Paul (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fremantlebiz) wrote,@ 2007-11-16 07:45:00 |
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I got a refund from the local council - Yay!
On Wednesday my wife and I visited the offices of our local civic authority, the Melville City Council. Our purpose was to cancel the licence for our old dog Daisy who was euthanized late September. I'd known that on long term dog licences a pro-rata refund was available. Better in my pocket than theirs.
I'd first visited them a few weeks ago but the female ranger from hell had been on duty and refused to take our word for it that we no longer had a dog. She made it clear that she was very busy and insisted that we go away and obtain a verification from the vet.
We rocked up again on Thursday with an invoice and receipt to find someone else was on duty - a non-ranger man with a Bluetooth receiver in one of his ears. Employees of our civic authority have long had a notorious reputation for being rude and unhelpful to ratepayers, but this one was polite and very happy to process us. But first he had to look us up on the computer. Thus began a minor drama.
You would think that when whom-ever-it-was designed the data base for dog licences in the distant past would have logically created the primary record under the dog owner's surname. Think again. The decrepit data base first needed the pet's name to make a meaningful discovery.
The man typed Daisy into the system and after about sixty seconds concluded there were a lot of Daisys in the suburb where we lived. This surprised us because we had never met anyone with a pet of any kind called Daisy. He scrolled through them all but couldn't find ours.
I suggested that he enter our address, which he did, but that also came up with a blank. It seemed we didn't exist. We were non-persons. The thought entered my mind that had our dog wandered off in the past and been arrested by the ranger from hell, we might never have seen our pet again because of a dodgy data base.
I could tell the man was getting flustered. He said he would have to seek help from a supervisor behind the scenes. Most employees in the council offices lurk behind the scenes to avoid public scrutiny. There is a common belief in the community that as well as disliking ratepayers and being obstructive as possible, they are a bunch of self-important slackers who generally do as little work as possible.
He retrieved his supervisor, who was also a pleasant and polite man. Obviously some things had changed. He was more familiar with the ancient computer system and after a minute or so of experimenting was able to put our record up on the screen. According the the data we were entitled to a pro-rata refund - one year's worth, or a little over twelve dollars. I hoped it didn't cause the computer to blow a fuse because money usually flows only one way with the council as far as ratepayers are concerned.
The Melville City Council has been embroiled in a secretive financial scandal over the past several months. It sounded like a job for the Corruption and Crime Commission. Someone in their wisdom had authorised the investment of a huge sum of 'surplus' ratepayers' money on the US sub-prime mortgage market. As I understand it, the sub-prime market specialised in housing loans to people who were at high risk of defaulting. The market has since gone into meltdown because the sub-prime borrowers haven't been able to maintain their high interest loans as the rest of the US economy goes into meltdown. This may have been because Mr Bush's Iraq war appears to have sucked up as much as three and a half trillion US dollars, which is something I heard in a news broadcast yesterday.
I had to look at Wikipedia to see how much a trillion is. In the US and Australia it's ten to the power of 12 - one million, million or 1,000,000,000,000, but in some inflation prone countries like Holland, Germany, France and Estonia, a trillion is ten to the power of eighteen - like there are eighteen zeros instead of twelve.
There was some strange business immediately after the revelation that the Melville Council had been making unwise financial decisions. A large lump of money was immediately recovered without a satisfactory explanation to the ratepayers. It seemed pretty fishy.
Anyway, I reckon its outrageous that the Melville City Council has been speculating in high risk foreign investment schemes when they can't even get a decent computer system running for dog licences.
As polite as they were, the people behind the counter wanted photocopies of the invoice and receipt for the euthanasia of our dog before the cashier would hand back the twelve bucks, plus I had to sign a receipt of theirs. I guess they can't be too careful with refunds to ratepayers.
© MMVII Paul R. Weaver.
About the writer
Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.
On Wednesday my wife and I visited the offices of our local civic authority, the Melville City Council. Our purpose was to cancel the licence for our old dog Daisy who was euthanized late September. I'd known that on long term dog licences a pro-rata refund was available. Better in my pocket than theirs.
I'd first visited them a few weeks ago but the female ranger from hell had been on duty and refused to take our word for it that we no longer had a dog. She made it clear that she was very busy and insisted that we go away and obtain a verification from the vet.
We rocked up again on Thursday with an invoice and receipt to find someone else was on duty - a non-ranger man with a Bluetooth receiver in one of his ears. Employees of our civic authority have long had a notorious reputation for being rude and unhelpful to ratepayers, but this one was polite and very happy to process us. But first he had to look us up on the computer. Thus began a minor drama.
You would think that when whom-ever-it-was designed the data base for dog licences in the distant past would have logically created the primary record under the dog owner's surname. Think again. The decrepit data base first needed the pet's name to make a meaningful discovery.
The man typed Daisy into the system and after about sixty seconds concluded there were a lot of Daisys in the suburb where we lived. This surprised us because we had never met anyone with a pet of any kind called Daisy. He scrolled through them all but couldn't find ours.
I suggested that he enter our address, which he did, but that also came up with a blank. It seemed we didn't exist. We were non-persons. The thought entered my mind that had our dog wandered off in the past and been arrested by the ranger from hell, we might never have seen our pet again because of a dodgy data base.
I could tell the man was getting flustered. He said he would have to seek help from a supervisor behind the scenes. Most employees in the council offices lurk behind the scenes to avoid public scrutiny. There is a common belief in the community that as well as disliking ratepayers and being obstructive as possible, they are a bunch of self-important slackers who generally do as little work as possible.
He retrieved his supervisor, who was also a pleasant and polite man. Obviously some things had changed. He was more familiar with the ancient computer system and after a minute or so of experimenting was able to put our record up on the screen. According the the data we were entitled to a pro-rata refund - one year's worth, or a little over twelve dollars. I hoped it didn't cause the computer to blow a fuse because money usually flows only one way with the council as far as ratepayers are concerned.
The Melville City Council has been embroiled in a secretive financial scandal over the past several months. It sounded like a job for the Corruption and Crime Commission. Someone in their wisdom had authorised the investment of a huge sum of 'surplus' ratepayers' money on the US sub-prime mortgage market. As I understand it, the sub-prime market specialised in housing loans to people who were at high risk of defaulting. The market has since gone into meltdown because the sub-prime borrowers haven't been able to maintain their high interest loans as the rest of the US economy goes into meltdown. This may have been because Mr Bush's Iraq war appears to have sucked up as much as three and a half trillion US dollars, which is something I heard in a news broadcast yesterday.
I had to look at Wikipedia to see how much a trillion is. In the US and Australia it's ten to the power of 12 - one million, million or 1,000,000,000,000, but in some inflation prone countries like Holland, Germany, France and Estonia, a trillion is ten to the power of eighteen - like there are eighteen zeros instead of twelve.
There was some strange business immediately after the revelation that the Melville Council had been making unwise financial decisions. A large lump of money was immediately recovered without a satisfactory explanation to the ratepayers. It seemed pretty fishy.
Anyway, I reckon its outrageous that the Melville City Council has been speculating in high risk foreign investment schemes when they can't even get a decent computer system running for dog licences.
As polite as they were, the people behind the counter wanted photocopies of the invoice and receipt for the euthanasia of our dog before the cashier would hand back the twelve bucks, plus I had to sign a receipt of theirs. I guess they can't be too careful with refunds to ratepayers.
© MMVII Paul R. Weaver.
About the writer
Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.
