Lead Candidate Kyle MacGregor
1/ financial experience
I am one of the only people running for council who has local government specific financial training and experience. Local government finances are not like your personal finances, running a business or a public sector agency. The accounting method is different and the mechanisms and methodology of council finances will be confusing to new councillors. They need someone to help guide them and help them understand not keep them in the dark and continue with business as usual. I will interrogate the council finances and be the biggest advocate in the room for community backed projects for budget submissions, while other people will sit back and nod their heads without knowing what is going on or why it’s happening.
2/ work experience
I have a bachelor of arts and education (Majoring in History and Minoring in European Studies) and am currently a teacher. I have spent the better part of the last decade in public education. Prior to that I was an industrial advocate and worked in the construction industry utilising my skills with workplace management and work health and safety. Before that I was a research officer in the NSW Public Service. I have also been a musician, worked in a music studio, and various odd jobs earlier in my life such as painter, cleaner and labourer. I’ve worked at all levels across the economy and understand how to make Government and bureaucracy work for you and not against you, which is why I am running for council to make ordinary peoples lives better and to give you a more direct say over the things that matter most to you.
3/ community activism or involvement
I have been involved in the labour movement my entire adult life. I have a keen interest in agriculture and the environment and have been involved in various community groups over the years. I have been active in local sporting clubs and community sport for 25 years across the Central Coast. I am also interested and involved in the arts and in particular music. I commit to regularly attending resident groups and reinstating precinct committees and genuine community consultation on the issues that matter most to you. If elected I will engage with and represent any community groups genuinely and honestly and do this regardless of your political or personal position. The job of an elected representative is to represent the whole community, not just their personal pet projects or groups.
4/ What current public causes/issues do you agree with?
I have responded to groups directly who have requested comment from me. Our policies commitments and our contract with the people of the Central Coast is viewable on our website.
I also want to make clear to residents and voters that I will not be rushing in to people please and commit wholeheartedly to every request to back something without the costings, the community consultation, relevant technical or expert knowledge and expertise available to me. Councillors need to make reasonable, lawful and informed decisions on the best possible information before them.
To simply say yes to everyone on everything is disingenuous, I also encourage groups to ask candidates how they plan on delivering their promises and how they can actually deliver what the groups are asking of them to do. Local Government is a unique beast and you need someone who knows how to get you want in the room backing your proposal the right way to get it done.
Please visit our websie for detailed information on our policies and positions on various issues for both our ward and the Central Coast LGA as a whole.
5/ Why should I vote for you?
I lead a team of people who are the only ones who have a practical and positive plan to combat the cost of living crisis through delivering cheaper childcare, freezing fees and charges for sporting and community groups and opposing the continuation of the unjustified extreme rate rises. We want to build a better Central Coast together through delivering at least 6000 jobs through getting the WEZ (Wyong Employment Zone) done, introducing apprenticeship ratios for council projects and implementing a local procurement policy to support local small business.
We will protect our unique region and environment through expanding the Coastal Open Space System, beautifying and maintaining town centres and our suburbs and tackling the infrastructure backlog with a back to basics approach.
Wyong Labor’s practical and positive plan for our region is the only way to ensure that Council will work for you and not against you and that people with experience and expertise to make what you want a reality will be able to lead our region forward into a new era.
Q1/ What’s important to you from the Operational plan’s vision and framework?
Choose three
1/ C3 C3 Facilitate economic development to increase local employment opportunities and provide a range of jobs for all residents.
• Endorse and focus on the development of the Wyong Employment Zone to bring at least 6000 high quality high paying jobs to the Central Coast and to build up productive industries on the Central Coast to diversify our economy and increase our gross regional product (GRP).
2/ • G2 Engage and communicate openly and honestly with the community to build a relationship based on trust, transparency, respect and use community participation and feedback to inform decision making.
• Endorse and expand by reintroducing precinct committees, reviewing procedures and policies around community consultation on council policies and initiatives and in particular providing options to the community on fees, charges and rates. If the community are the shareholders and stakeholders in the local council (as Rik Hart has often referenced and ignored) then they should have a say over what the council is doing and what direction it is proposing to take on things that matter to them.
3/ G3 Provide leadership that is transparent and accountable, makes decisions in the best interest of the community, ensures Council is financially sustainable and adheres to a strong audit process.
* Council is currently the most complained about council in NSW and this is because it is not meeting these benchmarks. Information should be proactively released to the public and as transparent as possible. Council finances should be audited by multiple parties not just the bare minimum to meet legislative requirements. There should be a review of council restricted funds and development contribution plans to ensure that infrastructure is keeping up with development and that funds are being allocated and spent appropriately. Council should not commit to projects with business cases and cost benefits analysis and the most rigorous of oversite of public funds.
Council should also institute a Expenditure Review Committee and Waste Watch Committee to ensure that Senior Council Staff are keeping to budget, finishing projects on time and no public money is being wasted in a profligate way.
Q2/ Which upcoming plans already in the pipeline do you support?
Endorse
1/ Baker Park Masterplan – I would like to review this, I resolved as part of the last council 6 or 7 years ago to formulate a new Baker Park Masterplan and was involved in the community consultation that the council conducted on this. Baker Park is an extremely important strategic asset for our region and I take a keen interest in any developments relating to this area.
2/ Biodiversity DCP Chapter – I would like to be briefed on the progress of this and have a detailed run down of it in a briefing from council staff. I would like to see any community consultation around this and what the community would like to see with this policy as well as the experts from the industry and environmental groups.
3/ Fees and Charges 2025-26 – The last council was able to freeze fees and charges for sporting groups for successive budgets, providing a direct cost of living relief to local residents. Some councils don’t even charge their sporting groups for hiring or using council facilities. It is a core commitment of our campaign as Wyong Labor to freeze the fees and charges for sporting and community groups and I will do whatever I can to make this a reality, regardless of the opposition from those who wish to treat our community as their own personal piggy bank and keep slugging locals for more during a cost of living crisis.
Delete?
I do not see any proposals that seem particularly problematic in the list provided. My main concern with the operational plan is that projects often are not completed on time or do not meet budget. Senior council staff are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and do not appear capable of meeting their basic benchmarks. It is a reputational problem for the council and is well known in the industry that this council has poor management structures and service delivery. Some have a view that without councillors this should have improved, but I do not see the evidence to match this theory, I believe the new councillors will have to take a keen interest in making sure that senior staff are meeting their benchmarks and not just giving them free reign and plenty of excuses for this inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
Q3/ Do you support keeping the 2021 ten year special rate variation (rate increase) beyond 2031?
Yes or no? No
Q4/ How would you increase revenue?
I reject the premise that increasing revenue is a simple swap in or out, delete or decrease line item from the operational plan exercise. This council has sat on a report that was delivered into how council can diversify its revenue and income base. The administrator chose to do nothing with it and instead simply put everyones rates up to pay off the commercial loans he did not need to enter into. We have suffered successive extreme rate rises because a disagreement over legal interpretations of internal and external restrictions between council leadership and the state solicitor general.
Councils have lots of ways that they can make money and it does not need to simply be off the back of local rate payers. This report should be revisited or a new one comissioned. The consultants who were commissioned during the financial crisis presented other options to increase revenue and the directors at the time also put forward options that could increase revenue.
The same old way of doing things is not good enough and it is not in the community interests. Council can be better and diversifying its income streams and moving away from an over reliance on rate revenue should be one of the core focuses of the new council.
Through instituting the unjustified and unnecessary extreme rate rises the administrator has made the rate burden higher, and increased councils reliance on rate income and took the easy way out that simply resulted in you paying more for less, budget after budget, and it needs to stop.
Council needs to have sustainable revenue streams for the future and should be planning accordingly not just focusing on the same old ideas that simply do not serve the interests of our residents.
Council delivers quality services that are greatly appreciated by our community and are financially viable with things like childcare, leisure centres, the art house and the Niagara Park Stadium to name a few. We should be focusing on these to raise revenue and to provide services that our community need.
Council needs to revisit its internal restrictions and infrastructure plans to ensure that they are achievable and deliverable and not an artificial noose around our neck, locking up money that will never get spent on anything. Council needs to increase developer contributions, not reduce them.
The model of developer contributions being reduced over the past decades has crippled our region, left us with a huge infrastructure backlog and an overreliance on rate revenue and increasing fees and charges for things.
Council needs to expand its grants department so that we can attract more external funding from the state and federal government to deliver the kind of projects that our community wants. During the term of the last democratically elected council we suffered through over a billion dollars worth of disinvestment from the state and federal government because we didn’t have a Liberal dominated council in our region.
The question here, is not if council has the ways, but the will, to increase revenue sources and streams without just slugging locals for more through higher rates, service reductions and crumbling infrastructure.
That being said, I would like more detail around the following items:
1/ 100304 Plant and Fleet Vehicle Acquisitions Region Wide General Fund Revenue ˜ $17,000,000. This is a significant amount of expenditure, I would like to know more details around this, are we talking about plant and fleet so managers get shiny new cars or are we talking about machinery or vehicles that desperately need to be replaced because of depreciation, degradation, delays or neglect? What methodology is being used here to determine what is necessary and what is not with these purchases? It may well be essential in it’s entirety, it may not be, without the detail it is hard to tell with a single line item in a budget having not been part of the process of developing that budget. It does however, stand out to me.
2/ 100319 Remediation Works – Gosford City Car Park Gosford Restricted Funds General Fund Revenue ˜ $1,377,624 This seems like a lot of money to spend on doing some remediation works on a carpark. I would like more detail about this project, particularly around its costs.
3/ 100352 Access Stairs Renewal – Jenny Dixon Beach and Soldiers Beach Norah Head General Fund Revenue Grants ˜ $2,285,000 – Seems like a lot of money to spend on stair renewal. I know it is a popular beach and the stairs are surely in need of improvement, but is this the best value for money?
Q5/ How would you reduce expenditure?
Firstly, I would be surprised to see any major amendments or alterations to the current operational plan and I doubt an individual councillor would lead or achieve this. The real headway if a priority is to reduce expenditure would be made in the next and subsequent operational plans. It is the role of the senior council staff to ensure that they meet budget and are designing and implementing budgets in a sustainable way. Councillors do not have control over the operational side of the council. I understand voters think that they do, but it is outside of your ambit to go and project manage things in the operational plan. I am not committing to cutting these things from the budget but would like to have some questions about them asked and some line of sight on how they are tracking within the budget framework.
1/100527 Council Chamber, Internal Workspace and Public Spaces Renewal – Wyong Civil Centre Wyong General Fund Revenue ˜ $3,700,000 – Over the past few years council continues to spend money on itself upgrading its offices. The Gosford Chamber building got a multi million dollar upgrade shortly before it was left derelict by this administrator. Wyong council building likewise has had significant investment in upgrading it recently. Why is council constantly spending money on itself rather than what our community values most?
2/ 100549 Road Upgrade – Del Monte Place Copacabana Grants ˜ $2,500,000 – This is a lot of money to spend on one street in one of our wealthiest suburbs whilst our regions working class suburbs are neglected and left behind by this current administration.
3/ 101014 Major Upgrade – Mardi Water Treatment Plant Mardi External Loans Restricted Funds Grants ˜ $42,480,784 – This is the largest line item in the entire budget and it is one that has received very little media and public scrutiny. One would assume that the incoming councillors will need to become informed on the details of this and would want ongoing updates as to its progress and the state of the project. I sincerely hope it comes in on budget and is delivered in the stated relevant time frame and that it doesn’t blow out. This will be a big issue for the incoming councillors and I don’t think I have seen anyone make comment on it so far this election.
Wiseman Ferry Road various projects – It concerns me that such a large amount of money is being spent across that area because of the following reasons. If it is a safety priority, how was it left in that state for so long that it requires tens of millions to rectify the issues? If safety is not the priority then it seems like a lot of money to be spending in an area with a small population base. I would like to know more information about this as it sticks out like a sore thumb in the operational plan.
