Rates will rise by 4.8 per cent from July 1, after Central Coast Council adopted its budget and operational plan for the 2024-25 financial year at its June 25 meeting.
The rate rise was the maximum Council could adopt as set by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal Rate (IPART).
For the first time, IPART set different rates across the state, using a new formula.
The Coast received one of the lowest maximum increases.
Blacktown Council’s maximum rate peg is 7.1 per cent; Camden Council’s is 8.2 and Armidale Regional’s is the lowest at 4.5 per cent.
The increase will bring in an extra $39.6M to the Council while employee costs will go up by $18.1M.
The employee costs are assumptions based on award requirements.
Waste Annual Charges will increase by six per cent to reflect the cost of providing the service.
Council says the Domestic Waste Management Service charges have not increased since 2021-22.
“The increase to these charges in 2024-25 is due to the increased cost to provide the service and is an annual increase of $31 and $28 for the eastern and western areas respectively,” Council said.
Some user fees and charges – what residents pay for Council services such as pool entry, car parking, development applications, etc – go up by six per cent.
Council says the user fees and charges have been set in line with the cost of providing the service, bench-marking with the market, or as stipulated by legislation, as applicable.
“More than 10 per cent of fees are set by legislation, with most of those not being able to be increased to reflect the cost of providing the associated service,” Council said.
The fees set by legislation went up higher than Council set out in the exhibited draft, to reflect the March Quarter CPI figures published in late April 2024.
Other charges went down.
The new list was tabled at the meeting.
As announced earlier in the year, Council removed the remaining subsidy for the junior sports usage fees.
More than 400 responses from the public were sent in when Council put the draft budget and operational plan on public exhibition.
Of these, 283 submissions related to the coastal protection works at Wamberal, 14 to the Kibble Park project and the planned demolition of the existing Gosford Library and 92 submissions complained about roads, drainage, lack of cycleways and other facilities.
Changes since public exhibition include deferral by two years of the relocation of Central Coast Aero Club at Warnervale Airport which has given Council $650,000 to spend elsewhere.
The budget for “essential upgrade works at Warnervale Airport” has been cut by $615,000 down to $115,000, with “project delivery rephased” given as the reason.
$750,000 has been added to the budget for “land acquisition for Colongra Sporting Facility Development”.
A long list of minor changes to the proposed capital works program includes project rephasings and some new projects such as change room renewals at “various leisure centres” and an upgrade to a district playspace at Illoura Reserve, Davistown.
Council expects to receive $727.5M in operational revenue in 2024-25 and to spend $716.8M on services and operational functions.
It proposes to spend $308.5M on a capital works program in 2024-25 but only about $70M of that comes from the general fund; the rest comes from other restricted funds or grants.
The works program is targeted at renewing existing assets with: $125.7M, or 40.6 per cent, to address the asset backlog; $140.2M, or 45.2 per cent, to upgrade existing assets to provide additional capacity or functionality; and $44.0M, or 14.2 per cent, for new assets where the project predominately provides additional capacity or function.
By asset type, the works program shows that almost 40 per cent will be spent on water and sewer, 24 per cent on roads, 20 per cent on water supply, 14 per cent on buildings and six per cent on plant and fleet.
That leaves less than one per cent (0.4 per cent) for work on pools and 2.7 per cent for footpaths.
Council says an increase in projects would depend on external grant funding with another $28.5M in projects pending possible grants.
The operational plan sets out what works Council will undertake next year under five different departments or themes with targets and timelines.
For example, under the theme of Responsible, the Coast has more than 2,000km of roads and Council plans to re-surface 32km, renew 15km and renew or build 2.7km of drains.
Under the theme of Liveable, it will continue to build the regional library at Gosford and target more than 7,000 new members across all its library branches.
Council has added a Development Assessment Improvement Plan to improve the Development Assessment service in the Planning department.
The operational plan includes a long-term financial plan.
That plan is written with the 13 per cent rate increase from 2021 staying on our rates.
The increase was actually 15 per cent but two per cent was CPI and is not slated to be removed.
Administrator Rik Hart presided over the Council’s special rate variation in 2021 which resulted in a one-off increase to our rates.
IPART’s original decision was that the increase would stay for three years.
Hart said three years wasn’t enough and got a seven-year extension which meant that after 10 years the 13 per cent increase was to be removed.
But Council is planning its long-term future with the 13 per cent in place.
Meanwhile, each year, our rates continue to increase yearly by the annual rate peg.
Merilyn Vale