Wagga City Council will avoid having to scrap any of its community services in the next financial year, but has said it will still need to find a way to mitigate its maintenance backlog amid predicted rolling deficits.
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Councillors at their meeting on Monday night unanimously endorsed council's next budget, which includes an infrastructure spend of $85 million for big-ticket capital works.
Council has managed to balance its budget for the 2021-2022 financial year, but it has forecast deficits for the nine financial years after that.
Speaking on Monday night, Councillor Paul Funnell warned of what he claimed was an overreliance on grant funding and overspending on projects to the detriment of key community services.
"If we have to live on grants we are at the behest of higher levels of government. And heaven forbid I am not suggesting the elimination of [capping rates] until we live within our means," he said.
"Without the grants, we sink. We didn't go hard enough in cuts."
Mr Funnell today announced his resignation from council, effective immediately, for unrelated health concerns.
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Councillor Vanessa Keenan also raised concerns at the meeting about "cost-shifting" and council's "reliance on grants".
"While we are grateful for the support we have received, we do have a lot of cost-shifting. We do still have a lot of gaps in equity for services and infrastructure and the like for our community," she said.
"There's a heck of a lot that we still don't have as a community and that our community expects us to stand up and fight for."
In the next financial year, the council expects to have an operating income of $116.7 million dollars, of which $12.9 million or 11 per cent will be made up of grants.
In addition, the council has secured a forecast $82.4 million for capital grants that will be spent on significant projects like the $6.8 million Riverside development.
One of council's plans to raise much-needed funds for the city's maintenance backlog, which sits at about $86 million, relies on the NSW government allowing a significant special rate variation to raise funds from Wagga homeowners.
Director of corporate services Natalie Te Pohe warned in April that without additional revenue or cutting costs the strain on the city's vital infrastructure, such as roads and sewerage, would only increase.
Ms Te Pohe yesterday told The Daily Advertiser that no cuts had been specifically identified in the next budget, but that the council was unlikely to have a special rate variation commence in the 2022-2023 financial year as it had originally flagged.
She said the council would "look at a range of mechanisms" to address the backlog, including the possibility of grants for road maintenance.