2016-03-07 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                   7 MARCH 2016


Future Challenges

We still have some unfinished business that the second term Council will need to focus on. As
examples, the following are identified:
 Finalising Asset Management Plans at a detailed level
   A detailed Audit Capability Assessment is underway. Ultimately, we will need to finalise
   detailed Asset Management Plans for each of our asset classes and link those plans to our
   long term financial planning.
 Implementation of strategies
   A lot of work was done during this first term in developing a range of plans and strategies
   (e.g. Social Strategy, Local Economic Plan, Noosa River, Electric Buses etc). The
   implementation of those plans will need to be well executed.
 New Town Planning Scheme
   This term saw the completion of many of the background studies and reports that will inform
   the development of the new Planning Scheme. The process for the development of the new
   scheme has been adopted and will be rolled out in the next term.
 Transport Strategy
   The completion of the Traffic Study provided good data on some of the issues and the
   community engagement on the Transport Strategy is underway. The Transport Strategy is a
   key strategy for completion in the next term.
 Digital Strategy
   While we have focused on improving our ICT systems to enable better efficiencies, we are
   only now starting to consider how we can improve our customers experience through an
   appropriate digital strategy.
 Matching our programs to our capacity
   As can be seen from this report, we took on a huge range of issues in our first term. Large
   capital programs, bedding down the de-amalgamation to establish a functional Council,
   introducing a range of new initiatives such as community juries, undertaking a number of zero
   based budgets, Corporate Plan development, development of major strategies etc – the list
   goes on. Our enthusiasm to do so much probably exceeded our capacity to deliver. Many
   staff worked incredibly hard to make sure that programs were delivered. To some extent, we
   aimed to deliver a typical four year list of projects in 2 ¼ years while at the same time,
   implementing a de-amalgamation.

Thanks

It would be remiss of me if I didn’t take this opportunity to pass on some thanks. In no particular
order, I would like to thank the following for their role in re-establishing our Council and the
Council’s first term:
 Transfer Manager, Peter Franks and the Transfer Team
   The Transfer Team did a great job in positioning the new Council for opening day. We were
   able to seamlessly open for business after 1 January 2014 as a result. The amount of work
   involved in this process should not be under-estimated.
 Noosa Council staff
   I would like to place on the record the incredible effort of our Council staff over the last 26
   months. They have worked hard to deliver excellent service to the Noosa community. This
   has been recognised with a range of awards for our staff including Finance Manager of the
   Year, Procurement Manager of the Year and the LGMA Above and Beyond Award.


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