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[h=2]Can we not do anything to stop town council fee increase?[/h]
July 29th, 2012 |
Author: Contributions
It was reported in The Straits Times that several town councils are going to increase their monthly fees soon, with the increase ranging from $1 to $12 per month, over a period of 2 years. Is there not anything that the HDB dwellers can do to stop this increase?
Town council fees are something HDB dwellers have no control over. Whatever the town councils want, we have to pay, with no bargaining, no negotiation, no service guarantee and KPI or whatever. We just have to accept whatever the town council delivers. We just have to “trust” that the town councils are using the best of our money. But are they?
I did a brief calculation for town council fees collected from my block, and allocated it out to the various usage of the fees as per the financial report of my town council. Below are my findings on a PER MONTH basis:
<COLGROUP><COL width=178></COL><COL width=64></COL></COLGROUP><TBODY>
[TD="width: 178"] Item [/TD]
[TD="width: 64"] Fee [/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$1,563[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$540[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$385[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$442[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$426[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$1,049[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$183[/TD]
</TBODY>
As can be seen from above, the biggest amounts used are in sinking fund, cleaning and utility bills. Given that sinking fund is non-negotiable (though that is something that can be hotly debated), we can look at utility bill and cleaning.
For utility bill, is the town council looking hard at what is nice to have and need to have and cut down on those nice to have? My observation is no, my town council is not doing that. For example, in the corridor of my unit, there are 4 units of 20inch florescent lights for an area of about 26 square meters, turned on everyday from 7pm to 7am. Why can’t the town council cut it down to 2 lights instead? If we extrapolate the same reasoning throughout the whole block, there will be substantial savings in electric bill.
Furthermore, come Christmas and New Year period, the town council will have “mini light up” in the estate, something similar to Orchard Road light up but on smaller scale. While all these look nice for the town council, it is the people who are paying the bills. Are these really necessary? I can say absolute no. Same can be said of spot lights lighting up signboards across the estate. These are not necessary and should be turned off. Again savings on electricity.
On cleaning fee, I believe the biggest component is manpower cost. However, it is widely reported that cleaners are earning less than $1000 a month. Assuming that one cleaner can easily take care of the cleanliness for 3 blocks, I cannot understand why my block has to spend more than $500 on cleaning per month.
It is not stated in the financial report what “Other Work and Maintenance” comprises of. As there are a lot of so called “mini gardens” in the estate, I would not be surprised a substantial amount of this maintenance goes into gardening expenses. Again, such mini gardens are nice to have. While they make the town council look good, residents have no use for such gardens. Please remove them and save on the maintenance fees.
Finally, my town council spent more than $347K on advertising and publicity, more than $331K on computer services and more than $230K on town councilors’ allowance for FY11. My personal feel is that these are unnecessary spending, especially the one on advertising and publicity but I leave it to the reader to make your own judgement.
.
Irritated
.
It was reported in The Straits Times that several town councils are going to increase their monthly fees soon, with the increase ranging from $1 to $12 per month, over a period of 2 years. Is there not anything that the HDB dwellers can do to stop this increase?
Town council fees are something HDB dwellers have no control over. Whatever the town councils want, we have to pay, with no bargaining, no negotiation, no service guarantee and KPI or whatever. We just have to accept whatever the town council delivers. We just have to “trust” that the town councils are using the best of our money. But are they?
I did a brief calculation for town council fees collected from my block, and allocated it out to the various usage of the fees as per the financial report of my town council. Below are my findings on a PER MONTH basis:
| Sinking fund |
| Cleaning |
| Managing Agent’s Fee |
| Lift |
| Maintenance and others |
| Water and Eletric |
| SG&A |
<COLGROUP><COL width=178></COL><COL width=64></COL></COLGROUP><TBODY>
[TD="width: 178"] Item [/TD]
[TD="width: 64"] Fee [/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$1,563[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$540[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$385[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$442[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$426[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$1,049[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]$183[/TD]
</TBODY>
As can be seen from above, the biggest amounts used are in sinking fund, cleaning and utility bills. Given that sinking fund is non-negotiable (though that is something that can be hotly debated), we can look at utility bill and cleaning.
For utility bill, is the town council looking hard at what is nice to have and need to have and cut down on those nice to have? My observation is no, my town council is not doing that. For example, in the corridor of my unit, there are 4 units of 20inch florescent lights for an area of about 26 square meters, turned on everyday from 7pm to 7am. Why can’t the town council cut it down to 2 lights instead? If we extrapolate the same reasoning throughout the whole block, there will be substantial savings in electric bill.
Furthermore, come Christmas and New Year period, the town council will have “mini light up” in the estate, something similar to Orchard Road light up but on smaller scale. While all these look nice for the town council, it is the people who are paying the bills. Are these really necessary? I can say absolute no. Same can be said of spot lights lighting up signboards across the estate. These are not necessary and should be turned off. Again savings on electricity.
On cleaning fee, I believe the biggest component is manpower cost. However, it is widely reported that cleaners are earning less than $1000 a month. Assuming that one cleaner can easily take care of the cleanliness for 3 blocks, I cannot understand why my block has to spend more than $500 on cleaning per month.
It is not stated in the financial report what “Other Work and Maintenance” comprises of. As there are a lot of so called “mini gardens” in the estate, I would not be surprised a substantial amount of this maintenance goes into gardening expenses. Again, such mini gardens are nice to have. While they make the town council look good, residents have no use for such gardens. Please remove them and save on the maintenance fees.
Finally, my town council spent more than $347K on advertising and publicity, more than $331K on computer services and more than $230K on town councilors’ allowance for FY11. My personal feel is that these are unnecessary spending, especially the one on advertising and publicity but I leave it to the reader to make your own judgement.
.
Irritated
.
