Much has been said and written about the effect of local government so-called reform on Council rates, but the rate in the dollar is not a full measure of financial and economic performance. Most Councils impose a separate rubbish rate (which itself varies from $174/year to $408), but Vincent, Fremantle, East Fremantle, Peppermint Grove, Victoria Park, Claremont and Cottesloe do not. These are all (a) small councils and (b) relatively high rating councils (on GRV).
This means that the picture of charges and population looks a little different - although neither gives convincing evidence of economies of size. Indeed, even with rates (as distinct from total charges) it is only the Stirling and Joondalup outliers that give any impression at all of such economies.
For total charges, even these outliers are not sufficient to prevent there being a small overall increasing trend. The logic of this suggests that (a) there is no economic or financial case for larger local governments and (b) that, since there is no systematic relationship between size and charges, communities should be given the choice of what size of local government they want.
Trend lines are linear plotted in EXCEL. More complex functions do not show any marked variation from these lines.
No comments:
Post a Comment