Published on Wednesday, 28 June 2017 at 12:00:00 AM
In what has been a long journey for the City of Greater Geraldton to reach financial sustainability, Mayor Shane Van Styn says the organisation is finally “on track” to end years of operating losses.
The past couple years has seen the City make big changes and find efficiency gains in order to pave the way for a bright financial future for the organisation with the City budgeting to record an operating surplus in the financial year 2018/19.
“Four years ago we had a deficit of close to $7 million and we can now safely say we have hit our targets to become financially secure with this year’s budget deficit reduced to $1.2 million,” Mayor Van Styn said.
Mayor Van Styn also added that it had been a rewarding journey and he is extremely pleased to see the City’s deficits dramatically decrease.
“A couple of years ago financial sustainability was projected to be at least 10 years off,” he said.
“The number of ageing infrastructure was increasing and it was made clear from our community that large rate rises were untenable so we had to put a plan in place to ensure we could keep up with major projects whilst keeping rates at a minimum.
“And that’s exactly what we did.
“This was through a number of efficiency and productivity gains throughout the organisation as well as a 20 per cent reduction in staff numbers since 2015. These efficiencies have helped us to achieve more than $10 million in savings annually.”
Whilst being able to maintain key services and keep up with infrastructure renewals, rate rises for the new financial year will be set at 3.5% with no change in minimum rates.
Mayor Van Styn said this was a great outcome for rate payers considering the plan in 2014 was for rates to rise by 7.2% this year.
Overall rates revenue for the current year’s budget are now below those projected in 2014 onwards.
“Whilst power costs will rise 10% and vehicle license fee concessions have been abolished we have ensured this won’t impact our rates,” he said.
The cost from the State Government of removing concessions on motor vehicle registrations has been estimated at $150,000 and cuts to State services such as the Art Gallery have been absorbed as well as the non indexation of Financial Assistance Grants from the Federal Government.
As adopted by Council, rate payers will enjoy a record spend on environmental initiatives, youth crime prevention programs, more skip bins for verge side collection as well as a big spend on footpaths and asset renewal within the community.
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