And what are the costs the rate payers incurred? Well, there was a $990 registration fee for each councillor attending the conference as well as accommodation and travel costs, all covered in the council budget.

So according to my calculations that would be a cost of around $2000 per person for the whole trip, at least, the very least that is. So that would add up to at least $14,000 for all of them.

That's not a huge amount of money, but its not nothing either. That money could have gone towards cleaning up rubbish dumping sites or removing illegal posters or a whole host of other projects to improve the area. But no, it was essential that seven people represent the area for the conference!

Not that I'm saying that nothing was achieved at the conference, I think it was actually rather successful. The focus of the event was on reducing the power that the State Government has over the local councils and how they operate. That's an important issue, parts of which I discussed in my last post, but apart from the introduction of the new Joint Regional Planning Panels, the State Government exercises its control over local government in other ways, rate pegging and the taxing of federal government funding being two examples. And Liverpool Councillors took an active role in those discussions and called on the Local Government Association to lobby the State Government to allow development decisions to come back to Liverpool Council after their discussed at the panel. So that was a great idea on their part and hopefully the government takes notice. They also brought up a host of other issues including graffiti management, food inspections and sewerage management.

But the same work could potentially have been done by two or three councillors and the whole thing does seem a bit like a junket, but then of course it was in Tamworth, not exactly the most appealing holiday destination. But the perceptions of the rate payers are something the councillors should consider too. It doesn't look good for Liverpool if its councillors are going on what look like junkets all the time.

I do think that elected officials are entitled to some perks for the hard work that they do, but I was just surprised that they didn't seem to consider the costs involved at all, they weren't concerned that the money was coming from rate payers in the slightest way, so hopefully this won't be an ongoing trend.

I don't so much subscribe to the idea that councillors should pay all of their costs themselves, but they should be mindful not to spend money unnecessarily and not to be wasteful with funds which council acquired through charging rates from Liverpudlians.