Quote: The question one would ask is: How did this happen? Were returns from investments so good? Or are town councils collecting unnecessary excess of service and conservancy charges?

I read my town councils annual reports. The latter seems to be the case, i.e. excess S&C and some rule to put aside 30+% into the sinking fund.

You want real transparency from them? All you will get is one Sarah Palin after another! All thinking the issues can be smoked over by non existent or what they think is adorable and charming humility!

JAQ(just a question). In this country, can and will the government reassure the people that town council annual reports can never and will never be falsified?

Congratulations!

We’ve been . . . Scalped Again!

Not unlike CPF, HDB, GST and other protection money for $ecret $ociety, what we are paying is way above what’s needed.

The $ociety needs the reserves to keep $ecret going.

When the secret is no longer a secret, we may get a few $ingaporean Bernard Madoff.

Another profiteering rip off?

$illy$ingaporean

This is the result of 50% walkovers, 66% mandate, and 98% seats in Parliament in elections.

You want more transparency and answers and your way to manage Town Council funds? Then please win at the next elections.

Is it that we should accept what khor said and no need to continue asking for the answers? after all, khor said in good shape.

but then hor, what does in good shape really mean in a concrete way?
good shape based on what?

Does
in good shape means :
NO LOSSES?
or
the losses is lesser than the residual in the sinking funds?

so lady and gentermen ,
you can see the my dilema.

what does in good shape mean in a more QUANTIFIABLE way?

to me, ‘in good shape’ is a QUALITATIVE expression.

$1 billion to $2 billion in 1 year. Fantastic!! I will recomend to double the management fee of my apartment block if they can double our sinking fund in 1 year without increasing the conservancy charges. Residents should also put their savings with these very successful town councils instead of the banks which offer only 1.5% interest.

That is very good!

After Khaw Khaw Keh, who will be the next humble and therefore they think will look more credible, minister to front the next smoke and mirror act to handle this issue?

aiyoyo

sinking & sinking further???

why cant commoners keep own $ & invest ourself?

is the ELITEs better investors than commoners?

seems commoners more honest, more credible to ownself, correct?

whats happening in the country that commoners lived in?

do not see the logic leh……………………………………………………………………

aiyoyo

See! they start to come out with all their craps again. Something is very wrong here and I think we people should stop paying the SC&C fees for now until we get the answer from them where have they used our monies for. This is absurd, these are monies paid by us singapoeans to maintain our flats and not for them to manipulating into some other illegal trades and investments. If win, they kept the profit, now lost, we became the scapegoats. Can someone advise if there is a case here, legally? we cannot just sit and wait for them to come out with craps after craps to smoke us time and again. Why can’t they disclose the truth? instead asking their different MPs to come out with all sorts of stories from the day the case surfaced? they are just playing dirty to cover up something, something that is grave enough for the people to know.

Yup! And stop calling it “Sinking Fund”, hiding below the surface out of sight of whatever hanky panky that could be. Change it to ” Floating Fund ” so that all can see, leaving no doubt as to where the money is, growing or depleting. This is not
their money but the residents’. Don’t allow them to follow the example of a certain family. OH my God! Does the money belong to them too?

Not only this familee thinks our money belongs to them, they even feel that our lives belongs to them too. Never in my whole life on planet earth seen in any other country the garments even control how much we can earn and how much we should spend, oh I forget who we should married and when we are supposed to make babies, craps!

how many of you peeps checked on our pap town council managment teams?
guess the numbers
if i tell you
it near 50 (fifty) top people to run a town council
would yo be surprised?
when i was having problemo with my area
i went to town council to do some complainning
i endup liked a pingpong ball
going from desk to desk
including arranging an open space when my belated pop
may he rest in peace
meet st peter
the 1 and only voideck was ^reserved for a RC function which was gonna happened in a couple of day
obiovously a funeral wakes last more or near 3 days
i couldn’t used the next avilialbe open space on my right side simply because another funeral wakes took place
so i seek town council for permission to sued the left side open space
you know what they says
how about using the next area void deck
which is across the road ( abusy 4 lane crossing
mind you
i asked them
why not left side open space?
they couldn’t answer
in th end
1 senoir officer give me her blessing
on 1 condition
that i must keep it cleaned after the wakes
every night without failed
i would pay the bangala cleaner to work overtime to enured everythinggie is tiptopped and clean
by the way
today the open space was used by cdac to give free school bags campaign
typical singaporean kiasu mentalities
just because they don’t lived there
they have a right to throw rubbish everywhere
till now
no road sweeper in sight
looked liked a lebanon war zone
after a bombing raid
so much for government hipocrisy….

back to the topic of discussion
a sinking fund
meants to be
SINK
isn’t it
or else it would have named a floating fund
we have the money to throw at anybody including indonesia
remembered the last generous donation of $400millions by temasek inc
to feed the poor starving indonesians
but in singapore
we don’t have beggars
(as proclaimed by our prince the prime minister)
nor hungry peasants
so not even $100million$ is placed aside
obviously my upstairs neighbours must be so well off
that they don’t seem to look hungry @ all
i must be hullcinating all this while
or is my 3rd eye vision needs to be lastik as well?

If they can claim that “we have made profits in previous years”, “no need to increase conservancy fee because of the loss”, “projects will be carried out as scheduled ” etc. – what does it show? Does it mean that we have been over-charged all these years so much so that the loss of $16M has no effect on the town councils’ projects at all?

Furthermore, the $2 billion in sinking funds is supposed to help pay for “long term maintenance work like lift upgrading” – where “a lift is replaced every 30 years or so” (ST – 7 Dec 08). Excuse me – $2 billion now waiting for a lift replacement every 30 years?? What kind of lift is that? In 30 years time, I wonder how many more billions would have been collected just for that 1 in 30 year replacement. What’s the mathematical logic? Someone please help.

1 year increase by $1 billion. then 30 years increase by $30 billion?

wow….maybe we will have super lifts that can reach the moon from our flats in 30 years time.

Can’t imagine so enormously huge sum of sinking funds floating around those TCs? What can happen should there be any illegal usage or movement of these funds from any unauthorised person or persons? This is no small case if such activities are involved as these are hard cash paid by the citizens.

i was trying to find out about the investment powers of our town councils. the annual reports by town councils are prepared in accordance to the town councils act, cap329a, and in this act, under ‘act vi: financial provisions’ section 41, it is spelt out as:

“Power of investment
41. A Town Council may invest its funds in accordance with the standard investment power of statutory bodies as defined in section 33A of the Interpretation Act (Cap. 1).”

whereas in the interpretation act, cap1, section 33a, it is as follows:

“Standard investment power of statutory bodies
33A. Where any written law confers on a statutory body the power to invest any moneys in accordance with the standard investment power of statutory bodies, then, subject to any general or special directions as the Minister charged with responsibility for that statutory body may issue, that statutory body may —

(a) invest those moneys in such manner as it thinks fit; and

(b) engage in any financial activity or participate in any financial arrangement for the purpose of managing or hedging against any financial risk that arises or is likely to arise from such investment.”

i fail to understand the guidelines which town councils follow in their investment, for it ultimately allows them to do investments “as it thinks fit”. would someone care to explain how the town councils choose their investments?

The discrepancy between $1b and $2b is frightening. How can we trust what is the true amount of sinking funds they are reporting when the figure keeps changing like a yo-yo? How can we trust them unless they give us more substantiated audited figures? Without proper audited figures it looks like they can suka suka change the amount to announce as they wish.
With so much discrepancy of figures occurring every time they make an announcement, even whatever little confidence I still had in the TC’s accounting has evaporated away.

Honestly,
tell me is there a problem with transparency ?
tell me what is the harm of revealing the information about TC investments in terms of which are all the FIs that had invested sinking funds in toxic products, and the total amount.

tell your children also. honestly.

[...] Seriously why not just come clean, and move on? I found some great comments here. [...]

“Furthermore, the $2 billion in sinking funds is supposed to help pay for “long term maintenance work like lift upgrading” – where “a lift is replaced every 30 years or so” (ST – 7 Dec 08). Excuse me – $2 billion now waiting for a lift replacement every 30 years?? What kind of lift is that? In 30 years time, I wonder how many more billions would have been collected just for that 1 in 30 year replacement. What’s the mathematical logic? Someone please help.”

what help? you don’t understand? let me explain it in one simple word.

INFLATION.

still don’t get it? please don’t pro-create, graduates only.

“That is the way the world is. I have explained this. I think I lost votes after I explained the awful truth. Nobody believed it, but slowly it dawned on them – especially the graduates – that yes, you marry a non-graduate, then you worry about whether or not your son or daughter is going to make it to the university!”

anyway to be frank, i don’t get it either.

lift prices probably do not inflate as fast as the inflation rate.

Look at your PC prices…

I don’t know why hoard prices.

ST says if this guy has his way, TC will have more power..oh oh..
To do what? To decide what the estate can and cant do! So that the govt can push the blame on to the TC if anything wrong happens, and the TC can also push it back to the govt. I the govt succeeds in making the TC the fallguy, then the govt need not fear they can lose the ward in an election, cos TC pple are not voted in. Haha..neat trick! Good try KBW!

aiyoyo

sinking funds really make $ huh?

what’s the rate p.a. huh?

if make $, got share share with commoners huh?

if no make $, commoners need to share share on the responsibility huh?

think commoners more elite than ELITEs, many friend says..

aiyoyo

How Much Is Too Much?

The services that are provided by the TC in the Jurong area I must say is mediocre and reflects the Asian standards of cleanliness. Nothing to shut about. Surely much can be done to improve the cleanliness, stain marks on the floor and the heaps of rubbish around the rubbish bin near the letter-boxes. The life – oh just sickening. If they have hundreds of residential blocks to maintain and decades of experience in doing that why are they still so amateur in maintaining lifts?

It appears to me that the PAP- TC is treated just like another statutory board with the
primary goal of making profits and retaining excessive funds.

With a hoarding of $2Billion it must be excessive unless proven otherwise. They must let an outside party to do an operational audit to see why the PAP-TC justify hoarding such a huge amount of funds.

Every auditings of these PAP TCs are done within their own companies, thats why alot of things are not being reported on. If they are being audited by outside party to do their auditing, I think basically all of them are already in trouble, but then again, this is internal things done internally within their own group of people, so what can you people do?

Since KBW uses the secret society as analogy and comparison, let’s follow this line of thoughts.
From the great K-gang, to the gangster depicted in various Hollywood, HK and local movies: Even in secret society, there is transparency among its top leaders. They know where, who, how and when to rob, kill or create havoc. So there is total transparency. But with its runners and public? total secrecy.

Who grow in wealth and who suffer?

U have the answers.

I believe the report in 2007 downplayed the value (ie. 1.5 billion reported as ‘more than one billion’ etc.) so as not to rile the peasants…er, I mean people. The more recent report obviously had to show that the funds were healthy in spite of losing (obscene amounts of) money and so, 1.8 billion would have been conveniently reported as 2 billion. In such a scenario, the difference would be much less stark in contrast (a few hundred million) and would in fact be unsurprisingly, in light of all their income avenues (conservancy, lease/rental etc.).

Also, the figure reported in December 2007 would have been based on FY2006/7 and the more recent one, on FY2007/8. This would effectively mean that only the transactions up to March 2008 would have been included in the ‘$2 billion figure’ – with the losses very well not having been included.

Well, the figures changed and will keep on changing all the time to confuse the public, whats new with these remote controlled elites who are just $million instruments bought and used by the master.

Answer is simple, Shit Times figures are wrong.

ST’s figures are never wrong. They are always calculated to mislead.

if you can’t beat them, confuse them

Gd! EXPOSE ALL THESE GREED!!! HIT IT HARD!

Okay, I’m not sure if I get the issue.

The one-year-ago statement was:
more than $1 billion in sinking funds
and the current statement is:
the $2 billion in the sinking funds.

Look at it carefully. The first reports it as more than a billion. It didn’t say that the TC had $1 billion dollars and then one year later they had $2 billion dollars.

Maybe I got it wrong, but it appears to me that this rule (first report) is setting a limit of $1 billion dollars. It’s not saying that the TC has $1 billion dollars. It’s just setting a point in which this rule will apply to the TCs. For all we know, the TCs may have $10 billion dollars but lost 80% of them within a year.

It’s like saying:

In a general election, if a defeated candidate got less than 12.5% of the votes, then his election deposit will be forfeited.
EQUALS
All defeated candidates got less than 12.5% of the votes.

Did I miss something?

If the $2 billion is indeed meant for life replacement every 30 years, then most residents will get to see the replacement only once in their lifetime. (assuming they still stay in the same estate).

If all residents are prepared to do without lifts but insists on climbing the staircases no matter what, is the town council prepared to give away the $2 billion to all these residents?

For those who must / want to use the lift, the town council can build a lift that activates on a pay-per-use basis. You pay only when you use – very clear cut.

Apparently, town councils are required by law to keep aside a portion of the conservancy fees as part of their sinking funds. This was implied from the accounts of Hougang Town Council (they are fairly transparent, but as I’ve indicated before, I wished they made it more easily accessible).

Anyway, while that surprised me (that it’s the law), there is no mention of how the sinking funds may be spent. All I know is “in an emergency” they could use the funds to do something. The trouble with this line of thinking is “what constitutes an emergency?” and “just how much do Town Councils really need to keep to handle an emergency (foreseeable or otherwise)?”. If someone could dig up the Town Councils Act, it might help us understand this issue better. Otherwise, by law, everyone’s gonna be maintaining sinking funds until they become larger than our GDP …

Guys,

I read all your comments. All valid. INSTEAD OF JUST COMPLAINING (WHICH WE SINGAPOREANS ARE LABELLED AS BEING GOOD AT), DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. STOP COMPLAINING.

LIKE THE NIKE ADVERTISEMENT SAYS — JUST DO IT.

NEXT ELECTION, KICK SOME OF THESE CLOWNS OUT. ONLY THEN WILL THEY START LISTENING. DONT YOU GUYS REALISE THAT BY NOW?