More evidence that the dozens of people who work at our Shire see themselves as a privileged and protected elite, somehow above the rest of us ratepaying rabble.
Our gullible councillors have just agreed to a proposal from CEO Tim Clynch that he and his staff should only have to pay half as much as everyone else for use of the town's pool, recreation centre and gym.
That's right, if you are one of the chosen many who work for the Shire, you now get an automatic half-price pool or gym membership.
Why? One of the reasons given to the compliant Council members was that this would result in an increased number of people signing up for memberships and using the facilities. Surely the same would apply if a 50% discount was offered to all citizens.
No, the rest of us suckers have to pay for these extravagant new facilities with fees and rates which go higher and higher every year because the pool and recreation centre are massively unsustainable. They run at a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Against this background, surely the Councillors would not give the staff this needless perk, which simply makes the facilities more financially unsustainable.
Yes they would. The following was the justification given to Council by CEO Clynch;
The definition of fiscal equity is “no social group within the community is taxed or
allocated benefits inequitably without a demonstrated reason”. Therefore Council
will have to determine that a “demonstrated reason” exists to provide employees with
a discounted rate for leisure centre membership that isn’t available to other members
of the community.
Demonstrated reasons are to offer the benefit to aid in staff attraction and retention
and also to encourage employees to use the facilities at the Bridgetown Leisure
Centre in order to promote physical activities which will contribute to productivity in
the workplace and a healthy work/life balance for all staff. Improved health and
fitness for employees will also potentially improve manual handling work practices,
lessen stress, improve resilience to minor illnesses and improve self-confidence. In
addition to productivity improvements provided by a healthier and fitter workforce a
consequent reduction in absenteeism and workplace injuries can be expected.
Productivity, healthy work/life balance, improved health and fitness, improved resilience and self-confidence, a reduction in absenteeism... aren't these things the Council should be encouraging across the whole community, not just for its own coterie? Surely our councillors could see the fatal flaw in this argument that everything Clynch says about the benefits for the staff would also apply to everyone in the community?
Clynch failed to make a case for why he and his staff should pay less to use the facility than everyone else, yet his compliant councillors voted 6/1 in favour without any debate.
What a disgrace.
