Category Archives: viewpoint

32 – Deeper Water.

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Posted by Whistler                                                                                          230 words

deep water

I posted some weeks ago on whether or not local government is a country song. It started me thinking about the connection between popular culture and working in local government. In the Paul Kelly song ‘Deeper Water’ he describes the process of growing up and becoming an adult through a series of images beginning with the child guided into deeper water in the security of an adult’s company; the adolescent getting out of their depth in order to grow up; the young adult being taken into deeper water by life’s inevitable events only to discover they are now out of their depth; and finally, dealing with death and moving through the waves to calm water.

In many ways the story parallels our growth and development as professionals. We begin conscious that we don’t know what we are doing but having a go in the knowledge that you are supported by more experienced colleagues. We then start to take risks in trying out our own ideas and testing our ability in new situations. If we don’t do this we will always remain dependent on others. Then we realise we are competent and capable and we have to step up and accept responsibility. The challenge becomes delivering, not mastering. Finally, we move beyond the turbulence of learning and practising to understand the deeper meaning of what we are doing. The patterns underpinning our professional life have become apparent to us. We now know how to act effectively to change and improve what we are doing.

If we are lucky.  Some of us are just out of our depth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsm82xc43Oo

30 – ‘The better things are, the worse they feel’. How so?

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Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         700 words

This is the title of a chapter in Richard Farson’s rather interesting book Management of the Absurd – Paradoxes in Leadership. Farson is a psychologist, author, and educator. He co-founded the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in 1958. His article on the ‘Failure-tolerant Leader’ is included in the HBR’s 10 Must-Reads on Leadership. He is a guy worth reading.

The idea that things feel worse when they are actually getting better appealed to me because of something a colleague said to me at work recently. Continue reading →

27 – Risk farming or good governance? How some executives avoid accountability.

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Posted by Whistler                                                                                          400 words

What do I mean by ‘risk farming’? It is the practice of spreading risk around so that your responsibilities become so diffused amongst various individuals and groups that you can’t be held accountable for them. There will always be someone else sharing accountability. So, how is it done?

You start by taking every matter before the Executive. Continue reading →

26 – The first 25 posts. What have you missed?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                              1100 words

Writers have posted 25 times since the start of the year. A number of themes and ideas have been discussed. This post provides a brief overview.

The goals are set out in post 1 – track current issues and discuss the issues that are ‘everlasting, widespread and insoluble’ (using the least amount of words). A range of issues have since been covered from the daily media, day to day work life, and the things people often talk about but seldom resolve.

Post 2 and 5 discuss local government services – what we do and how we can define it. The conclusion is that local government needs to provide services that fit within legislated requirements, are responsive to broader community needs and expectations, and meet the individual purpose for each person receiving a service. Each service can be defined as a cross-functional process or value chain.

In post 3 the complexity evident in local government is discussed, including the involvement of customers in service delivery, the variability they introduce, the difficulty measuring service quality or setting service goals and measures, and the impossibility of separating service delivery from politics.

The impact of training on performance is discussed in post 4 in response to media criticism of the Australian government public service for its spending on training. The post suggests that understanding, documenting and improving processes would yield more benefit than providing more training for most councils.

In post 6 the differences between customers, clients, citizens, residents and ratepayers are discussed. Understanding which role someone has chosen to take in an interaction is important in determining the value they expect. This can be useful in differentiating between public and private value expectations.

Post 7 looks at public service job cutting and the link to productivity. Some key messages from the Centre for Policy Development report False Economies: Unpacking public sector efficiencies are discussed. The post identifies the importance of defining public value so that any changes to resource levels can be made in the knowledge of the impact they will have on the value produced.

Post 8 presents an imaginary script for an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ in which he assesses the performance of local government as if it were a restaurant.   Hopefully it is both entertaining and thought provoking. What would Gordon Ramsay say?

In post 9 some emerging characteristics of people and councils are discussed. Obligatory empiricism, oblivious narcissism, and consensual lying are put forward as reasons why councils always seem to learn everything from scratch, leaders set out to meet their own needs first, and why people tell others what they want to hear for the sake of convenience.

Post 10 draws a ‘line in the sand’ with a discussion of the changes that have impacted in Victorian local government since the 1990’s. Part history lesson and part explanation of the present, the post concludes that the most influential change has been to the tenure of the CEO and their increased dependence on the goodwill of their council for survival .

Planning in local government gets a thorough airing in posts 11, 12, 18, 19, and 20. In posts 11 and 12 the current organisational planning processes is critiqued. Posts 18 and 19 suggest ways to better integrate planning. Post 20 discusses the role of the Council Plan.  All posts provide commentary on how to develop plans that are realistic, achievable and focused on delivering the value expected by the community. Constraints identified include the need to work within legislated requirements and the need for leadership to really understand ‘the business’ to be able to implement a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ planning process.

In post 13 the role of policies and strategies is discussed. Are they becoming convenient but ineffective solutions to difficult problems, devices to avoid doing something that needs to be done, or just a way to be seen to be doing something?

Post 14 is an attempt to explain why councils stick with conventional organisational structures and avoid dealing with cross-functional processes; why systems seek to control risk and increase compliance without regard for producing public value; and why council culture encourages people to avoid making decisions. The discussion centres on what an organisational culture survey, an ABEF organisational self-assessment, and the Executive’s risk appetite can reveal.

Four books that should be read by every leader in local government are discussed in posts 15 and 17. The books are Recognising Public Value by Mark H. Moore, The Whitehall Effect by John Seddon, Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, and The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Each book has a different focus and there is a mixture of public sector and business reading.

Post 16 discusses the rate capping proposed for local government in Victoria. The history of rate capping in Victoria and the long-term effects of it that are apparent in NSW provide a backdrop to a discussion about what councils can do in response. This post covers the potential for shared services and the potential impact on capital and operating budget cuts.

In post 21 the way councillors feel about their role is discussed. Do they feel inundated and manipulated or respected and influential? The difficulties they face as volunteers and in becoming skilled in their role, working together in an adversarial system, and coping with very demanding workloads, are covered. The message is stop complaining and support them more effectively.

What does a high performance local government organisation (HPLOGO) look like? In post 22 a methodology is proposed to define and create a HPLOGO. Based on the work of Andre de Waal, a set of characteristics of a HPLOGO are described (as actions) and prioritised.

Post 23 is a bit tongue in cheek. It is an attempt to pick up on the ‘chip on the shoulder’ prevalent in some parts of local government. Is local government a plaintive country tune or a majestic aria?

In post 24 an article by Frank Ostroff from Harvard Business Review (Change Management in Government) is discussed in relation to making high performance happen. He describes four unique barriers to change in the public service related to leader skills, leader tenure, rules that create inflexibility, and stakeholder resistance to reform.

Finally, post 25 looks at local government budgeting and how it is focussed on the past and has difficulty coping with improvement and innovation.   The need to balance investment in compliance with improving customer service and developing new services is discussed with reference to Christopher Stone’s work on public sector efficiency.

25 – Budgeting in local government. Is it capex, opex or a new initiative?

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It is budget time again. In conjunction with ‘planning time’ (see posts 11 and 12) councils are starting to compile their proposed budgets for 2015/16. Capital bids are being evaluated to determine ‘logistically’ whether they can be completed within the financial year and ‘strategically’ whether or not they should proceed. Recurrent budgets are being submitted by managers, either built from a zero base or simply last year’s budget with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase. Councils will be comparing the amounts requested with the estimates in the long term financial plan to see whether they match. So where is the problem?

What if you have had growth in demands for services? Service levels may have to be increased in response to community needs. More services may be needed to cater for population growth. What if you have had significant increase in the number of assets to be maintained and renewed? More parks, more roads, more buildings. Somewhere in between the funding available for capital and recurrent budgets sits the ‘new initiative’ (NI) funding that is set aside for budget or staff increases in the recurrent budget. Councils know that costs can increase by more than CPI. They just don’t cope with it very well.

For starters, the amount available for NI’s is usually inadequate and is over bid by the organisation.  It is not unusual for $1 million to be available and for bids to add up to $3 million or more. When this happens there are often no predetermined criteria for prioritising amongst the bids. The orderliness of the budget process then comes under pressure. When criteria are developed, they struggle to effectively assign priorities. How do you decide whether expenditure to mitigate risks or increase compliance is more important than making efficiency or performance improvements to existing services? What about investment in developing new and better services now and for the future?

As you can imagine, local government will tend to eliminate risk. So the first category of NI’s are usually funded. Councils also like to satisfy the community, so improvements to services the community says are important but performing below expectations, will also be funded if at all possible. The last priority to be funded, unless there is a political imperative, is new and better services. This correlates with one of Christopher Stone’s findings in his report False Economies – unpacking public sector efficiency, that ‘two significant barriers to public sector innovation are an overly risk averse orientation within organisations, and a lack of resources invested in developing and implementing innovative ideas’. The whole process is hardly a sure-fire way to ensure that the available financial resources are allocated in the way that best meets community needs now or in the future.

Part of the solution lies in a better planning process that actively considers the relative benefits from investment in risk reduction, service improvement or new services. In a business balancing these considerations is essential. Owners and managers must ensure that there is sufficient investment in compliance, and satisfying customer needs, and developing new services for the future. Why not local government?

Posted by Whistler

Stone, Christopher, 2014. ‘False Economies – unpacking public sector efficiency’.

23 – Is local government a country song?

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I have heard people say that if local government was a song it would be a country song. I guess they mean it would be a tale of woe, the classic country song about losing your land, your partner, your friends and then your dog. It is tragic and suggests that local government is a victim of its circumstances.

It is an interesting observation. At a recent ‘future of the local government’ conference, discussion was dominated by the limited ability for councils to increase rates, cost-shifting from higher levels of government, and ever increasing community demands. It is a grim tale. Despite these realities, I think it is too easy to blame our circumstances, limit our expectations and play the victim.

I would prefer to work in a different musical genre altogether. Take opera for instance. Despite story lines that are similarly tragic, there is a worldliness, grandeur and determination in the lives of the characters. They have a sense of hope for the future. Opera has a majesty that suits my career ambitions.

If there is a link to a country song, as someone with a passing interest in country music (yes, both types), I figure that Melinda Schneider captures the essence of local government with her lyric ‘we’re going in the same direction in a million different ways’ (Big World, Small World). I think these words describe the work of many people in local government, trying hard and having to make it up as they go along in the absence of an organisational ability to determine a set of priorities and coordinate action to achieve them. It is not a tragedy. But it needs to change.

Posted by Whistler

http://www.countrymusicchannel.com.au/lyrics/melinda-schneider/big-world-small-world-lyrics-15773648.aspx

21 – Inundated and manipulated, or respected and influential. How do your councillors feel?

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“Politics is the answer that a liberal democratic society has given to the (analytically unresolvable) question of what things should be produced for collective purposes with public resources”.

I was reading this quote from Mark H. Moore (Creating Public Value, p.54) and I thought it might be worth discussing some of the issues relevant to the sometimes uneasy relationship between politicians and the administration in local government. Politicians have a tough job to do. In Victorian local government, the job is made harder for several reasons that are worth some consideration.

Councillors are volunteers. They receive what is effectively a stipend for their many hours of work in representing their constituents. They may have no political experience or skills when elected. They often don’t know the other councillors elected with them and have no relationship with them. If they do, it could be because they have competed with them at previous elections. Often, councillors are elected who have diametrically opposed platforms – they believe their mandate is to achieve the opposite outcome to another councillor.

This situation is quite different to other levels of government in Australia where politicians usually belong to a political party, they know each other, and they share political views and ambitions. If elected to govern, they work as a team towards their goals (or they should do). They are also much more likely to have political skills or experience (sometimes acquired as a local government councillor). They are also paid enough to enable them to dedicate their time to the role, and it is expected that they will do so.

When local government councillors are elected, they have an immediate workload – develop a City Plan within 6 months, approve contracts outside the CEO’s delegation, etc. At the same time, they are learning about the responsibilities of their role – conflicts of interest, meeting procedure, the Local Government Act. And it goes on. Imagine starting a new job (which, by the way, is in addition to your current full time job) and having to learn how to do it while you do it in front of a public audience. It is worth remembering that the public nature of a councillors work is a key factor in the decisions they make.

The skills and abilities of individual councillors and the dynamics of the group are critical to the performance of a council. You often hear people saying that the councillors should ‘act more as a team’; however, a council cannot always function as a team. In fact, the community often expects the opposite. They want to see councillors challenge each other and vigorously debate issues. If councillors do caucus and/or if they always agree in the council chamber, they are often criticised. The local newspapers rely on contention in the council chamber to help maintain readership and will often do their best to create it if it doesn’t occur naturally. In some ways, representative democracy works best when politicians pursue different agendas and there is conflict between ideas, so long as the debate and decision-making processes enable the best ideas to be adopted.

So what does this all mean for the council administration?

For a start, don’t expect councillors to be highly skilled in the role, willing to work cooperatively with each other, or prepared to agree with one another. Be pleased if they are, but don’t be disappointed if they aren’t. Plan for the most likely situation. Support the councillors in developing the skills required to participate in formal meetings, publicly debate and issue, and deal with the demands of their constituents.   Create processes that are tailored to councillors needs and effective in informing them about issues to enable informed and vigorous debate. Make them feel respected and empowered. Not inundated and manipulated. Allow the time required for the council to understand issues and make considered decisions.

In saying this, I am mindful of the workload of councils. They have a lot to do and limited time to do it. I have often thought that the main capacity constraint is the time available for councillors to meet and be informed or make decisions. It is a challenging ‘finite capacity’ scheduling problem and probably should be approached in that way. Ask the councillors how often they would like to meet and for how long. This will give you the available time for briefings and meetings. You now know the available capacity.

Then list the statutory decisions that the council must make (e.g. elect the Mayor, adopt the budget), estimate the decisions council must make that cannot be delegated (e.g. approve large contracts, adopt policies or strategies), and then estimate the time that the administration believes it needs with the council to discuss matters that cannot be delegated without direction (e.g. changes in the operating environment, major strategies or projects). Subtract the time required from the time available. You now have the ‘discretionary’ time available for the councillors to pursue their agendas or debate topical issues of interest to them. It won’t be as much time as they want.

Discipline with time is often not a strength of councillors and they can be inefficient in using time because of the group dynamics. But they have choices. For example, they could choose to increase the time available by meeting more often or for longer. There are limits to this, particularly for councillors in full time employment. Another option is to choose to work within the available time and accept the restrictions that this places on them in terms of choosing what is discussed. They will need to priorities as a group and in collaboration with the CEO to optimise the use of time and meet all obligations. A further option is to delegate more decision making to the CEO and the administration. This requires trust and an initial investment of time in ensuring that the policies guiding delegated decision making are acceptable to the council.

In practice, councillors are constantly under time pressure and often they have not been presented with all their options in a way that makes them feel that they are in charge and making the decision. They get swept into the business of dealing with issues and making decisions, feel under pressure to make decisions (sometimes with political consequences), and their trust and confidence in the administration is eroded. Resolving the problem then becomes much harder.

Councillors are asked to make tough decisions under difficult circumstances. Be reasonable in your expectations and plan to support them in ways that meet their need to feel respected and influential.

Parkinson

Moore, Mark 1995. Creating Public Value.

20 – Plan, promise or accountability tool. What role does your Council Plan play?

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I am always interested in documents called ‘plan’. Add ‘strategic’ and you really have my attention. I suppose it all depends on definition of a plan. Here are a few of my thoughts to add to the posts on planning by Lancing Farrell (posts 11 and 12).

I take a plan to mean a document containing your intended actions to achieve an outcome. If circumstances change, the plan will need to change accordingly. It is a mechanism for a group of people to come to a common understanding of what they are going to do and it helps communicate that to others. It guides decision making and the allocation of resources. It is a reference when you need to confirm the direction you want to go in. You probably have your own definition.

In local government, however, plans tend to take on other roles. They become public promises about actions to be taken and the objectives that will be achieved. It is the yardstick to measure the performance of the Council and the organisation and hold them accountable – have they kept their promises? Politicians keeping their promises has become a bit of an obsession in Australia. The Council Plan is the main document that fulfils that purpose in Victorian local government.

Actions from the Council Plan ‘cascade’ into department work plans and the performance plans of individuals, who are then measured on how well they achieve them. Accountability for delivering the plan – implementing the actions and producing the outputs – is then embedded. But what if circumstances change?   What if the plan you started with is no longer a good one? It does happen. As Keynes is reported to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Unfortunately, in local government, changing your mind about your plan is often seen as breaking promises or avoiding accountability.

This is a simplistic view of the world. Sometimes the plan needs to change in order for the same outcomes to be achieved. When the outcomes start to change all the time without a process to ensure it is what the community wants, it probably is an accountability problem. I have observed councils sticking to plans and implementing actions that everyone knows are no longer relevant, but they continue to be implemented because ‘we said that we would’. Often this happens because lead time to get an action into the plan has made it obsolete or another more relevant opportunity for action has emerged.

The emergence of a new and better way to achieve the same outcome can be the most difficult to deal with. The Council Plan is not readily amended and the amendment process is public, which opens the door to accusations of breaking promises. It is difficult for a council to take risks in producing value for the community if those risks are to be embodied in the Council Plan. There is usually a process to double check on the ‘doability’ of any actions proposed for the Council Plan – unless we are sure we can do it, it often doesn’t get included. Imagine a business only planning to do the things that it already knows it can do.

The risk is that the plan becomes a controlling document full of risk-free and relatively easily achieved actions.

Is there a solution? The flexibility of a plan to effectively guide action in achieving outcomes must be balanced against the public demand for accountability from their elected representatives and the council. The planning structure and the process to develop and review plans is probably the key. At the moment a lot rides on the Council Plan. In the absence of lesser organisational plans that capture actions and accountabilities of the organisation, they are being incorporated into the City Plan, which is essentially the plan made by the councillors for their term in office. As such, it necessarily has a political focus.

A better planning process, which is possible within the legislated planning framework, would seem to be the answer.

Colin Weatherby

17 – Interested in local government management? Four books you should read and why. Part 2

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This post continues my discussion about the books that I discovered in 2014 that I think should influence management in local government.

3. Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache. Published in 1995, this book is quite different to the other two books recommended. It is not about the public sector and it is a hard core management book. The authors have developed a way of thinking about organisations and their performance that is very relevant to local government. Topics covered include managing processes and organisations as systems, linking performance to strategy, redesigning processes, and designing a performance measurement system.

Rummler and Brache apply their systems view by discussing the interdependence of nine performance variables shown in the diagram below.

the 9 performance variables

The levels of performance and the performance needs are described:

  • Organisation level – the organisational strategy, goals, and organisational structure.
  • Process level – how work flows across functions in the organisational structure.
  • Job/performer level – the people doing the work in processes.
  • Goals – the customer’s expectations of service quality, quantity, timeliness or cost, etc.
  • Design – of the organisation, processes and jobs to achieve the goals.
  • Management – the practices in place to ensure goals are current and being achieved.

It is a simple and powerful way to think about organisations vertically and horizontally. In a diverse organisation like local government, understanding the performance variables is critical to improving cross-functional services and reducing the ‘silo effect’ in which functional goals are put ahead of the goals of processes that deliver services to customers.  Read it if you are interested in cross functional processes and improving service delivery.

4. The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Published in 1998, this book is also a serious management text. Written in an engaging way with lots of diagrams and case studies to illustrate points, it is accessible and easily read. So, don’t be put off. For someone who believes in systems thinking, it contains gems, such as this one below written in the context of performance appraisal and why Scholtes believes it isn’t effective;

“Successful work requires having a consistent and reliable set of systems, processes, and methods by which you and your people design, develop, and deliver what the customers need when and how the customers need it. Systems are created, sustained, and improved by insightful and interactive work on the system, not by using carrots and sticks. Measurable goals do not improve systems. Improving systems improves systems (p.303).”

Chapters cover a wide range of topics including, systems thinking; giving meaning, purpose, direction and focus to work; leading by asking good questions; and performance without appraisal. It is clear that Scholtes (a colleague of W. Edwards Deming) values systems and statistical thinking, relations with people, and learning to master improvement. He sees organisations as ‘complex systems of social networks and technical processes in which simplistic approaches will not help resolve complex problems’. He identifies 6 leadership competencies:

  1. Systems thinking – understanding the difference between systems and structure or policy; and seeking systemic causes, not culprits.
  2. Variability at work – knowing the difference between common cause and special causes of variation.
  3. Learning – understanding when a statement is theory or opinion versus fact, and acting accordingly; and knowing the difference between change and improvement.
  4. Psychology and human behaviour – understanding and applying the concepts of internal versus external motivation and demotivation.
  5. Interactions – seeing the interdependencies between systems thinking, variation, learning and human behaviour.
  6. Vision, meaning, direction and focus – providing clarity of purpose and developing and continuously communicating a clear sense of direction and focus.

Scholtes sets out a new paradigm for leadership for complex socio-technical systems.  Local government, with its political and organisational challenges, is nothing if not complex (as discussed in post 3).

I challenge you to read these books and then decide whether you think about your organisation as a system and if it is really focussed on creating public value by fulfilling customer-defined purpose through effective and efficient processes where variation is understood and performance is measured.

Lancing Farrell

16 – ‘Council rates capped from mid-2016’, The Age, 21 January 2015

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‘Council rates will be capped next year with the state government forcing councils to justify any increases above the rate of inflation. Councils must now send their budgets to the Essential Services Commission for permission to raise rates above inflation. Inflation – as measured through the consumer price index [CPI] – is currently running at 2.3 per cent. Last financial year rates increased by an average of 4.23 per cent.’

Some people will be thinking it is about time that municipal rate rises are curbed. Nobody likes paying more taxes. But is it a smart move?

Rate capping has been in place in NSW for more than 30 years. In 2013 the NSW Treasury Corporation reported that a quarter of the state’s 152 councils had a ”weak” or ”very weak” financial sustainability rating. If not corrected, half would be ”very weak” financially within three years. In 2014 the number of councils requesting rate increases above the 2.3% cap set by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal almost doubled. The requested increases ranged from 5.5% to 11%. The increases reflect the financial realities confronting local government and ‘catch up’ increases to cover lack of revenue

NSW councils have responded to the rate capping in different ways. Ryde Council has created an RSA-type animation that neatly explains to residents the choices that need to be made.  It illustrates the implications of the demands for growth in services and infrastructure when revenue is declining.  New works are less possible and maintenance and cleaning standards have to be reduced with long term impacts on infrastructure.  Ryde is having to define ‘core’ services, i.e. what is essential versus what is nice to have, and balance reducing service levels with increasing rates.  It is a simple and effectively told story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR_BJKAo0dA).

The overall effect of rate capping seems to have been a reduced ability to provide services to the community, accumulated backlogs in infrastructure renewal or replacement, and increased reliance user charges for revenue. According to Brian Dollery and Albert Wijeweera the increase in rates in NSW since 1995 has been about half the increase that has occurred in Victoria and council rates per capita are lower that every other state and only higher that the Northern Territory.

Councils in Victoria experienced enforced rate cuts and capping for a period of time in the 1990’s. The Kennett Liberal/National coalition government capped rates in 1995 and imposed a cap of one percentage point below inflation. The cap was lifted in 1997 to allow increases of up to 3 per cent – with Ministerial approval. In 1999 the Bracks Labor government scrapped the cap altogether. The councils unable to draw on financial reserves or liquidate assets were profoundly affected and the impacts, similar to those now evident in NSW, were enduring.

The arguments in favour of rate capping are worth some discussion. They revolve around preventing councils from abusing monopoly powers in delivery of services; stopping expenditure on services or infrastructure that the State government regards as ‘non-core’; reducing the risks of poor governance; and limiting the ability of councils to provide services that are better provided by the private sector. Essentially, it reflects a lack of trust by the State government – councils won’t make sensible decisions without supervision.

In practical terms, what is it likely to mean for Victorian councils from day to day?

For a start, some councils are talking about entering into shared services to reduce costs. This has been a popular idea with CEO’s for a while that has failed to take effect. But will shared services really help? The evidence suggests that the savings are seldom as great as people think and there are initial costs involved in making those savings. John Seddon writes eloquently on the shortcomings of shared services. More in a future post.

What else can councils do? Reducing expenditure on capital works to enable funds to be used for recurrent operational expenditure is one likely response. In the short term this is fine if there are not pressing asset renewal demands or community demands for new assets. Cutting back expenditure on new assets will be easier for developed municipalities. It will not be as easy for developing municipalities where population growth is creating demand for new assets to meet community needs. In all municipalities, reduced expenditure on asset renewal will ultimately result in reduced fitness for purpose and increased future costs.

What about cutting recurrent operational expenditure? This is much more difficult because the community is likely to immediately lose services. There will be opposition from those who no longer receive the benefits of a service that is cut. The typical council operational budget is about 60-70% salaries and wages, 10-30% contractors and materials, and 5-10% plant and equipment. There will need to be a reduction in staff numbers for the cuts to be meaningful. This is likely to result in industrial disputes. If staff numbers are not reduced, there will need to be big cuts to expenditure on contractors and materials and/or plant and equipment, which impacts directly on the ability of staff to be productive.

Reducing expenditure on contractors is probably the easiest cut to make, especially if it doesn’t directly impact on delivery of services to the community. For many councils, this type of cut will impact on major maintenance/minor renewal of assets, which often sits outside the capital budget because the amount is below the threshold for capitalisation or the works do not increase asset life and cannot be capitalised. In the 1990’s it was cuts to this type that had long-term impacts when assets failed and needed premature renewal because of inadequate maintenance.

Rate capping has been shown to reduce the ability for councils to respond to community demand for services and to adequately care for physical infrastructure. It takes away the potential for local communities to determine the amount of funding they want to provide for council activities. It might drive administrative efficiencies, but at what cost? More than anything, it says that the State government knows more about meeting local needs. In every respect, it is just wrong.

Colin Weatherby

Dollery, Brian and Wijeweera, Albert 2010. An assessment of rate-pegging in New South Wales local government, in Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, Issue 6: July (http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/cjlg/article/view/1619)

Seddon, John 2014. The Whitehall Effect.

The Age. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/council-rates-capped-from-mid2016-20150120-12tz7k.html