Perth Voice Interactive

Far from perfect
ARTHUR MISTILIS draws a long bow saying Stirling is “a perfectly working council” (Voice Mail, November 1, 2014). One doesn’t have to look far to find that assertion wrong.
1. The council dithered over the Scarborough foreshore revitalisation for about 20 years. Finally the Barnett government had to appoint the MRA to take over and now things are moving.
2. The council has increased rates and decreased services. Take the chaos it created with verge junk and greens collections when, without warning, they were reduced from twice to once per annum.
3. Until caught out by a ratepayer who’d discarded jewellery in her bin, the council disgracefully hid from all residents the fact rubbish from its much touted one-bin recycling system was in fact all going to landfill for almost one year.
4. The council allows suburban amenity to constantly deteriorate by not controlling illegally parked vehicles, boats and trailers plus builder materials obstructing verges and footpaths. It runs a reactive rather than proactive regime by not appointing enough rangers for the city’s size to control local laws.
5. The mayor scaremongers “rates will rise” due to boundary changes. I can’t recall Stirling ever reducing the money we pay for rates, plus annual levies for rubbish collection and security service. They always rise!
6. Not to forget the council pays bonuses to city officers simply for doing their job.
Far from “perfectly working” the underlying problem seems to be Stirling is too large for council and city officials to properly manage. Let’s hope a smaller city allows the council to better manage Stirling.
Sid Breeden
Abbett St, Scarborough

Let’s stick together
MODERN Mount Lawley is a coalescence of nine distinct areas that started as colonial land grants (or parts of those grants) which became unified under that name more than 100 years ago.
These total 568.9 hectares, making Mount Lawley the largest inner-city suburb of Perth. In the absence of published areas in the latest WA government metropolitan boundary revisions, it seems 13 per cent ends up in the City of Vincent, 26 per cent in the City of Stirling and 61 per cent in the City of Bayswater.
This wouldn’t matter if we were talking about state or federal government electorates where boundaries reflect wider political concerns, but local government municipalities are quite different. Municipalities deal with matters close to the everyday lives of the communities they serve.
It would seem logical to me that communities/suburbs should be distributed among municipalities in ways that strengthen community coherence and identification with those municipalities.
This revision has sought to do just the opposite. It can hardly be argued that splitting Mount Lawley across three municipalities, with their separate policies, town planning schemes, traffic policies, etc will further the coherence of the suburb and foster its sense of community.
Mount Lawley is notable for the high degree of positive involvement it shares with its local government. Why does the state government work against this desirable outcome?
As far as Mount Lawley (and maybe for those other suburbs/communities similarly affected) is concerned, this is not boundary reform: it is negative social engineering.
Barrie Baker
Patron, Mt Lawley Society

Sad sentiment
THAT a ratepayer seems to think he/she has precedence over a non-ratepayer, I can only echo the headline to the letter, “So sad” (Voice Mail, November 8, 2014) that responded to the article featuring me and my dog on the front page the previous week.
I  suggest your correspondent do their homework: my landlord pays his rates, I pay my landlord—I am on the electoral roll, I have worked in the past, paid taxes, when not working I have done volunteer work for several organisations.
I have lived at my present address for more than 28 years, I have known all the mayors, from Jack Marks to John Carey. If your correspondent had done a “simple background check” he/she will have read about me before, in the same paper, (with a different dog) back in 1997, Friday December 5.
Well, as the letter-writer seem to have no problem “forking out” $1000 toward moving a doggie bowl such a short distance, perhaps he/she might  push for a safety fence around the playground on the same reserve, now the dogs can have free-range, when no sports in progress
Just wondering, how long has your correspondent lived in the area of Charles Veryard Reserve and Smiths Lake?
Caroline Powell-Pepper
PS. I’ve had nothing but positive feedback about the article—and they were ratepayers.

Better off RET
DEATH might be coming early for the Australian renewable energy industry if the federal government goes ahead and breaks an election promise it made to keep the current renewable energy target.
Investors have spent more than $10 billion on big renewable energy projects such as wind and solar farms under this policy, and now they face being ripped off if the government changes the rules halfway through the scheme and pushes through a cut to the target of almost two-thirds.
As the government’s own analysis showed, any cut to this policy would drive up power prices for Australians so a few old coal companies can make more money.
Kane Thornton
Acting CEO Clean Energy Council