Financial Performance Report – October 2023

Good on you. It's going on well. Out there. You'll have to send us a link for some fundraising. We certainly can. I think we're fundraising for my wife because I've been removed on the 1st of December. I'll get all the staff to go at the end of the month, the best mo wins. Pauline, welcome back. Nice to see you. Nice to see the smiling faces on the table. Thanks, Dave. Pauline, would you like to give us an overview on our current financial performance for October 2023?

Absolutely. So financial performance year to date to October continues to be positive with operating revenues outperforming our forecast and operating expenditures slightly under forecast. Operating revenue is $2.2 million above budget which comprises, the majority of this comprises $1.3 million relating to interest revenue which is resulting from the investment in term deposits at about 5%. 700,000 relates of goods and services goods and services for holiday parks, waste and Council facilities and $327,000 relates to operational grants. This has been offset by a below budget Fees and Charges. Some of this is timing and some issues in terms of getting some invoicing. Into the system as well but there are some areas that are down here today. Operational expenditure is $925,000 underspent with employee costs $901,000 under budget and materials and services $55,000 on the budget. Overall council's year-to-date operating position at October is $3.1 million above budget. Of this, $2.9 million of these funds are currently unconstrained and 2.5 coming from general Council top-up operations and. $4.4 million or $400,000 from holiday parks and waste. This surplus will be utilised to offset the forecast deficit that we adopted at budget review 1 and will fund operations and emerging works during the remainder of this financial year. Capital revenues above budget with a receipt of grants from QRA and other programs and expenditure is also slightly above budget year-to-date due to timing of delivery. Council is currently holding $126 million in cash reserves with $40 million invested in term deposits. This position will degrade through to 30 June 2024 as business as usual operations occur and capital and grant programs including the QRA funded projects are delivered. Just for note, just for Councillors to note, while council's cash cover is currently equivalent to 13.8 months, if we removed externally restricted funds, which is grants, levies and developer contribution, this would reduce cash cover to 9.7 months and reduce in terms of restricted funds, which is disaster recovery provisions, fleet replacement and landfill provisions, that would reduce to $7.6 million. Would usually aim to three to six months' coverage, so we are above that, but also we need to take into account that we still need about $40 million to deliver our capital program. There's a reason why we're holding so much cash. So with third of the financial year complete council's financial performance continues. To be strong.