A suggestion that Central Coast Council use developer contributions for operational matters was labelled ‘’economic vandalism” at council’s April 27 meeting.
Cr Rebecca Gale wanted to accept the February and March investment reports with an amendment allowing the CEO to investigate both developer contributions and water and sewer contributions to be borrowed within council for operational matters.
Cr Gale asked the CEO Gary Murphy if it was possible before the pandemic outbreak to foresee the huge drop in February and March investment returns of more than $15m and the more than $10M decrease in transactional cash accounts and cash at hand.
The CEO Gary Murphy said the short answer was no.
Cr Gale said the extraordinary circumstances needed the “board” to think collectively and to think boldly and creatively to protect and care for residents.
It was prudent to allow the CEO to investigate the use of contributions, she said.
Cr Greg Best said that some $200M could be used from contribution funds as a line of credit within council with more ‘’humane” interest rates.
Mr Murphy said the State Government assistance package announced that day talked about another funding opportunity, through Treasury Corps, but the council was reliant on third parties to get information in a timely matter on these issues.
Cr Kyle MacGregor called the idea economic vandalism and said the contributions were restrictive funds for a reason. They were to be used for parks and footpaths and were paid by developers.
Once those developer funds went away, they would be hard to put back in and while he appreciated the intent of the motion he could not agree with the method which was just economic vandalism which “we see time and time again from these people’’.
He said he thought the idea was dangerous and possibly illegal.
Deputy Mayor Jane Smith said a report from the Department of Local Government said some councils have been investigated for this recently and she asked if there had been a relaxation of the rules since then but staff could not say.
Cr Doug Vincent, who came to the meeting late, agreed with Cr MacGregor, saying this sort of change shouldn’t be done on the run.
He asked what had happened about a previous item which gave the CEO authority to investigate a loan of $50M and the Mayor Lisa Matthews explained that item had not been debated but had been voted through en masse at the start of the meeting.
The CEO says it might have been more appropriate to have this matter dealt with the other item but as it was only calling for a report he couldn’t see any issues.
Cr Gale said the intent was simply to give the CEO greater flexibility to be creative to come up with solutions.
“The key word is to investigate and a report will come back to the councillors,’’ she said.
The Mayor said the vote was tied and she used her casting vote to defeat the motion.
Source
Agenda item 4.6
Central Coast Council meeting, April 27.