Lets be honest...

Shire President Brian Moore phoned in to ABC Radio’s South-West Morning show last Thursday to defend the CEO and the Shire in relation to the decision to demolish Zinnecker’s House.

He made three points;

-        It is not the CEO, but the councillors who made the decision

-        The Shire does not have a lot of money to spend on doing up buildings - $30,000 is the equivalent to a one per cent rate increase.

-        Of the people he has spoken to in the last few weeks only one complained about the decision to bowl over the house.

But I think he was being more than a little disingenuous. Let me ‘deconstruct’ these points…

True, the CEO does not make the decisions, but he makes recommendations to Council which these days are invariably followed.  In the case of Zinneckers House, the CEO recommended in 2009 and 2010 that the house be removed. In both cases, Council rejected his advice and DECIDED to retain the house.  Undeterred, the CEO brought the matter back again earlier this year with yet another recommendation to get rid of the house. This time, a compliant Council agreed, without even discussing the matter.

So the reality that is that the CEO effectively makes the decisions, due to the compliant mindset of the current councillors.

True, the Shire has only limited resources and spending an extra $30,000 requires a rate rise of one per cent. But what Mr Moore did not mention is that the Shire also has hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away in “reserves” which are earmarked for such things as building improvements. And as he spoke last week about not being able to afford to fix  Zinnecker’s House, more than a million dollars of ratepayer’s funds (along with $2m of State taxpayer funds) was being spent on building a large “state of the art” library up the road.

So the reality is that Zinnecker’s House can be fixed without a rate increase being necessary, as the President suggested.

It may be true that only one person has approached Mr Moore to complain in person about demolishing Zinnecker’s House, but perhaps that is because the many hundreds who have signed a petition protesting the decision believe that by doing so they have already registered their objection and that Mr Moore and his collegues will pay heed to the petition.

So the reality is that many, many people have objected to the Council’s decision.