POLITICS IN THE PUB – Q&A Council Candidates for Light Ward

POLITICS IN THE PUB  11 July 2024

Attendees: approx 50

Thank you to the Candidates for the Light Ward District Council of Yankalilla supplementary election 2024, Shane Grocke, Gavin Denton and Karin Hatch.

Thank you to current councillors, Davina Quirk and Wayne Gibbs for attending the night.

The following notes summarise the response to questions asked to the three council candidates standing for the supplementary election of Light Ward 2024.

Written notes and a voice recording were made on the night and every effort has been made to summarise the presentation as accurately as possible. YDRA takes no responsibility or liability for any omissions, errors, or misinterpretation but we welcome correction by any party.

Candidate general introduction :

Gavin Denton:

• Will act on behalf of the resident majority – not what I want but what you want – will be a meditator for resident concerns and fight hard for the community – prioritises speaking to residents, evidenced by close to 100% door knocking in Light Ward between 2022 & 2024, regularly attending council meetings and keeping abreast of local issues.
• Wishes to reduce the financial burden on ratepayers and the council budget. If I were on council, I would have voted NO to the last motion for a rate rise and CEO / staff wage rise, which would have made the majority vote NO and therefore change the outcome.
• Will address rubbish collection over the Christmas holiday season, asking for weekly collection of the blue bin to cater for the significant increase in population during this time.

Shane Grocke:

• The role of Councils is expanding and they are expected to do so much more than the traditional three R’s (Roads, Rates & Rubbish).
• I propose to look at passing the road maintenance on to the experts – Department for Infrastructure and Transport (DIT) – to reduce the significant financial burden on the council budget, starting with Range Road which is virtually an arterial road already.
• To stop rates going up the common saying is we need to reduce services or increase revenue, I propose a third option which is to move some services sideways, we don’t need to sell off assets or merge with another council, we just need to move the goal posts and work on things council should be providing. I don’t have an exact plan on how to do this but doing things differently and thinking outside of the box is what is needed right now.

Karin Hatch:

• I’m a retired professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Adelaide, I have had a place in the district since 2008, retired here in 2020 and have never looked back. I’ve brought in props to show the activities that the council district has provided for me – southern elders basket weaving workshop, golf and hockey at Memorial Park (a facility which is in great need of our community support, the council does not support the Memorial Park or Myponga Park except for a one-off $25k grant a year), botanical drawing with Gilbert Dashorst, rug weaving from recycled materials with Denise McGrath.  I appreciate what the community has done for me.
• One more prop – I want to show you how I think the council should run and I’m not so sure it does – displayed a chart which demonstrated her approach to a collaborative interaction with Council which engages Residents – Elected Members – Council Staff/CEO. Residents at the top, elected members in the middle and council staff/CEO at the bottom. The elected members should be meeting and representing our views and our interests to the broad council and also, they should be explaining policy decisions to us whenever something significant gets decided, like 7.6 versus 5.6 rate increases. Council staff are there to advise elected members on strategic directions, to advise on decisions that they are on the verge of making, to do tasks like reporting on issues that the elected members may be concerned with because they have received feedback from the residents – and that is how I think we should work.

QU 1:  Will you continue to stand by the principles you are articulating tonight once you are actually on council?

Shane Grocke:  Yes, 100% and more so, it’s the people who dictate to us and from my point I will listen to anyone who contacts me

Gavin Denton:  Yes, I will continue to be honest and continue to listen

Karin Hatch:  Currently the ‘your say events’ are run by council staff and you rarely see elected members at any of the face-to-face sessions. Seems to me, that it should be the elected members who run these sessions, council staff’s duty should be to make the ‘your say event’ happen but the elected members should go along and gather the resident’s views and then represent their views down to the council staff/CEO, (points to flowchart with Residents – Elected Members – Council Staff/CEO), somehow I think it’s going the wrong way, but this is the way I want and I think we will do much better.

QU 2: Would you support a motion to be net zero by 2030?

Karin Hatch: We need to have some concrete steps to be able to get to net zero by 2030, not just say it because it feels good. I don’t want the council to just pass a motion to say they will support net zero without an action plan to get there. There are lots of different steps that can be taken to achieve this and yes, I would support a motion but only if the motion had teeth and a series of steps to achieve it, not just flowery language with no direction.

Gavin Denton: It’s a loaded question and what you’re asking is impossible, a councillor does not work on a day-to-day basis in council to make these decisions, if a motion comes through a councillor will decide then and if I don’t know I will research it or draw on the resident’s knowledge to make a decision, so, no I wouldn’t support it without research.

Shane Grocke: Yes, I support the motion in concept but it does need to have a lot of criteria around it for the motion to hold water, it can’t just be net zero by 2030.

QU 3:  Given community concerns over council debt, and the high wages & high pay rises for staff, what do you propose to do, directly or indirectly, to change the culture of treating ratepayers as compliant cash cows?

Shane Grocke: Something different needs to happen as rates are the only tool in the box for raising revenue. In the whole scheme of the entire budget, the CEO wage is only a small amount, so I’m not saying I support it or not, but the actual amount is very minimal in the whole scheme of things, however, it does multiply over the years, as with staff wages. We just need to look at things differently, increasing rates is not the only answer, we can decrease spending by handing over the road maintenance to DIT which could help reduce rates or redirect money saved into other areas like debt reduction.

Karin Hatch:  We are in big debt with one main source of income, rates. The council is spending $946,000 this year just to pay the cost of the debt. I looked at the long-term financial plan from the council back in 2022 just to see what it said about 2025, and they said we would be in a positive surplus and we would only be paying $446,000 in interest costs, so clearly those long-term financial plans are done with a bit of airy-fairy hand waving and don’t really mean that much.  Here and now though, we are in serious debt, we were deemed to be at risk of being financially unsustainable by the ESCOSA (Essential Services Commission of SA) report that came out in Feb 2023, the auditing risk report also said we were on the verge of being financially unsustainable and oddly enough, it also said it appeared the residents supported rate rise of 7.6%.    Staff wages are also another problem, I downloaded every SA council enterprise bargaining agreement and our council staff have the highest wages across the state, we need to understand why because staff wages are a lot of the expenditure of council income.  The projected occupancy and income from the caravan park is approx. a third less than we expected.  We need to know how and why, and we need to generate income that doesn’t come from our pockets.

Gavin Denton:  If I had been on council I would have voted NO to rate and wage rises. What I have already done, is I personally approached the CEO and asked him not to accept a pay rise, please, the community is bleeding, and it would be a good indication from you to the community if you were not to accept a pay rise. That’s what I have done already.

QU 4: What are your key areas of interest as an elected member?

Gavin Denton:  It’s not what I want, it’s what you want My interest is not relevant, I want to represent the residents and whatever their interest is. When a motion comes to the council, I will look at it and make a decision then.

Karin Hatch:  My area of interest is the residents across the entire council, I want to get residents more involved and communicate their views and interests more than they do now.  We need to have issues presented earlier to ensure resident feedback to elected members which is then fed back to the council staff instead of the other way around.

Shane Grocke: Residents are very important of course, but my main interest is the region and making sure the region doesn’t change for the sake of change, I don’t want a McDonalds or Target here. This area is why I am here, I want stability for the way things are done and good future planning to keep the region beautiful.

QU 5: Considering the amount of council debt and reduced services as a result, will you investigate the necessity of high-end vehicle purchases for management when there are more economically priced vehicles available

Shane Grocke: Every dollar spent needs to be looked at, at the appropriate time and reduce costs for what’s not necessary, plenty to look at, whether it’s a car, electricity, IT, whatever it is. Absolutely reduce costs of things that aren’t necessary, plenty to do across the board.

Gavin Denton:  Things are not being done properly but it is not up to a councillor to decide what cars are purchased, it is up to the CEO, we can only try to influence the CEO to make the right decision and to care enough to defend and look after the region.

Karin Hatch: There needs to be a conversation about cutting costs and these can be divided into essential or extra services – is it essential or is it an extra? For the next 3-4 years council staff have recommended rate rises of 4-5% over the CPI, it is a wicked problem that needs cooperation and collaboration between residents – elected members – council staff/CEO.  Hard conversations are going to have to happen regarding what is an essential service vs an extra service because we don’t want to be paying 4-5% over CPI rate rises for the next 3-4 years.

QU 6: What are your opinions on the dog park, do you support it?

Gavin Denton:  If residents want it, yes. I am involved in the dog park committee and fundraising, it’s not going to cost the council anything, all the council will do is provide the space.

Shane Grocke: Conceptually, yes, a good idea. Great they are funding it themselves and it would be good if there was a grant along the way.

Karin Hatch:  I support it, especially here where there aren’t dog schools and is a very important way to socialise dogs. There’s the caveat that we have to make sure we are covered by insurance, liability, and implications to the council, which can all be worked out.

QU 7: The Memorial Park and Myponga Park attract close to 1000 people and get $50k combined from the council, with no increase since 2016, facilities are going backwards, and some facilities are not fit for purpose. The council don’t want to take it on because it will cost the community a lot more money, what is your position on the Memorial Park?

Shane Grocke: Not council-owned properties, they are community-owned properties, so the responsibility is outside of the council. However, I will support it in any way I can but it is not council-owned and the council do not have any additional funds.  State funding will need to be chased and I have Leon Bignell coming next week to discuss.

Gavin Denton:  No, the council has too much debt and would not be possible, it’s a balancing act, otherwise would, of course, support it.

Karin Hatch:  I’m on the Memorial Park board.  There is a lot to learn from other regional councils because we don’t support sport (other than a one-off annual $25k) but somehow we are still in dire straits financially.  Reducing debt could lead to extra support, and the council has said the Memorial Park is on their radar once they are out of debt, but not sure if it can last that long.

QU 8: In the past, there were committees in the community, ie caravan park and strategic direction committees that reported back to the council, these committees have been lost to staff only.  Would you support a return of committees to bring back representation to the people?

Gavin Denton:  100%

Shane Grocke: Absolutely, power to the people is what is needed, as per KI who have a resident committee in each town which comes together regularly to speak to councillors who then pass back ideas to the council.

Karin Hatch:  Yes, terrific idea, many councils have committees which focus on community topics and are a reference group which feed in and advise elected members who then inform council staff/CEO. Our council has agreed to a reference group to be established for advice on environmental issues, we have a lot of expertise in our community.

QU 9: To this end, I am hoping the candidates might be willing to share some opinions regarding rates administration and the potential effects of DCY.

• Should levied rates be structured to maximize potential income and how would you achieve this?
• Rates calculations are supposed to be based upon the recommendations of the Land Valuer General. How do you feel about the concept and application of differential rates as has been the practice of DCY?
• During the 2023/2024 budget preparation discussions it was explained that the 9% discount on large assets was initiated many years ago as a temporary measure. What are your opinions regarding the 9% rates discount for large assets that may include commercial or Trust entities?
• Do you feel the differential rates system might disproportionately affect ratepayers who have small valued assets, lower incomes, single parent families, women, and people with disabilities due to the possibility of comparatively higher rates might be applied?
• In the 2023/2024 budget preparations discussions at DCY Chambers, it was stated that some measures of the rates structure will reduce DCY’s income and limit its potential to deliver projects or financial solvency. How would you seek to address this conundrum?
• There seems to be some discussions regarding the number of employees within DCY. Should employees be made redundant and where do you feel these positions should be cut?
• Front line services compose disproportionately part time positions employing women. How should DCY seek to prevent an overrepresentation of female employees?

It was felt by the audience that these questions had been answered in a general nature in previous questions and opened the questions to the floor.

QU 10: This question is for Karin – how do you propose, as a woman, to manage the absolute arrogance that goes on in that chamber?

Karin Hatch: I was the first female professor in geology and geophysics at the University of Adelaide – it doesn’t get more misogynistic than that. I’m fairly confident having handled that over the last 20 years, I’ll find my way and also bring some rational behaviour to what goes on there.

Qu 11: What do feel about the proposed Willis Drive retirement development and the possibility these developments could become prevalent in the area?

Karin Hatch: There is demand for retirement housing but there are concerns.  These development groups are not charged the same rates and are often quite low, we may have many homes built but rates will only be paid for the entire property, which is often quite low.  This development has been knocked out of other councils. The location also has lots of problems hydrologically and the worry is these drainage costs will ultimately fall back on council, which would be dire.

Gavin Denton:  This development company has tried in other council areas and has not succeeded, so may not go ahead. If there is any good to come out of it, it will mean more people in the district spending money and going to the local school.

Shane Grocke: The idea of having more housing for retirees is good, however conceptually I don’t like this model of development, but it could happen without the council having any say. Concern of lack of public consultation, or short timeframe to comment and so many problems regarding access, sewage, water etc.

QU 12: I live on Thomas Street near the council chambers.  Why does it have to be lit up all night, every night, lights blaring into homes – it is inconsiderate to residents and reeks of the council’s total disregard for residents.

ALL: Common sense says to turn them off for the resident’s comfort and in regard to reaching net zero emissions.  Contact current councillors to make them aware.

QU 13: Regarding misogyny and potential problems arising from long-term councillors, would you support a maximum of a 2-year term for councillors?

Shane Grocke: Will not tolerate misogyny and will call it out every time. Two terms would be good, but practically may not be possible, as not many people are interested in running for council.  The biggest issue I have is with the councillor demographic, it is too old and would like to see much younger people elected, at 51 I would be the youngest.

Karin Hatch: There are councils that don’t have anyone standing for council, that would be my worry – what about the possibility of two consecutive terms then having to step down but then come back?

Gavin Denton:  No, let the people decide by voting.

QU 14: rates, farmers paying the highest rates in all of Australia, mine are $10,500 a year, neighbour’s is $800 per week (41k). The budget meeting said there will be a 26.6% rate rise over the next 5 years above the cost of CPI, so in the next 5 years rates will accumulatively go up 40%, you be supporting this?

Shane Grocke: The first problem is staff wages but they won’t be renegotiated until 2026 unless staff leave on their own accord if we can reduce expenditure there and potentially move some things sideways, like roads (although I agree with Karin this won’t happen quickly but is a longer-term solution), also room for improvement in the caravan park management as there is plenty of opportunity, I feel, to provide some further income.  None of this is going to help without a significant structural change to the system, rates have always been a problem.  I sympathize but it won’t change unless something dramatic happens and I don’t know what it will be.

Gavin Denton: I would have voted NO to rate and wage rises which would send a clear message to the CEO – you do your job more efficiently and don’t put pressure on the ratepayers.

Karin Hatch: I’m data-driven – we charge our primary production at the same cents in the dollar as we do for our residential residents, we are the only council I could find that does that, and at such an exceptionally high rate.  I don’t understand, and we need to understand how we got there before we can change. It doesn’t make any sense that everyone is on the same rate (except vacant land).

The Chair closed the meeting with thanks to outgoing Councilor Bill Verway thanked all candidates and wished them all luck.

At close of the Q&A Councilor Davinia Quirk thanked YDRA and suggested a regular elected members Q&A ‘Politics in the Pub’, to facilitate connection and keep the community well informed, which was well supported by the crowd.

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