: Any one out there interested in the answers to Treegers comments or issues raised by Bob could contact their councillors direct on www.huonvalley.tas.gov.au My recent experience asking questions this way has been an eyeopener as to which councillors want to engage with their community and those that do not. Two male councillors, i shall not name them, either have not replied at all or sent a cursory sentence and ignored my questions completely.I am sooooooo unimpressed!

• Bob Hawkins in Comments: #6. Have I ever denied I am an active participant in an amorphous, many-tentacled campaign to make Huon Valley Council a more efficient and transparent organisation? Read my TT portfolio. Everyone in a community (local or national) should be welcomed as an active participant in its affairs, and to exercise their freedom of speech — unless, of course, they choose to be cowed by the despotic behaviour of control freaks like Tony Abbott and his henchmen, who rule by inspiring fear in the minds of those who might reach for a whistle. We’ve got lots of Abbott types here in Tasmania, and fear of political reprisal is ingrained in the minds of those who, down the years, have been “persuaded” to be obedient and to keep their mouths shut. Is it fear that drives Anon to keep her/his identity concealed?

• h. manning in Comments: re rates HVC /Kingborough. Due to Leon’s post i decided to check this for myself, both by going onto each councils web site and speaking directly with staff. Kingborough council has a strategic plan that states a 4% rate level as their ‘long term financial strategy’ its ‘average ratepayer’ in current budget will experience ‘increase of 3.8%’. HVC’s new stategic plan, only passed this wed, has approved a 3.95% rate level.They were unable to confirm yet the % for the average ratepayer. The kingborough figure for the ‘minimum general rate’ is $298 while i have been told by HVC staff member that ours is $456. It would appear that HVC rate % is currently only 0.05% less than kingborough while the minimum rate is considerably higher.