I missed another meeting today

It probably wasn't such a big deal to miss the meeting but I missed a treatment too because I was not good enough to go with it. Wasted my whole day!

The Governance, Finance & Economic Development committee meeting should have started at 8.30 am today and we have already seen some councillors unable to bring themselves to be there by that time. As the elections get closer I'll be offering who makes the effort and who, very often, doesn't.

This meeting is the powerhouse for the council, as an administration, and it is chaired by Cr Smith with a lot of energy and skill. It is one that I least like to miss because of the amount of information that can be gleaned during the meeting and for the opportunity to speak to the top-level executives of the council. I'm lucky that I have been able to create those mutual-trust relationships and I can tell you that we have some of the best executives you'll find in the State—but not all of them.

Item GF1, the Organisational Services Monthly Report for November, is worth perusing every meeting. In this one it tells us that the council's (paper) records have been transferred to storage and that were now fully digital. It is good to see that everyone in Queensland is cooperating to bring our geospatial information (GIS) up-to-date. I've been commenting since about 1998 that what was at the disposal of councils was far less than adequate and often lead to serious misjudgements and planning glitches.

Another thing that I noticed in the report is that the Microsoft Office upgrade has been completed. I have to say that I do not really think that has been done competently at all. I'm looking at the meeting Agenda document on my screen where the heading for the document says it is a council letterhead! I know it is picky, but templates with incorrect names like that mean that no one in the word processing part of council has any real idea how to organise and set up template documents that are traceable into the future. The upgrade has not been completed, just botched into place!

Another item is Building Entry Security upgrade ongoing. It seems to me that people using a building constantly have the least idea about its security. They expect to be able to get into and move about the building without any trouble. If they do, occasionally, have difficulty it is often overcome by rerouting oneself to overcome the problem. It is the occasional and infrequent visitors who really notice the security lapses, and the members of the public who go into the main administration building know where the unreliabilities and problems really are.

Rates income is down by almost three-quarters of a million dollars. You'd expect that sort of thing in this environment and you might also expect that council has a plan to overcome the problem, or tell us why not. I hope that someone asked today. There are draconian means of repairing the situation and subtle and effective means, but this last needs careful and long-term planning. Too often we seem to be seeing the former means, especially with people's homes.

Page 16 onwards lists the Community Benefit Fund grants made to the end of November. Mayor's first and each Division in turn. I'm surprised that our councillor has spent almost $3500 on horsey people and $200 completely outside of the division. She has just over $5000 of the $20 thousand left after only five months of expenditure.

I also noticed the typing mistakes and rude corrections throughout the tables! Not very good. Maybe because it was a kiss-and-run thing no one cared?

Item GF2, Australian Constitutional Recognition Update, tells us that we have contributed $26,307 to LGAQ for their (our?) constitutional recognition of councils campaign. There will be another tranche to pay later this year.

Item GF3 is about the Allconnex take-over campaign, a presentation by the CEO. You'd expect that there was not a lot of joy in Mr Rose's story. The required legislation is still not passed in parliament and the last I heard was that the Opposition was not promising to help. Campbell Newman sucks! He could cause a serious blowout to our rates in years to come. Maybe some LNP diehards could remind him of his obligations to ratepayers too?

Item GF4 is a government mandated monthly report, for November, about council's finances. It runs from page 47 to page 64 and is intended for easy reading. Item GF5 is the same for December only in outline only, just one page.

Item GF6, a sundry debt for almost $7000 seems to be uncollectible. Rather than try harder we will let it go! You'll notice an amount of incompetent typing on the bullet-point line starting "In February 2011… was still and in mate and…."

We jump to page 84 and GF9, the caretaker arrangements for the elections. It is hardly two pages and I'll leave you to read it for yourselves. Item GF10, changes to the provisions for Register of Interests that some might call the Hajnal Black amendments. We will end up seeing all of the register for each councillor on council's web site. We will not have the situation where a councillor might get away with an inadequate entry because it was too much trouble for people to go look at the, previously, semi-secret registers. And we should not read of a person in court saying that the prosecution took so many years to establish and bring a case!

The approved forms are from page 90 to 103.

The next item, GF11, is about councillor remuneration. It shows that there is going to be only three scales of salary because the old payment for chairpersons is deleted. The scales are on page 105 and the full determination document starts on page 107 to 170. In our council I believe the removal of the chairperson's additional payment is unfair because they do work very hard, well, most of them. And there would hardly be a time when every one did not do much more than a non-chair councillor does. How effective they all are is, as always, variable. Chairpersons are elected to their positions, after the election, by their colleagues. With the extra salary it was a position to attain, but hardly that now. I am just concerned that if the good ones don't step into the positions we will get the ratbags who think nothing of trying to rule committees for their own benefit and aggrandisement.

The other problem is that the election of chairpersons is a secret from the public.

Item GF12 is about Greenbank Rural Fire Brigade's short-term funding problem for the fit-out of it's new location. It would be a pity if the councillors were less than sympathetic. Item GF14 is about the Divisional Infrastructure Capital Improvements Program. This is the big fund where councillors have $650 thousand to spend in the financial year, each year, and you'll see that much of the money goes on roads, drainage and parks. The division 11 pages are from 184 to 185.

Item GF17 is a report about the Strategy Performance and Leadership Team. It is usually a kiss-and-run item but normally has little gems of information about what is going on there. Maybe it is the pre-Xmas, maybe I'm becoming jaundiced but there is not a lot there this time. I expect that the meeting closed by about 10.30 am.