Jobs expected to be on offer at Central Coast Council next financial year include marketing officers, open space and recreation planners and engineering undergraduates.
The marketing officers would quantify customer insights, create new surveys and assess ongoing customer sentiment.
The engineering undergraduates would take on asset investigations and respond to internal and external customer requests and “build the talent pipeline” for highly technical roles.
But from an employer brand point of view Council admits it is facing issues regarding reputation.
“Job security, and overall culture/morale is also impacting on the number of candidates seeking employment with Council,” Council said.
And with 56 per cent of the workforce over the age of 45, Council is highly reliant on mature aged workers.
“This reliance is not yet conversely supported by the recruitment and retention of younger staff where people aged between 16 and 25 represent only 1.8 per cent of permanent employees, opening a terrific opportunity for youth employment programs,” Council says.
The information came from the recently-exhibited Resourcing Strategy.
The new staff would be part of the current headcount.
At the conclusion of last year’s restructure to cut costs, the headcount had been reduced by about 300 to 2,183 and is now less than that.
“Central Coast Council is a complex organisation employing 2,172 people (headcount) across a range of services,” the strategy says.
Council has admitted it has not planned to increase or improve these services in the next 10 years because such a scenario would require a much larger increase in rates than the community would be prepared to pay.
In its latest long term financial plan the Council said that taking into consideration the community’s anger and frustration surrounding Council’s financial situation, a decision was made to only focus on maintaining Council’s financial sustainability and securing the emergency loans repayments, rather than forecasting an increase in Council’s services, which would cost more.
Council has now applied to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) to maintain the current one-off rate variation of 13 per cent plus the annual rate peg for another seven years after 2024.
It said that would allow Council to: demonstrate to commercial lenders that Council was able to meet ongoing loan commitments; Maintain services at least at current levels; embed further productivity improvements across the organisation and establish an ongoing business improvement and service review program.
“The Maintain SV scenario shows a path that allows Council to maintain the current level of services for the community via the SV being maintained for a further seven years and restraining its expenditure through productivity / efficiency savings with limited adjustments to service levels,” Council said.
It assumed a reduction in depreciation from a focus on asset renewals and limited new assets constructed and that the annual operating surpluses match the expected principal repayment requirements for Council’s loan load.
It would mean that In 2031-32, when the rate variation ended, an organisational restructure would be undertaken to rebalance the organisation to the reduced revenue.
This would lead to a reduction of $6M in employee costs and $4M in materials and services which would result in an estimated operating surplus of $1.5M which would be necessary for remaining principal debt repayment.
The Resourcing Strategy showed that as at June 30, 2020, the cost to bring Council’s assets to satisfactory standard was over $205M or a backlog ratio of 3.43 per cent.
This backlog was above the two per cent benchmark set by the Office of Local Government and one of the issues the community was told would be fixed by amalgamation of their two former councils.
The plan said the population of the Central Coast was approximately 343,968 with projections for 415,000 people by 2036.
“To meet the projected population growth it is estimated that an additional 41,500 dwellings and 24,600 new jobs will be needed to support the increase in the population,” Council said.
Merilyn Vale
The justification for the IPART increases uses a lot of spin from the Administrator
hiring new employees as if that will fix the financial situation? The desperate grab for more money from residents which will be a big imposition on the ratepayers well into the future.
We would not need the Bank loans if the Council stayed within their budget constraints. Why would we be required to service the Bank loans for the next 10 years? The Administrator assures us the debt is being paid out? Is it? Or is he planning to borrow more money? Where has the money from the sale of Central Coast assets? Disastrous though they were.
Remember it was not the ratepayers that created this financial crisis! In business if you were in this situation you could not increase your products prices repeatedly for 10 years! You would not have any customers!