July 25 meeting highlights
Keys to the City
1/ Mariners to get the keys to the city in a civic reception to be held at Leagues Club Park, Gosford, on Saturday, August 5.
The won the A League a couple of months ago, remember?
Keep your eye out for more details on this to come soon.
Diary date
2/ Councillor training will start in October for interested residents.
Plan to go along: you don’t have to commit until late next year but this will be a good opportunity to get a feel for the role.
End of year surplus
3/ Federal Government provides the annual financial assistance grant (FAG) for 2023-24 early, beefing up Council’s end of year surplus for financial year 2022-23.
Councils know the FAG is coming but can never be sure of when and how much it will be in any individual year. The Central Coast averages $240M over a ten year period but it is never a nice cut-and-dried $24M each year. So it makes forecasting the FAG difficult.
“For the 2022/2023 FY, at the time of preparing this report, Council has a preliminary consolidated net operating result surplus of $27.0M, before capital income, which is favourable to budget by $19.9M and a preliminary net operating surplus including capital income of $108.9M which is favourable to budget by $29.6M,” the tabled report explains.
So in June, just before the end of last financial year, council got $18.4 more than expected in a pre-paid FAG meant for this year.
“Accordingly, an unbudgeted $18.4M is included in the operating grants and contribution amount and reflects a significant amount of the positive operating result variance of $19.9M,” Council explained.
Customer Charter
4/ Customer charter for sewer and water will go on public exhibition for your comments. Yes, your comments; it will be open to all residents and will lob on the https://www.yourvoiceourcoast.com/ website any day now. Check out also the library survey.
Uni to transfer land to Council for $1
5/ See previous story here:
https://www.cccouncilwatch.com.au/a-win-for-ourimbah-residents/
A new Aboriginal Advisory Group
6/ See more here: https://www.cccouncilwatch.com.au/aboriginal-advisory-membership-announced/
A simpler plan to spend developer contributions
7/ Council has rolled into one contribution plan all its Section 7.12 contribution plans including some old ones dating back to before the merger of Wyong and Gosford local government areas in 2016.
This is good news for residents. It means when a developer pays a contribution to local infrastructure, it will now go into one big pot.
It is a big pot; more than $200m that Administrator Rik Hart is keen to see roll out the door into infrastructure projects.
In the past, it was in a series of small pots, subject to a whole pile of individual rules and regulations and rarely with enough money in the individual pots to do anything: now it is one big pot and money can be ladled out for work around the coast such as bike paths, community facilitate upgrades; and the new regional library.
