A Cashed-up Council
As the Federal Government gets busy stimulating national debt, Sydney City Council is watching its spare change grow to more than $50M.
The latest Budget review of the second quarter of 08/09 reveals that Council’s operational surplus has grown to $50.5M: $11.6M higher than anticipated.
A Council spokesperson said the excess cash ‘reflects slight increases in operating income, and a number of operational expenditure savings.’
Sources of increased income include the $14.693M Council collected from parking stations, and an extra $394,000 from residential strata titles.
Savings include higher than expected staff vacancies, less investment in consultancy services, and lower than budgeted spending on infrastructure projects, like parks and drainage maintenance, property acquisition and capital works investment.
Dr Joanne Keely, Director of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government at The University of Sydney, suggested that the savings point to a degree of Council ineptitude, leading to the key question: ‘Do they have the ability to actually implement these projects’
‘The report suggests that right now they’re over the capacity to do what they planned to do,’ she said
But Greens Councillor Chris Harris maintained that Council’s long-term projects and finances were well managed, with plans to dig $107M from their $404M savings account for capital works projects alone this year.
Mr Harris rejected the idea that Council should follow Federal trends and start over-spending to stimulate the economy, rather than collect a surplus. “With a steady revenue base, and an even level of investment, there is no reason for the city to go into defect,” he said.
