Wagga City Council working to balance the books in budget bonanza

On Monday night councillors will vote on a balanced budget for the coming financial year, followed by three years of deficit.

In the out years, the budget is predicted to balance from 2027/28 to 2031/32, and small surplus in 2032/33.

In a report prepared for Monday's council meeting, Council's chief operating officer Scott Gray noted arriving at a balanced position in the coming years was a "complex and challenging task".

"These ongoing adjustments will continue to have a substantial impact on the delivery of projects and services, which will require Council to be highly innovative and efficient in delivering the Operational Plan and Delivery Plan items," Mr Gray said.

"These figures will again be reviewed as part of the 2024/25 Long Term Financial Plan to ensure that a balance budget for at least the initial financial year is achieved."

In other news

Councillor Richard Foley said that while he could see significant work had been done to get the budget back in the black, council would inevitably need to increase revenue into the future.

He is currently investigating the prospect of creating a council-owned housing trust to provide low-cost housing in the city, and act as a revenue source for council. He said he thinks it would be worth applying for a special rate variation to get the project off the ground without having to go into debt.

"What they're doing is fortifying the position until the next term of council," he said.

"In the next term, you can expect rate rises, because they're inevitable.

"I'm looking at the model of a housing trust, because I think we need to get something that's productive ... that's why I'm looking at a special rate variation that is exclusively to go towards the construction of residential property

"If you build 1000 residential properties ... it's many millions a year in rental returns."

Independent councillor Georgie Davies said she didn't think there was a strong enough economic case for a special rate variation for housing specifically and council staff had done great job of balancing the books in a very challenging economic environment

"Considering we have a lot of capital projects coming up ... I think it's a good result," she said.

"I think there's going to be some ongoing adjustments as we go through the year. That's just the nature of the world we're living in at the moment - prices keep going up and things have just got to give.

"Our role as councillors is to drive efficiency, and really start driving efficiencies as prioritising what projects need to happen."

Cr Davies said she was pleased to see there was a significant budget allocated for Wagga's roads - $28.5 million, which includes one-off projects of $17.7m, and recurrent programs of $10.8m. Last year's spending was just over $20m.

An NRMA report last year said Wagga's road repair backlog was over $180m - more than the council's entire yearly budget.

Council received a number of communications about their commitment to best practice environmental stewardship during the display period for financial and operational plans

Council has a number of detailed performance indicators that relate to sustainable development, conservation, and reducing carbon emissions.

A number of locals have raised questions about whether "community satisfaction with availability of car parking is increasing" is in line with their broader environmental goals.

"This is a measure that prioritises car transport over other forms of transport. It should support increasing satisfaction with transport in general including the cycle network," wrote one correspondent.

"We need to move beyond this narrow minded 20th century, urban sprawl, fossil fuel based mentality," wrote another.

Others applauded commitments already made to pursuing sustainability through tree planting initiatives, and committing to net zero emissions within council by 2040, and the wider community by 2050.

Deputy mayor and Greens member Jenny McKinnon said that while she understood why people might be concerned about the environmental impact of more cars on the road, Wagga was not able to offer alternatives to people driving.

She said more parking would inevitably be needed in the future.

"We can see in the longer term what's going to happen in the CBD area is that more and more buildings are going up that rely on street parking," she said.

"Because we're a regional centre, we have people driving into Wagga for events and all that sort of stuff. We don't have a good public transport system, so I think we do need to be providing parking - but not necessarily street parking.

"It may be that we've got some parking stations that are going to mean people are going to have to walk a block or two to get where they need to go, but that will be built into the way we do our planning."

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