Noosa Council Draft 2023/2024 Budget For Consultation

Good morning everyone. I'd like to declare the meeting open. I'd also like to acknowledge that we're meeting with traditional lands of the Kabi Kabi people and I pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging. I note that all councils are intended to Councillor Jurisevic who has a medical appointment and is hoping to join us as soon as possible. So we will until that time, Linda, put down Councillor Jurisevic as an apology. Thank you. We have one item on our Special Meeting agenda today and that is Noosa Council draft 2022 2023-2024 budget for consultation. We have our Acting Director Corporate Services Trent Grauf and Pauline Coles, our manager here to present the report. Thank you Trent and Pauline for being here and for all your hard work to make this report.

Thank you Councillors. Under Local Government Act and supported by Local Government Regulation, councils are required to adopt a budget each money to a year. Council's budget process runs from December through to June so it's quite a significant annual project for Councillors as officers requiring considerable organisational officer and Councillor support and input to ensure that we align our budget for the next financial year in line with our Corporate Plan objectives, our operational plan targets, our financial sustainability policy requirements and our liveability priorities. A number of challenges have yet again been presented in this year's budget as occurs most last years. To most households and businesses across the region and nationally, Council is facing unprecedented economic conditions. Inflationary price pressures on imports, fuel and logistics, construction materials and contracted services well as across the wages. As and our borrowing for our investments. As we all know, CPI has reached its highest level for Queensland in this last quarter of 7.4% since the 90s. For context for council's budget, even a 1% increase in inflation can equate to 1 dollars in additional costs. We also faced for a second year in a row with land valuations with significant increases which we have dealt with through the rating process. The aim of this report and the Special Meeting is to see Council approval for the budget be made draft publicly available for community review and consultation prior to its finalisation and adoption at the end of June. As such the agenda in front of you does not include any budget information as this will only be released publicly following today's draft. This is the third year the Council has undertaken public consultation the feedback on its budget. While there's no regulatory requirement to do so, Council remains only one of a small number of local government authorities in Queensland who continues to take proactive steps for its budget to ensure community engagement. Um, but it is important to recognise the extensive consultation undertaken prior to the commencement of the budget, not only with the Corporate Plan, which was recently adopted by Council, which received thousands of responses from the community, but before that with the corporate, with the Liveability Survey from the prior year. These um, these are provided robust community feedback to setting the priorities for the 2024 budget, and this second round of engagement is about fine tuning and ensuring that we have stuck with the priorities and are on the right track. It is also important to note as we close out that this draft budget still excludes the finalisation of council's special rates and separate charges, which are levied on ratepayers in precincts such as Noosa Junction, Noosa Waters and Hastings Street. Separately, Council is currently engaging with these precinct ratepayers through their respective business and associations and will finalise these over the coming month through the final budget. Council, you're happy to. I'm happy to spend the next few minutes talking through some of the key elements of the draft budget. Thank you, Trent. Thank you. Let's start with our base budget. It's what we call our base, business as usual, back to basics, or like some budget, as some Council will call it. It's about making sure we do the day-to-day as we do every year as good as we can. Some of the key challenges or changes with our their base budget. Include the 2024 election costs which are on charge from thank you for

Amelia Lorentson10:32

I have a question. How will we be addressing issues raised by community in the budget draft consultation?

Yes. I'll move that we. You don't need to, but you can. I'll move that we reinstate Standing Orders. I'll second that. Thank you. All in favour? Unanimous. Thank you. I'll move that we reinstate Standing Orders. I'll second that. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, Trent and Pauline. Trent, thank you so much. Thank you, guys at the end, but I want to thank you at the beginning, too, because there's been so much work involved in this. There has been sleepless nights, there's been two 3am starts, so. There has been a huge amount of capital, personal capital that has gone into this budget and we really appreciate you bearing with us. There's been a lot of robust discussions, but thank you for all your hard work and please pass on our genuine thanks. And appreciation to the team. So the draft 2023-2024 budget has been prepared with a back to basics focus and with reference to the recently adopted Corporate Plan. All Councillors have been heavily involved in the budget process which has been workshopped extensively and our primary goal and consideration has to been minimise as much as possible the impact of costs to ratepayers having to take into account the inflationary pressures on us too as a Council to continue to deliver the same levels of service to the community. Our budget discussions have been formulated around our recently adopted Corporate Plan as well as 2022 Liveability Survey by annual Community Satisfaction Survey conducted in the previous year as well as feedback received through the 2022-2023 budget. Feedback from the corporate feedback from the Corporate Plan process as well as the Liveability Survey was significant and has provided sound insight into the community's priorities with more than 1,000 responses received in both instance. We are now seeking our community's feedback once again on the proposed draft 2023-2024 budget which is open for consultation and feedback for two weeks from Monday today the 22nd of May 2023 through to Sunday the 4th of June for residents, businesses, community groups and business associations. We want to hear from you. About your priorities, ideas, suggestions and areas of concern. Responses from you our community will inform and shape the final decisions for adoption of the budget from the 30th of June 2023. There is a lot in this budget but highlights included, Trent has alluded to many of them, a continued approach to adopting a modest operating surplus. All key statutory financial sustainability targets being met. Freezing of all levies to ensure keep rates and general rates as low as possible and rates in general. A capital program of 39 million invested to maintain and improve the condition of existing infrastructure as well as provide future growth. Disaster infrastructure program estimated over 80 million to reinstate infrastructure impacted by the February 2022 floods with funding provided by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority as Trent has said. Bridge renewal, Noosaville mundi road resource recovery centre expansion as well as stabilisation works at Ross Crescent and increased investment in the shires road network. Proposed rates will be kept below CPI 5.5% for the majority of ratepayers who continue to remain on minimum rate. Also the formation of a reconciliation plan is part of this year's budget. The challenges have been significant and discussions very robust with agreement in some areas and disagreement in others. There are aspects of this budget that I don't support. No doubt other councils feel the same about different areas but all areas have been heavily debated and like all decisions put forward ultimate decisions are determined by the majority support. The draft budget we put out for community consultation today is a collective one from all Councillors who sit this around table. This has in so many ways been the most challenging of budgets. Councillor Wilkie, I think you said the most challenging since de-amalgamation. Record inflation, rising costs, staff shortages have all occurred. We've also as a Council had to take into account the re-evaluation of our land for the second year in a row. In setting rates and charges the Valuer-General's office has again undertaken a further land valuation for the second year to capture property prices increases in Noosa Shire. The average land valuation as Trent said increases just over 62% across the Shire and the distribution between localities and property types in the Shire has been very diverse. Broadly valuation increases are ranging from no increase in land value all the way up to over 300 percent for some properties. I'd like to quote from the agenda of our corporate services Acting Director who said the challenge for Council is then setting the general rate which is calculated by multiplying the unimproved land valuation by a rate in the dollar for each different category of land. Been every effort has made to moderate the impact of valuation increases and has managed to keep most properties within or below CPI. However, it is not possible for Council to mitigate the full impact of the State government imposed valuation increases for those minimal number of outlier properties very significant valuation increases without creating significant adverse impacts to the majority of ratepayers in the Shire who are on the minimum rate. So it has been challenging, but I think we've come to a good result. And despite all that, we as a collective Council have worked incredibly hard to deliver our draft budget that we now seek your input on. This is the third year that Noosa Council has engaged in public consultations for its budget. There's currently only one on a small number of local government authorities in Queensland taking these proactive steps to improve the level of community engagement through the budget process. We welcome our community's feedback, we thank you for participating in the budget, and we really, as I said, we really want to hear from you. This is your budget, this is your community, and again, Pauline Trent, thank you so much, and to our CEO who is also, and our Director who's here, and directors listening, they have all sat in on this budget, and as I said, been really challenging with everything that's been presented to us over the last couple of months, but I think we're in a good space, and I think it's a good budget, and it's one that, as I said, it's a collective, and again. Thank you for your hard work.

Frank Wilkie20:11

Just to reinforce what the Mayor has already said, I'd like to mention that despite two land valuation rises in two years and near record inflation rates, the majority of ratepayers will receive a 5.5% increase with over 4,000 property owners receiving a decrease. Moderating the impacts of valuation rises in a row and the highest inflation rates in three decades have been major challenges in preparing this draft budget for public consultation. As the Mayor said, consultation is not mandatory but provides a good way to foster understanding of a complex process and gain feedback from our community regarding priorities. Two land valuations in two years have caused stress to property owners and added further complexity. In an hour-long presentation to Noosa Council the Valuer-General staff stated Noosa and some other Council areas received two valuations in a row because they were markets where property sale prices had flattened off and were continuing to escalate. With land valuations soaring in some cases as high as 300% this understandably caused some to believe rates would also increase by a similar rate. Fortunately, although it counts councils must base their rates on land valuations they can adjust the rate in the dollar to minimise impact on ratepayers. Although Noosa Shire recorded an average 62% increase with some properties as high as 200-300%, the vast majority of ratepayers, 87%, will see rate increases below CPI of around 5.5%. In order to moderate the high level of increase and slide and moderate the bell curve of property valuations back into a minimal rate increase, means that some properties over 4,000 will see their rates decrease this year. Despite these challenges, the draft budget proposes an approach that allows our Council to maintain and improve services and the public and natural assets our community love and is financially sustainable. Margie, I'm looking forward to the feedback we receive from our community on this.

Amelia Lorentson32:29

I'll keep my little talk just brief but I do want to sort of reference the consultation. To me consultations really important something that we as a Council have committed to and I hope we're doing it better now that we've got a little bit more experience. The process highlights transparency and it also needs to be the budget has been informed by the Corporate Plan, the Liveability Survey, Community Satisfaction Survey and we're again inviting feedback in the draft. The other bit of consultation, and I want to really reinforce it, we've got seven of us around the table. We live and breathe this. To residents in this community and, you know, this morning I started off with a run through the national park. Yesterday I was at a Boardriders. Saturday I was with the Mayor and other Councillors at Cooroy Pomona Lions celebrations. We live and breathe this place. We love this place. And I know, hand on heart everyone around this table, the executive and staff, we work hard to protect what we love and that's Noosa. So I hope that when you get the draft budget please know that there has been a lot of sweat, a lot, of robust discussion and we hope we've listened to our community and I hope we've met your needs and expectations and in particular the focus on back to basics, when you're on the street, that's what community are asking, they want to see what we do, not just hear about it. I hope we've delivered that in the budget. Again thank you Trent, Pauline and our incredible hard-working staff. We may not say it, but we so appreciate you. We may not say enough but we really appreciate you and to the Acting CEO Larry Sengstock. I would like to acknowledge Larry and Kerri Contini in the room as well. Thank you.