Plant and Commercial activities

Today's post, If I am honest, is really 2 separate posts, but they are sort of related....

Plant and Equipment

Plant and equipment comprise a significant part of council’s asset base. It is important to maintain an efficient and effective plant fleet. Plant purchases represent a significant investment of council’s budget. We need to ensure that all plant purchases are well researched and carefully considered. Consideration should not only be given to WHAT the equipment is, but also HOW it would be deployed. Do we buy 3 smaller machines based around the shire, or do we buy 1 bigger one that does it quicker and can be moved around the shire as required?

Plant replacement must be organised to occur while a piece of equipment still holds some resale value and before it starts to incur increased maintenance costs. Sometimes this means that the best value for money machine when it is new, may not be the one that is cheapest to buy.

I would also like to see some exploration into the feasibility of purchasing a pavement stabiliser for use in rehabilitating deformed sealed shire roads and to explore the hire opportunities that may exist to other surrounding shires or for Main Roads work.

 

Commercial Enterprises

We must question, very carefully, the operation of Commercial enterprises operated by local government. They tend to have a history of being unsuccessful in the longer term for a number of reasons. Any new commercial enterprise should only be entered into afte careful and detailed consideration. Council should not be in the role of direct competition with existing or potential local businesses. Any commercial enterprise operated by council must be scrutinised carefully to ensure that they are, in fact, profitable.

Having said that, however, commercial enterprises should not be confused with private works. there is a role for council to fill the gap in a number instances, providing products and services from their day to day operation to the public that would otherwise be unavailable or unviable. An example of this is the manufacture of hydraulic hoses in the workshop or the provision of sand and garden loam.