Your major issue with local govt seems to be, you're still are not part of it?
That said, I believe in compulsory voting, which shouldn't be necessary, save too many of us take our freedom and the ultimate sacrifices made to keep it, completely for granted; particularly newcomers? {If where you came from was better, fell completely free to return to it? I'll even pass around that hat!]
And I completely agree with Rangers having the right to see some photo ID!
Given the often deliberately lit forest fires, the number of homes the current fire storms have destroyed; or the lives taken, which included some of my relatives, in the disastrous Victorian forest fires.
I mean, some arsonists were apparently arrest quite recently, all of who thus far, have turned out to be juveniles!
If entirely lackadaisical or completely irresponsible parents, have to pay punitive fines for trouble making or entirely unsupervised kids, doing what unsupervised/bored kids usually resort to, antisocial activities/mischief/property damage? Just deserts!
More CCTV and fewer half baked, lamebrain, drunken stumble bum excuses!
Rhrosty.

Ludwig and RandomGuy are on the right track( though not "city states").The only sensible way forward is to abolish the states and extend municipal councils.

Good article.

I have wondered about the ridiculously increasing rates we pay for not very much.

I bought a property about 22 years ago. The rates were $126 a year. A couple of years later a new council, with ideas of grandeur started rapidly increasing them.

A few years later I calculated that at the rate of increase of council rates, my rate bill would exceed my total annual income by 2016. They have slowed their grasp for our money a little, but I still think my $2800 a year bill is a bit excessive.

For that we get a truck with 3 men filling potholes with bitumen about every 9 months or so, & a mobile library for 3 hours 48 weeks a year.

Far from increasing their power, we should cut them back to roads garbage & poo, about all the "B" graders on council & the staff could do properly. Surely Luddy, you don't really thing councils are capable of managing anything like sustainability, when they can't handle a call center.

<< Surely Luddy, you don't really thing councils are capable of managing anything like sustainability, when they can't handle a call center. >>

Hazza, they are capable of having a good input into sustainability issues.

But alas, many councils are a very long way from properly addressing sustainability – about as far away from it as every state government and the feds are!

I strongly disagree that local government should be cut back to << roads garbage & poo >>

But of course the broadness or narrowness of local government can cut both ways. Broadness can be good if a higher government wants to do things that the local community doesn’t want, and the council bats for the community. Or it can be bad if a local government is too close to property developers and the like and is all too willing to do their bidding, against the wishes of the broader community, which unfortunately often seems to be the case.

Luddy old mate, I think our council is one of the less bad of those around, but having said that, they are pretty damn stupid.

I think this stupidity is basically from the senior staff, with councilors just too dumb to evaluate their recommendations. Here is an example of their efforts on sustainability.

I think it was the shire clerk, trying to cut the services budget, to waste on something in town, who suggested closing a number of transfer stations on the grounds of being cost effective.

Well I guess it was for the council, but it was one of the few facilities provided in a district of 880 homes, with no garbage service. So instead of a couple of trucks a week picking up large skips from the transfer station, all 880 homeowners were driving an extra 25 to 30Km each way to the next nearest transfer station.

For me that meant over 280 liters of fuel a year, plus about 48 hours of my time wasted on the extra driving. For the district that comes out to well over 250 thousand liters of fuel, & over 40 thousand man, or woman hours wasted, on the councils cost effective idea. That is not a misprint. I'm talking about a quarter of a million liters of fuel a year. How's that for sustainability

That is I find, a usual result of an honest council. The bent ones are much worse.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=chicago+bankruptcy
http://www.suntimes.com/business/23310572-420/trial-starts-is-detroit-eligible-for-bankruptcy.html

Detroit, with $18 billion in debt, filed for Chapter 9 protection in July, but it’s not automatic. Judge Steven Rhodes has set aside several days to hear evidence and decide whether the city met many key steps, including good-faith negotiations with creditors, before taking drastic action three months ago.

Jim Spiotto, a bankruptcy expert in Chicago, said
it’s “virtually impossible” to argue that Detroit is solvent.

“They’re not paying their debts,” he said.
“Look at their blighted areas. Look at their services.”

Nonetheless, unions and pension funds are challenging Detroit on the eligibility question. They claim emergency manager Kevyn Orr, who acquired nearly unfettered control over city finances following his appointment by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, was not genuinely interested in negotiating when they met with his team in June and July. Orr insists pension funds are short $3.5 billion and health coverage also needs to be overhauled.

Evidence will show that Orr “planned to file bankruptcy long before the purported negotiations had run their course, confirming that the ‘negotiations’ were no more than a check-the-box exercise on the way to the courthouse,” Babette Ceccotti, an attorney for the United Auto Workers, said in a court filing.

Earle Erman, attorney for Detroit’s public safety unions, said the city has cut wages and changed health care benefits without across-the-table talks. Lawyer Sharon Levine, who’s representing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the city spent months “mapping out its path to Chapter 9,” not looking for compromises that could keep Detroit out of bankruptcy.

In response, however, attorneys for the city said a June 14 meeting and subsequent sessions with creditors were well-intended but fruitless. A bankruptcy filing was being prepared, they acknowledged, but “never set in stone.”

Spiotto said the judge will have much discretion to determine whether the city has met its “good-faith” burden.

“I don’t think courts require perfection,” he said. “Good faith is not measured solely by, ‘Did they offer what we want?’ It’s about providing opportunity.”