REPORT CARD: General Manager's Book of Spin

STATUS: this publication has been circulated to ratepayers for assessment with their Rate Notices – some are ratepayer and residents some are just ratepayers.

The Rate Notices are a good opportunity to communicate with ratepayers but this document fails on a number of points:
1. It is blatant serf serving SPIN that demonstrates that the producers are concerned that they are unappreciated – and thus may not get their rewards, bonuses, promotions, whatever. This book is an example of The Big Lie technique in operation in the 21st Century.

2. It addresses its audience on the assumption that it is reaching the people who count. In one way it does but it misses a vast number of people who are residents, who also count but are not ratepayers who receive Rate Notices – renters generally, many medical professionals working in our hospitals temporarily, students from elsewhere studying in our schools, colleges and university, migrants and refugees and many others. Without these people the city would not, indeed could not, function and deliver the quality of life the writers are claiming as being ’their work’. The 'residents' – well large numbers of them – are left out of the equation yet AGAIN.

3. It exudes a 1980s “GREED IS GOOD” ambiance and mindset. It oozes opulence and waste, with its expensive non-recycled paper, colour printing and clichéd graphic design. All this is compounded by the fact that residents and ratepayers – and potentially visitors and prospective residents too – would have been much better served by an interactive electronic publication – yet another lost opportunity and an example of misspent resources.

4. It engages in political bias, which is TOTALLY inappropriate for such a publication. Residents and ratepayers can see this for what it is and can be expected to ‘bin it’ – physically and intellectually.

5. It fails the ‘cost effectiveness’ test. Imagine this, there are approximately 30,000 rateable properties in the Launceston Municipality and think about the cost effectiveness of 30,000 of these things being posted out to unappreciative readers – then multiply it by 4! The ‘Marketing Department' at Council has grown out of all proportion to NEED as is demonstrated by this document.

We could go on but we would rather you leave your comments – opposing, concurring, divergent, parallel, whatever – so that this assessment carries the endorsement or otherwise of readers. ALL comments will be posted unless they are libellous or defamatory.

What was the final Cost? When will it be reported?

It is now a year on and you have to think that the reporting has been done and that the reports are available for scrutiny. If it has been done, what did the reporting tell us? If they are not in yet, then why not?

So much gets lost in the in the melee of day to day management of a large enterprise like Launceston City Council – but tracking expenditure and assessing outcomes are a part of all that. Assuming that there was State and/or Federal government funding involved you would also think that by now it would have been necessary to report on outcomes by now.

If the speculated cost reported in the press in 2008 had any veracity this project represented approx. $130 plus per rateable property in Launceston. The question that really needs to be asked is just how many budgetary glitches like this do ratepayers need to carry.

After that, ratepayers need to be quizzing their Aldermen about this project and this kind of thing. Why? Well, because in the end they are the ones who need to find the dollars to cover the expenditure – as taxpayers and/or ratepayers.

There are a lot more questions linked to all this that should or could be asked but let’s keep this simple and confined to some basic first principles for now.