Financial Sustainability Review

Wollongong City Council is planning an extensive community engagement program to help develop options for how Council can address its long term financial sustainability.

Council is not broke.  However, like most councils across NSW, Wollongong needs to put more money into renewing and maintaining our roads, footpaths, pools, buildings and other key community infrastructure, much of which is more than 40 years old.

To try and address this issue, over the past five years Council has improved its operating result and been able to reinvest over $20 million into infrastructure renewal.

Long term financial sustainability was raised in 2012 as part of the Wollongong 2022 Community Strategic Plan and more recently in a NSW Government report ‘Financial Sustainability of the New South Wales Local Government Sector’.

Council is well positioned in the short to medium term. Council has an annual budget of $243.6 million, and an assets portfolio with a replacement cost of more than $3.7 billion. This includes our roads, footpaths, storm water drains, buildings, pools and other infrastructure.

Wollongong City Lord Mayor Councillor Gordon Bradbery OAM assured the community that no decisions had been made on how to achieve long term sustainability and that it was vital that the community have a voice in how we address this issue.

“We are embarking on broad community engagement over the next three months to investigate with the community, staff and Councillors three specific areas: operational improvements, service levels, and opportunities for increased revenue and funding,” Cr Bradbery said.

“We will also have an independent facilitator work with a randomly selected community panel to develop options to address our financial position. This panel will meet to review and discuss Council’s services, budgets and revenue options and provide recommendations to Council.

“We’ll also be calling on the broader community to make submissions to this panel to include in their considerations, as well as running workshops with staff and councillors and hosting online discussion forums with the community.

“To help with this, Council will be placing information packs on our website over the next few weeks.”

The panel’s recommendations will be combined with staff, councillor and community feedback and put out on exhibition in November.

The questions being considered are:

  • What are the priority services for Council to deliver and to what level should Council deliver these services?
  • What are the opportunities to achieve operational improvements?
  • How should Council fund the delivery of these services to the desired level?

Proposed changes to Council’s budget and operations will need to be reflected in our Resource Strategy and the five-year Delivery Program which would be put on public exhibition in December.

Council’s Financial Sustainability Review Discussion Board will be available shortly on our website through the Have Your Say pages.

For more information on Council’s Financial Sustainability, you can visit our website Wollongong City Council