Two more mayoral candidates entered the race for the city’s top job recently.
One launched with a lot of fan fare at a $1,750 a table affair and the other seems to have made the decision to run while speaking to a journalist on the phone.
While they are at different ends of the campaign spectrum, I do genuinely applaud both candidates for sticking their hands up and wanting to have a go. It will mean one good thing for this city – more debate about the issues that are important to us and to our city’s future.
The other candidates have something in common as well. They are both either current or former Councillors, and have been for many years.
I feel they have both had their chance to make a difference as Councillors and have failed to dent the growing bureaucracy that is Gold Coast City Council.
I’m not just talking about staff numbers or the gaggle of consultants that have been hidden within the payroll but the broader concept of the red tape, lethargic decision making, policy formulation and local law enacting that has strangled our business and residential community.
Both these mayoral candidates have been a part of that system and have likely been (or still are) friends with the senior officers forcing these restrictive measures onto the city. While they might talk about ‘big change’ they don’t have the runs on the board or history of reform for which this city is desperately looking.
You may have been at the campaign launch of one of the candidates or a long time supporter of the other Councillor that is now running for Mayor. That’s ok. The problems we face as a city are still here and I still want to convince you that I have the right idea about fixing our city.
So I am writing to you again about one of my key policy platforms: Council Reform.
Without genuine Council reform you cannot hope to get the development industry going again with faster approvals of good projects nor timely rejections of bad proposals.
You can’t possibly think that Council will unshackle small business from the oppressive infrastructure charges without genuine reform.
Certainly you can’t believe our rising annual rates and charges can be brought under control without fundamentally changing the way Council operates, without it being restructured and without it being simplified.
You can’t make the Gold Coast an attractive investment proposition for interstate and international businesses or the preferred place for people to move from interstate without fundamental reform.
Basically, you can’t control spiralling rates without first controlling Council’s spiralling costs.
I don’t believe the answer is in making adjustments to Council’s budget. Instead, my plan is to simplify the complexity and reduce the actual size of Council. We have got to get Council back to its core responsibilities and get it out of the way of the many businesses that are trying to make a go of it in this city.
This will mean redundancies in middle and upper management in some cases and the redeployment of many staff back into frontline services. However, this short term pain will result in our city’s long term gain.
I have a proven track record in running large businesses with very tight margins while delivering customer value and providing exceptional customer services at a profit. I intend to apply the same principles, practices and accountabilities to Council.
The large numbers of hidden so called ‘consultants’ at Council is actually a real opportunity to reduce the size and complexity of Council without large redundancy costs.
But the Mayor, with the support of the elected Councillors, will need to be serious about reforming this Council if any real change is to be felt in the hip pocket of residents and business owners across the Gold Coast.
I don’t think any of this can be achieved by the creation of a heap of new external committees or task forces or advisory boards. The elected representatives have to roll up the sleeves, do the critical thinking and make the decisions – it can’t be done through delegated leadership!
The devil is always in the detail and Council reform is no different. Currently Council has eight directorates or departments, each with directors and director’s staff. Within those directorates there are many branches, each with managers and manager’s staff.
The directorates all have overlapping and duplicated functions and are not really aligned with the needs of the community, but instead are functionally setup to serve the internal needs of the organisation.
I intend to cut the eight directorates to just five: Running, Building, Managing, Promoting and Planning the city. I also intend for those five directorates to be completely refocused towards servicing the city, its residents and local business. Simply put, we need to re-engineer Council to be outwardly servicing rather than inwardly focused.
Obviously five directorates is three less, but the real savings will occur in the refocusing of those directorates to servicing ratepayers and residents, removing the duplication and tearing down the mini empires. Having a simple-to-understand structure will make it easier, quicker and therefore cheaper to deal with Council if you are a resident, business, Council employee or even a visitor to our city.
If you don’t radically change the organisation structure of the Council you can’t change its cost structure and you certainly can’t change its culture.
This approach will have a number of benefits for the city beyond simply saving ratepayers money. You can’t talk about rate reductions, or rate freezes or CPI rate rise limits until you fundamentally change the way Council operates, how it is structured and its culture. You can’t change the culture inside Council unless you give the Council staff the proper resources, autonomy and direction.
At the same time we must start making Council staff accountable for performance at every level of the organisation. So if you start a reform like this – it flows through an organisation and has benefits far larger than the original expectations.
It won’t be easy.
You need a Mayor to lead the reform supported by a majority of reform-minded Councillors. You won’t be able to do it with someone who already has allegiances, old friendships or preconceived ideas about how things ran in the old days. The city needs fresh critical thinking, free of any influences from past association within Council.
We also need a leadership team at Council willing to embrace real reform. Some inside Council will resist it, some will champion it, but all must be given the opportunity, at least initially, to be part of such a Council reform. I hope Dale Dickson, CEO of Council, is up for this level of reform of the organisation he currently manages.
This letter to you is simply to outline one of the major platforms for my campaign. I want key people like yourself to see what I have in mind and if you are so inclined, to provide me with some feedback. It is a major change for our City Council, the biggest since the amalgamation that occurred 16 years ago in 1995.
I want you to see that I have more than empty rhetoric, vague promises to do more, pay less or cut waste. I certainly didn’t want to be the candidate that promised more committees, advisory boards or task forces to review the situation and report back.
I am about real plans for real action to achieve real change for our city. I am seeking your support to make the hard reform decisions in this city.
This is not a request for financial support for my campaign.
I want to be in the room when decisions are made, applications debated or major projects proposals are accepted or rejected. I don’t want to have to leave the room every 10 minutes over conflict of interest issues because of who may or may not have purchased a ticket to a fundraiser.
Decisions are made by those people who turn up and get to stay in the room to see it through, not quitters or ditherers but decision makers and action takers.
I have a lot more detailed information prepared for this reform plan and I will be uploading it to my website (www.tom4mayor.com) in the coming weeks for all to see. Hop online to my site if you can find the time and provide me with your thoughts on this reform agenda I am proposing for the city and its Council.
“After nearly 40 years of playing golf my first hole in one on the 3rd in Alice Springs was indeed a grand moment.”
“In January this year, after 16 years of procrastinating…I was accepted to study nursing at university as a mature age student. I’ve never been so proud of myself!”
“Many years ago I was a member of Surfers Paradise Surf Club. Out training on a rescue board one afternoon I spotted a pod of dolphins acting in a way I’d never seen before. They circled and cicled one dolphin and I thought that it may have been ill. They came right under my board. The one being circled came part way out of the water and there was a tiny tail sticking out – she was giving birth and being attended to by the sisterhood! A couple more circles and she came up, baby at her side, quick breath for them both and they and the sisters were gone. It was reported in the paper the next day and I got to speak to a visiting professor who was a dolphin expert, about my experience. What a truly special and GRAND moment!”
“My Grand Moment was when my co-worker and friend, emailed a certain radio station to try and help me out of a pickle. The radio station (You know who you are lol Hot Tomato) called and helped me get out of my pickle. I didnt have a lot of faith in humanity before this day, but do now. Thanks to a generous soul and a loving heart I am back on track for Christmas with my son and a dream wedding.”
“Going on a cruise to the South Pacific Islands, it is awesome. I had the best time.”
“Receiving my tax return. Now that could turn into some grand.”
“I recently shouted my partner a trip to New Zealand to surprise visit his two children. As we drove into the town we spotted them on the side of the road, he jumped out and approached them. His 10 year old son wrapped his arms around him and his 12 year old daughter yelled out ‘Holy Shit.. Dad!!’ The moment was magic.”
“My Grand Moment is a little different because I’m Bridget a ten year old Boxer. The fact that I’ve even made it to ten is a grand achievement, but my Grand moment is waking up every day to enjoy life and give all my love to my mum and dad. My medical history is long, but to give you an idea at the age of three I had both cruciate ligaments in my back legs replaced. Several times I have come within minutes from dying while going into anaphylaxis shock, after being bitten from what I think was either a spider bite or bee sting, and if that wasn’t enough, I’ve had to have three eye operations because of a scratched cornea. Hence my vet knows me very well. However, despite my medical issues, I’m still a very healthy, happy and loving part of the family. Because I love swimming and water the most, my mum takes me to a pool twice a week to keep me fit and healthy, and mum and dad always take me fishing and camping at the beach.”
“Finally giving birth to two awesome, incredible sons after twelve long, heartbreaking years of fertility treatment and being told we had less than five per cent chance of ever having children. Achieving our dream TWICE! Can’t get much grander than that.”
