Perth Voice Interactive

A MOVE by Cr Reece Harley to stop the City of Perth charging cafes thousands of dollars a year for alfrescos has been shot down.

Only Cr Jemma Green and James Limnios supported Cr Harley’s motion, with lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi, Jim Adamos, Janet Davidson, Judy McEvoy, Keith Yong and Lily Chen voting against it.

Cr Harley says the city should be encouraging alfresco dining to activate streets and jazz-up the town, and that the large fees could cripple a small business.

The owners of Partisan, on Royal Street in East Perth, pay council around $4000 a year to put out tables and chairs at Claisebrook Cove.

The city collects around $275,000 a year in alfresco fees by charging businesses an annual fee of up to $150 per square metre, with less busy areas getting slugged around $115 to $130.

Cr Harley says the city should keep the $125-a-year assessment and inspection fee to cover its costs, but scrap the hefty square metre charge.

He says fellow councillors, “might sneeze at $4000 because it doesn’t mean much to them, but to a small business owner running a single coffee machine cafe it can be a lot of money. A lot of small businesses may only just be able to pay themselves a salary.”

Cr Harley first proposed the idea two years ago, and since then, Vincent and Bayswater councils have both done away with similar charges.

Vincent mayor Emma Cole said while it had impacted the amount of revenue collected for the budget, she had “no regrets” over scrapping its alfresco fee as it’d encouraged traders to activate local streets.

Previously, Bayswater council charged cafe owners $25.60 for every chair they wanted to put out, and a $147 application fee. Both charges were scrapped in the middle of last year.

by DAVID BELL

PERTH council has slashed funding to NAIDOC week, reducing it from $30,000 last year to $8,714 this year, potentially compromising the scope of the event.

At Tuesday’s night council meeting, councillors also voted to increase the amount of cash they’d give to the Perth Fashion Festival, from the $230,000 staff recommended, to $255,000 in a motion moved by Cr Janet Davidson.

This year, NAIDOC Week’s July 2 opening ceremony is at Elizabeth Quay, and the city’s new policy states it should give a maximum of 10 per cent to any event held on Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority land, like EQ.

Reece Harley moved a motion urging colleagues to override that policy and give NAIDOC week $20,000 and he won support from councillors Lily Chen, Jemma Green and James Limnios, but lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi, Jim Adamos, Janet Davidson, Judy McEvoy and Keith Yong said no.

The report prepared by city staff stated that if they gave any less than the $20,000 NAIDOC had requested, it could “significantly impact the scale of the event”.

Minutes earlier, Cr Davidson had moved they give the Perth Fashion Festival an extra $25,000, bringing their total cash to $255,000.

Crs Harley, Limnios and Green voted against it, but they didn’t have the numbers. The PFF now has major corporate sponsors, and is technically known as the Telstra Perth Fashion Festival. Last year Cr Limnios argued that because the festival had private sponsors, the city’s funding should be reined in.

by DAVID BELL

MOST Vincent property owners will be hit with a modest 2.7 per cent rates rise, but poorer homeowners could face a hike of nearly 10 per cent, warns a Voice reader.

The reader, who wanted to remain anonymous, highlighted the minimum rates increase Vincent would be charging for low-end properties.

Rates are usually based on the rentable valuable of your house, but councils set a “minimum rate” to recover their costs, as even small properties need their bins emptied and verge trees maintained.

If the draft figures in Vincent’s budget are approved, the minimum rate will surge to from $1007 to $1100 in a single year, a 9.235 per cent increase.

That’s on top of a 10.5 per cent increase last year, and around 28 per cent the year before.

“If you complain, then you are told that hey are much cheaper than Stirling, and that we have not been paying enough in rates for a long time now,” our correspondent writes.

“This is the same council that scrapped alfresco fees to local businesses, at great expense to the city, the same businesses that are about to be able to start reducing their weekend penalty rates to their staff.

“Yet if you are a little one-bedroom unit ratepayer in Vincent, then you are copping these large increases in your rates, and told not to complain about it.”

The draft budget report, prepared by Vincent council staff, states the minimum rate of $707 from 2014/15, “understated the cost and value of services and facilities provided by the city and was recognised as being out of proportion to all other metropolitan local governments”.

Vincent remains the second cheapest minimum rate after Perth, with the average in the metro area hovering at $1143, if you include both rates and rubbish charges.

The proposed rates are out for public comment until June 28, available from the council website or Vincent council offices.

by DAVID BELL

Vincent mayor Emma Cole has admitted she’s not convinced about the merits of self-cleaning toilets. After waiting 10 minutes for the toilet outside Leedy HQ to finish it’s cleaning cycle recently, Voice photographer Steve Grant was taken aback to find the finished product looked like it had hosted an out of control gathering, with cigarette butts, toilet paper and other earthy substances floating through an inch-thick puddle.

We asked Ms Cole if she thought it was value for money given a self-cleaner will set the council back a hundred grand or so, and she admitted to not being their biggest fan. Ms Cole said while in an ideal world the council would be able to wash its hands of the toilets, but says in certain locations and circumstances they could provide a useful service.

Have you got any self-cleaner horror stories? We’d love to hear about them. Send them to news@perthvoice.com. There’s a roll of recyclable toilet paper up for grabs for the most stomach-churning yarn.

VINCENT council has joined the City of Perth in calling for the state government not to hit ratepayers’ wallets by jacking up the Perth parking levy.

Every year the councils have to give the state government around $1150 for every car bay close to the CBD, amounting to $58 million last year.

The cash is earmarked for public transport initiatives like CAT buses, and recently it helped fund the Perth underground bus station.

But some Perth councillors have been unhappy with how the cash is spent—they opposed the placement of the bus station—and Vincent has recently complained they get very little out of the deal, apart from a small leg of a CAT bus route.

The fee’s also skyrocketed in recent years: when it was introduced in 1998 it was $70 a bay, it then hovered at around $600, before doubling in the past five years when the underground bus station was built.

At last week’s Vincent council meeting, councillors unanimously voted to request the state government freeze the levy at current levels, and that CEO Len Kosova lobby the department of transport to have the cash spent on public transport projects that benefit Vincent.

At a Perth council meeting in April, lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi had tabled a motion asking for a levy freeze as “urgent business”.

At the time the move drew criticism from councillors Reece Harley, Jemma Green and James Limnios, and Cr Harley reckoned the lord mayor tabled it as an urgent to detract from the bad press she was receiving that week.

Vincent councillors decided that it wasn’t that urgent and took another six weeks to approve a near-identical motion.

by DAVID BELL