2018-07-16 General Committee Meeting Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                  16 JULY 2018


   o   76.4% of respondents viewed Council’s overall performance as good and very good.
   o   Top performing services were Waste Management, Customer Service, Disaster
       Management, Community Safety, Management and Supervisory Officers, Quality of
       Elected Council and Financial Management.
   o   Areas for improvement included Parking, Facilities, Economic Development/ Local
       Employment, Road Maintenance, responding to the Community, Road Construction, and
       Providing Leadership and Advocacy.
 Although our end of year financial statements have not yet been finalised, it is clear that we
   have had another successful financial year. Revenues were above budget and expenses
   were below budget. This will be reported to Council separately in due course.
 Council has successfully achieved another unmodified audit from the Queensland Audit
   Office with the 2016/17 financial statements being signed off by the QAO in late 2017.
 Council undertook a successful Enterprise Bargaining negotiation process with employee and
   union representatives. This resulted in an 87% “yes” vote in June 2018 with the formal
   Certified Agreement to be registered with the QIRC in coming months.
 The Audit and Risk Committee has continued to add value to our compliance and
   performance for governance and finance. This has included an oversight of our strategic
   risks, review of key governance and financial policies, review of organisational KPIs,
   development of Business Continuity Planning etc. Our two external members of the Audit and
   Risk Committee in particular have added significantly to our overall governance practices.
   Although not high profile, this Committee plays an important role in making sure that Council
   “dots the i’s and crosses the t’s” both in governance and in the management of risk. Council’s
   Internal Audit Program included internal audits on:-
   o Bank reconciliations;
   o Rates and utility charges; and
   o Insurance strategy and insurance renewal processes.
 Our organisational structure was adopted in March 2017 and came into effect in July 2017.
   Our new Director Infrastructure Services and Director Environment and Sustainable
   Development were appointed as well as our new Environment Manager.
 We continued to focus on good governance practices and adopted or updated a range of
   polices in support of that goal. These included:
   o Administrative Action Complaints Process;
   o Audit and Risk Committee Charter;
   o Councillors' Expense Reimbursement Policy;
   o Internal Audit Policy and Terms of Reference;
   o Local Law Making Process;
   o Public Interest Disclosure Policy and Procedure; and
   o Insurance Renewal Procedure (Internal document).
 Our enterprise risk management has been further developed with risk management practices
   being further embedded into Council operations. The Executive Team reviews strategic risks
   on a quarterly basis and operational risk registers have been established at a Departmental
   level. Our comprehensive Business Continuity Plans are now complete and will be tested
   soon.
 Council continued to look at ways in which we can improve services. One of the most
   important steps this year was the development of a Level of Service catalogue which was
   adopted as part of our 2018/19 budget process. This is the first time that Council has had
   service by service details of what is provided, costs, response times, benchmarking etc.



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