Sydney Council flush with funds

BY ANDREW WOODHOUSE

Sydney Council is rolling in clover. And no, I don’t mean in Clover Moore. It’s rolling in so much of our money, there’s an embarrassment of riches.

Its latest December 2016 figures state: “Council’s total Investment and Cash position is forecast to be $613.6 million … with investments earning interest of $1.4 million a month …  The majority of the City’s cash and investments portfolio is … $346.1 million (investments) and …  $88.2 million cash reserves …” (December 2016 meeting Item 2).

Phew! That’s good to know. For a moment I thought the money was being splashed about like glitter in the Mardi Gras parade.

But hang on. Excuse me for thinking. We have $613.6 million total in cash and investments. And “the majority” of this money is made up of  $346.1 million plus $88.2 million, totalling $434.4 million.

OK, got it so far. Stay with me on this please readers. So that leaves a whopping $179. 2 million, the remainder, going where, exactly?

With this I could buy 40 fabulous four-million dollar Parisian apartments and still have change left over for two Rolls Royce Wraiths with hand-sewn starlight roof linings in cashmere and five round-the-world, first-class trips including five star, champagne-encrusted accommodation all the way. And a new penthouse in Sydney, overlooking Town Hall, just for fun, all a totally tendentious, gorgeous, self-indulgence!

But wait. It’s not my money. It’s too easy to spend other people’s money, especially if you’re in control of it. And Clover Moore, who is in control of it, should know this.

She’s spending $3.5 million on a grandiloquent ribbon arch in front of Town Hall, as a “diversion”, she told us in council, but yet to be certified as structurally sound.

She’s also spending $2.5 million on a milk crate sculpture whose fate is now unsure.

Her defence?  “The City of Sydney’s investment in public art helps cement Sydney’s status as Australia’s global city”. Just how could a mega-milk crate have done this? All it does is cement in a structure nobody wants or can use.  She’s dreaming.

She splurged $19,000 on a mural by US Artist, MOMO, curated by the appropriately-named local artist, Elliot “Numskull” Routledge. It was constructed in January 2016 but removed within thirteen weeks. Blink and you missed it.

Her overseas, jaunty junkets and pointy-end-of-the-plane trips with her phalanx of flunkeys are legendary. Think Paris, Guangzhou, Mexico City. New Orleans, Rio Di Janero and Copenhagen for starters. Hasn’t she heard of Skype?

She now has twenty staff, including two media advisors and five policy advisors costing $3.6 million this year alone, as well as a personal chauffeur and a fleet of limousines on stand-by, all of which beg the question: what does she actually do? Just cut ribbons at openings? She certainly gives new meaning to the term “disposable income”.

She has almost as many staff as former NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell did during the Olympics yet she deals with about 180,000 constituents compared to the Premier’s state constituency of 7.5 million.

Former Lord Mayors, Jeremy Bingham and Leo Port, had only four staff including two typists. Current City of Fairfield Mayor, Frank Carbone, representing a similar population to Mrs Moore, doesn’t have any dedicated staff. He sold the mayoral vehicle when he was elected to council in 2012.

Now she is trying to placate the public over her new expenses policy. It is largesse with a capital L. The Minister for Local Government , Gabrielle  Upton, recently launched a probe into this proposed policy so Clover has ordered Ms Barone, her right-hand arm CEO, to find ways to make real-time spending more transparent, but not now: in the next financial year instead, of course.

Which will do what? Just highlight how glacially slow the Council is to act and how transparently wasteful it really is!

City of Sydney Councillor and experienced businessman, Chris Chung asks rhetorically, “What happened to grass-roots Clover? Gone are the days of Clover being for the people of Sydney; now all she is interested in is her pet projects, and keeping herself and her party politically alive. Over-the-top ratepayer-funded trips for her and seven staff members, and campaigners being paid $100,000 aren’t the priority of the community, but it’s exactly what the Lord Mayor is delivering.”

Council should spend our money on us instead, on it’s core functions I say; repairing footpaths, installing more CCTVs in Kings Cross and more compliance rangers to chase down illegal works, a far better bang for the ratepayers’ bucks.
Or upgrade Green Square, one of the densest populated districts in the world, and construct their plaza and library, still not started 17 years after it was originally proposed and 12 years since Clover assumed the throne.