Glenorchy City Council is undertaking a targeted service review with the aim of improving its financial sustainability and focusing on a “back to basics” delivery of strong priority Council services for the Glenorchy community.
Council, mindful of the cost-of-living pressures being faced by its ratepayers, recently limited its annual rate revenue increase to 3.5%, consistent with its Long-Term Financial Management Plan. The 2022/23 budget forecasts a $4.5m deficit at year’s end, with a return to surplus in the 2026/27 financial year.
Mayor Bec Thomas reiterated that “This budget and review of the services Council delivers gets back to basics, focussing our resources on doing what’s most important to our community and doing it well”
The service review has been designed to improve the financial position of the Council while minimising both the impact on Council’s direct customers and disruption to Council operations. This has been a difficult but important decision by Council to reverse a trend of being in deficit in ten of the last twelve financial years.
Council has taken measures to address the structural deficit and get back into the black more quickly. By lifting our financial performance, we make sure we are in a stronger place to continue to deliver services to the Glenorchy community in a sustainable manner.
The service review is being delivered in two phases. The first phase involved:
- trialling a two directorate model (down from four)
- five redundancies, largely in the economic development area
- Non-replacement of a recent vacancy
The second phase, now underway, is focused on Council’s Community Department, exploring how Council can be best positioned to deliver on priority community services. The review will look at the community development, arts and culture and child care service areas with the aim to take recommendations back to Council as soon as practicable, being mindful of the timing of the local government election period later this year.
It is important to reassure parents that, regardless of the recommendations, there will be no change to Council’s childcare services before the end of the 2022 calendar year.
While, as usual, we are always looking to improve the efficiency of what we do at Council, there are no other services areas identified as part of this targeted review.
Our aim is to have a Council which is stronger financially in order to deliver priority local government services to our community.