Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT councillors have voted to slash their IT allowance by $1000, but former councillor Dudley Maier says the $2,500 they will now get is still too high.

Councillors are given the yearly allowance upfront to cover phones, computers and data bills.

They have the option to return cash that they don’t spend, but when Mr Maier inquired in September, nobody had done that.

“I just don’t think it fits their rhetoric of being open and accountable,” he says.

“If they’re open and accountable, at the end of the year publish what you spend and pay back what you haven’t.”

Vincent mayor Emma Cole said the maximum allowance of $3500 is set by the independent Salaries and Allowances Tribunal.

Mr Maier says the upper limit was probably intended for councillors living in rural locations like Wiluna, where they have to use expensive satellite data plans.

He noted the SAT’s preferred method was for councillors to hand in receipts and get reimbursed item-by-item, but Cr Josh Topelberg said they used to do that and it was an “outrageous” system that took up too much time.

Vincent staff checked with 23 other metro councils and found 13 gave their councillors the maximum $3500, five used receipt reimbursement, and five gave less than the maximum amount (the tiny municipality of East Freo being most frugal, giving councillors $1000 a year).

Councillor Dan Loden used the allowances review to propose that councillors get a gift up to $100 when they retire, but only Cr Jimmy Murphy supported the idea.

In speaking against the retirement gift plan, Cr Topelberg said “every cent in this building comes from the public purse” so they had to be thrifty.

Ms Cole said she’d personally chip in to buy Cr Loden a retirement gift when he left council.

by DAVID BELL

LABOR MP John Carey has lambasted Perth city council for sending three burley security guards to watch over a group of seniors protesting against cuts to the Rod Evans Senior Citizens Centre.

“This shows just how averse the City of Perth is to bad publicity,” Mr Carey told the greying crowd of 15, who’d obediently gathered at a bus stop on neutral territory to avoid going onto the centre’s grounds and breaking council rules.

Heavy-handed

Protester Irene Peart says the council pack also included two senior council staffers, who said the rangers were there to protect young mothers who were having post-natal class at the centre.

“We inquired why it was necessary to protect them from us vicious senior citizens, who are all mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers ourselves,” Ms Peart said through firmly pursed lips.

The reaction to the protest was “heavy-handed”, says Mr Carey.

“I was actually amazed that when I turned up today to speak to residents, not on the property but on the pedestrian footpath, that there were three rangers there waiting at the door of the Rod Evans centre,” he says.

“Are they seriously suggesting that a group of seniors are going to somehow seek violent means to take over the Rod Evans centre? It’s insulting.

“Seniors have a right to come together, they are deeply concerned and angry about the change.

Fines

“As soon as they saw the photographer from the Voice turn up they all scurried inside.”

Ms Peart claims protestors asked the rangers if they could park behind the centre and were told it would be ok, only to find they’d been pinged with fines when they returned to their cars.

Ms Peart, whose car was displaying an Acrod sticker, says it’s the first fine she’s ever received at Rod Evans and she reckons it was linked to the protest, labelling the fines “vindictive”.

SENIORS were given just a few days’ notice about the cancellation of fitness, food and social services at the Rod Evans Senior Citizens Centre in East Perth.

After the abrupt cancellation less than two weeks before Christmas, services were shifted to the Citiplace centre at the Perth train station.

But Irene Peart, who’s taken her disabled husband to the RESCC for four years, say the new space is smaller, cluttered, and poorly organised: often they’ve shown up and the advertised sessions haven’t been on.

“It’s totally thrown so many people’s social activities out,” she says.

“It was a very big part of many peoples’ lives.”

Ms Peart says she could park directly behind the Rod Evans centre, making it easy to get her husband inside, but at Citiplace she has to park further away and hope that the temperamental elevator’s working.

She says the old location was ideal because it has lots of elderly people living nearby.

“To the left of the Rod Evans centre is a two-storey high block of units that is all aged people who used to go across to the centre for their meals every day,” she says.

“Some of them struggle to get to Citiplace: some have to get meals on wheels instead, so they lose that social aspect.”

Behind the RESCC is a high care facility.

“They’d come across for bingo or meals,” Ms Peart says, but they have little hope of making the trek to the new spot.

“Some of them just can’t cope with the crowded train station.”

Ms Peart says seniors phoned the Perth council on several occasions, but were unable to get answers about why the centre had been moved and why they’d received so little notice.

“The very first we heard of it was December 15, it was a Wednesday, and at the end of a class we’d been attending we were told the centre was closing down, and there would be a meeting advising us why on the Friday morning,” she says.

“And of course a lot of us like myself couldn’t get to that meeting, because it was only 48 hours’ notice.

“The manager who was very caring, who knew everyone’s name, she just disappeared.

“I don’t know if it was her choice or if she was stood down.”

Perth Labor MP John Carey says “this just paints another picture of a city that is out of touch with its residents and it deeply concerns me.”

“Why would you shift all the seniors services to Citiplace at the railway station?” he says.

“There’s a large number of seniors living in East Perth.

“Why is the City of Perth doing this and why hasn’t it explained its position?”

He’s hopeful once they see people are willing to speak up the city will change its stance.

“Sometimes the City of Perth has to be dragged kicking and screaming because it doesn’t understand community engagement,” Mr Carey told the Voice. 

“We should be looking after our seniors. We need a city for all, that caters for everyone and not just the hipsters.

“I love the hipsters, but we need to cater for everyone: young people, old people, and families.”

Perth council media officer Michael Holland didn’t respond to our queries, making it 18 months since he last got back to us.

by DAVID BELL