When they say there’s nothing more certain than death and taxes, I think they had our Council in mind.

I’ve had quite a few calls from punters cheesed off that their lower property valuation notices from the State Government aren’t likely to translate into lower rates come the June Council budget. They rightly can’t understand why rates fire up when values rise and don’t fall in turn when they sink.

Some areas will find their properties worth 30% less yet will still receives higher rates bills. That’s because our Council is too lazy to cut its cloth to fit the hard times we’re facing. The cost of doing everything they want to do keeps going up, regardless of how much our properties are worth.

Let’s hope Eddy Sarroff and the crew fight hard to cut rates rises back to the bone as promised.

The Gold Coast could solve a lot of venue problems if it simply built (with State support) a Major Events precinct on The Spit, north of Sea World.

It could host the new Super Carnivale, leaving the streets of Surfers free for the best light rail route possible. It could house the Big Day Out and Good Vibrations festivals, instead of kicking them out of the showgrounds over to the new AFL Stadium at Carrara.

It could also feature a range of Commonwealth Games events.

Yes, the Save our Spitters will say over our dead bodies. But come on, let’s do something innovative for a change.

Read more in today’s Bulletin

The one move that Surfers needs to get its reputation and mojo back is ironically the one item left out of the government report into alcohol-fuelled violence on the glitter strip.

What Surfers needs is zero tolerance policing…not more nanny-state laws that limit the rights of those who already do the right thing.

The solution to crime and anti-social behaviour is more wallopers on the beat, with new rules of engagement…like anything goes! Only better policing will return the Surfers of old to families, locals and visitors.

The tragic death of a young champion ironman at the Aussie champs should not result in the coast losing the event.

Why it’s even in question I don’t know. But surely the accident could have occurred on any beach in the nation given a repeat of the horrific sea conditions.

I don’t think its fair that the Gold Coast be dumped when there’s little argument it’s the best location and the spiritual home of lifesaving.

Yes it was heartbreaking. Yes, someone’s head should roll for letting the race go ahead. But come on..let’s not overreact.

Only a bunch of out-of-touch, out-of-town State MPs could have come up with the foolish plan to turn Broadie into another Surfers.

A parliamentary committee has told the Premier that Broadie should be transformed into an entertainment precinct. This hair-brained idea has already copped the ire of local councillor Eddy Sarroff who has said “over his dead body”.

He’s right on the money. Broadbeach is all about families, restaurants and shopping. Let’s leave it that way. And leave the crime, bashings and drugs to Surfers.

It is not panic so to speak but there is a definite air of desperation in the voices of major developers on our beloved Goldie. You know…the guys that built the place because governments of all colours couldn’t be bothered! They are that important love them or loathe them!

I’m not going to name them cause they’re so concerned and paranoid about getting brushed at City Hall as a consequence. They actually demand anonymity so that they don’t get marked down the next time they lodge a development application. (Author’s note: This should no way be the case as all stakeholders within our City should be able to speak their mind without worrying about their next project.)

What the real property guys (as opposed to the fly-by-nighters) want is a Council that understands the market; understands the pressure that business is under; understands the attitude of banks to debt funding; understands the banks’ strike on lending to the customers of developers; and understands the implausible lack of affordable stock required to provide housing to the thousands and thousands of new residents that are growing this beautiful and vibrant city of ours!

The reason they want to remain nameless is really because the message they bring is a harsh one. It is: “Council, you are killing the golden goose that built the GC of old”.

They believe that Council needs to urgently start pushing through heaps of smaller projects – the ones that the Banks will still fund priced between the $10 and $20 million mark – in order to keep catering for the almost 100,000 new residences we will need by 2031 to cater for a population growth rate that we can never, ever stop – and, to create and protect jobs from migrating elsewhere.

Instead of relying on the big signature projects that will disappear soon after the Soul, Hilton and Oracle highrise projects are completed, the property industry believes the Council should be meeting its density target by streamlining approvals to encourage a multitude of small to medium density projects across the Coast from Coolie to Coomera – the ones that will keep our “tradies” employed here… instead of Emerald!

They want our Council to start realising that the boom is dead and that developers are the employment “good guys”. Property believes that a misguided Council administration is making things harder instead of easier and therefore is defeating its long term objective of housing more families in existing areas instead of cutting up new bushland areas on the fringe for the same purpose.

Moreover, the property community is sick of being characterised as blood-suckers without a civic heart. It wants the public to know that it also has our housing future at heart.

It is unequivocal in its belief that Council has lost its way in providing affordable housing to meet growth demand  – to help meet the population explosion of the next decade. As two thirds of that mooted growth is planned to feature in old or new infill projects, it thinks Council has failed to let residents in on what’s planned and risks a massive outpouring of local grief as a result. It also has not adjusted its fees and charges accordingly.

I predicted the same result many months ago. It takes very careful expectation and perception management to convince the punters that more people in their street is a good idea.

In the absence of Council selling its density ‘vision”, that developers are going about their normal business within the Gold Coast council area will remain problematic. They’ll get the blame for sure!

Overall, developers believe our Council has gone from the easiest to deal with to the worst by a long shot…and they can’t cope with the breathtaking change of look!

They now long for a Council like Jim Soorley’s Brisbane City Council -  a council that clearly continues to understand their needs under the “can-do” Campbell Newman administration. They want to be heard. They want reform. And they want it now.

Don’t forget you can tell me what gives you the shits and I’ll help tell everyone else. Leave a comment on this blog or send me a note at Staerk Reality on Facebook and Twitter.

Yesterday’s clearance of Councillors and Council staff in the Tipplers purchase bruhaha misses the point.

The point was never whether anyone had done anything underhanded or not. The CMC investigates wrong-doing in a criminal sense and I for one never thought there was anything like that involved at all. Others might have smelled a rat…I didn’t!

For mine, the issue is about misplaced spending and flawed priorities.

I personally don’t support people running off to the crime body any time they disagree with a decision.

The Tipplers saga is simply bad policy and a waste of public money…but it’s legal. The CMC clearance should not let Council off the hook politically. It should not allow the Mayor to crow about it being proven right.

There are many valid questions as to process that was followed that the CEO is now answering and this should provide the information the public needs to make a judgement as to the correctness of the decision-making.

In my mind, the Tipplers example highlights poor consultation and the misapplication of scare rates dollars to a non-core activity.

The populous will now make its judgement of the Councillors involved and move on to the next issue.

Don’t forget you can tell me what gives you the shits and I’ll help tell everyone else. Leave a comment on this blog or send me a note at Staerk Reality on Facebook and Twitter.

Last week in the Gold Coast Bulletin I predicted that the Council bureaucracy would scaremonger over service cuts rather than deliver the funding cuts proposed by the courageous finance boss.

Ron Clarke has pathetically beaten them to the punch with the shrill claim in the Gold Coast Sun that the “Gold Coast will become a down-at-heel city…littered with potholes”…overgrown parks and fewer rubbish collections if it were to restrain the rates rise to inflation.

This is fanciful political rubbish from the Mayor. In my view there’s well over $100 million worth of cuts to current operational expenditure that could be made without the sky falling in as the Mayor falsely predicts.

I find it extraordinary that this is the same man who won election in 2004 and re-election in 2008 on the back of promising to freeze rates. He now says…”when I first started as Mayor I supported a zero rates rise, but I have learnt it is not possible”.

Mr Clarke, it is possible. It takes hard work and hard-nosed decisions but it is possible when you have the will.

If a Premier or Prime Minister broke such a key commitment, they would be hounded from office. If all this makes you furious, don’t cop it sweet. Email your local Councillor - find the details at Say No to Rates Rises on Facebook.

One of my pet hates, that’s becoming an complete obsession, is bureaucracy in all its forms.

When I was a young socialist I used to think that government was the answer. Now I’m an old small “c” conservative I realise it is the problem…stupid! I finally understand why the Americans have enshrined their distrust of government in their constitution and why a b-grade actor in Ronald Reagan won two terms as President on an anti-government ticket.

The worst excesses of bureaucracy also exist in all large companies and lately, in my personal case, in the bowels of Energex.

As I write this post the rain has stopped and the conditions have dried. But yesterday, when it was going cats and dogs, Energex decided to cancel its connection of power to our soon-to-be-finished new home in Southport. After a year’s planning and building, with every trade finishing on time and on budget, it was only trade not to meet the mark and unfortunately it was potentially the most important.

Correctly from a policy point of view, an officious, twenty-something customer “service” person told me it was for safety reasons but when I pointed out that Energex fixed broken lines all the time in cyclones, she became all policy-speak, telling me that the firm simply could not perform the task in the weather in this street at this time. I asked whether the whole company had shut down then, but of course I got nowhere.

I proceeded to point out that the electricity firm had simply moved their risk to me, as my 32-week pregnant wife and 21 month year old daughter could not be expected to move into a home without power for security and safety reasons.

But what really got me going though was Energex’s insistence that it could not return to the job to connect us up until either the 8th of 10th of March – meaning at best four days without power that could drag out to six.

I strongly told them that this smacked of being shunted down the queue and seemed to have nothing at all to do with the inclement conditions. I asked what if the rains stops Wednesday or Thursday? Why wouldn’t you come straight back to do it?

But the more I punched holes in their arguments, the less customer service-oriented the prison guard (I mean officer) became. I gave up and tried to call Energex’s media centre to confirm what their actual policies were in regard to connections in the rain. Guess what? The twenty-something intercepted the call ( I dunno how). In the end she said I had to accept the situation and had to stop going around in circles trying to talk them out of it. She then advised she was terminating the call, refused to let me speak with anyone higher up the chain, and hung up. Phew!

As it turns out they’re not all that bad. I was later able to make a formal, detailed complaint and this morning was told the power would be connected tomorrow weather permitting.

Notwithstanding the resolution, none of us should have to cop that crap. If you’ve got a bureaucrat from hell yarn, let me know!

Don’t forget you can tell me what gives you the shits and I’ll help tell everyone else. Leave a comment on this blog or send me a note at Staerk Reality on Facebook and Twitter.

I know they were called fools for sitting by the beach on tsunami watch, but isn’t so Australian that we take such warnings with healthy grain of salt?

We’re a cynical, disbelieving mob and that trait has served us well.

It’s why we have a built-in BS detector when it comes to our politicians at all levels and ideologies.

It’s why we haven’t completely swallowed all the chicken-little, man-made catastrophic climate change stuff.

We’re prepared as a culture to see for ourselves if something is true rather than be told it.

I put it down to the Irishness in us. We don’t have much chop for authority and don’t suffer the fools well at all.

So when we heard there was a Tsunami coming, maybe we thought “aw yeah I’ll believe that when I see it. It’s got the whole Pacific to travel before it gets here. It’ll run out of puff for sure.”

That’s why the authorities really have to make sure they don’t cry wolf too often on this stuff.

Did you go to the beach to see tsunami? Let me know.

Don’t forget you can tell me what gives you the shits and I’ll help tell everyone else. Leave a comment on this blog or send me a note at Staerk Reality on Facebook and Twitter.