By Tanya Steele
The end of the financial year has seen councillors in Knox deliver what some called their most difficult budget yet.
Knox City Council handed down its annual budget 2024-25 on 24 June at their monthly council meeting and has pledged to spend $115 million on services and $76 million on infrastructure, while managing an asset base of over $2 billion.
Chandler Ward Councillor Mayor Jude Dwight said she wanted to speak to this because she had honestly never been so challenged in having to deliver a budget.
“Our budget is a lengthy process which we commenced back in October – the cognitive effect of five separate interest rate rises in the last financial year alone takes a little while to really hit,” she said.
Mayor Dwight talked about the difficulties with the modern-day cost of living issues.
“There are many in Knox who are being hit and hit hard,” she said.
Mayor Dwight said that the Council work hard to fund the staggering number of services they deliver while maintaining and improving ageing infrastructure and delivering new facilities for our growing community.
“Remaining financially sustainable is critically important but it is becoming more challenging, with inflation continuing to rise much higher than the rate cap,” she said.
Friberg Ward Cr Susan Laukens said that Council have had to make some challenging decisions.
“I’m really proud of how we have a really strong, methodical way of ensuring that we remain a financially sustainable organization that will serve our community,” she said.
“We need to maintain our financial sustainability – we are at the mercy of the state and federal grants that we come in and we know they are not meeting our needs. They are not going up by CPI. We also know that we are at the mercy of different policy changes like the housing policy.”
The Knox budget will invest a significant amount towards things that the community have given feedback as a priority on such as parks and reserves, roads, recreation and leisure facilities, community facilities and environment and sustainability.
In addition, the budget supports several key initiatives from the third year of the Council’s Plan 2021-25 including, working towards net zero emissions by 2040, trialling new and recycled materials in the construction of shared paths, reducing food waste going to landfills, transforming how they deliver our services to place the customer at the centre of everything we do and supporting the local economy.
In line with the state government’s Fair Go Rates System, the Council’s rates income can only be 3.50% more than last financial year. Currently, there is a State enquiry in process which will investigate local government funding and service delivery in Victoria.
Deputy Mayor and Drinsdale Ward Cr Sorina Grasso said she wanted to acknowledge the financial constraints that Council worked under with this budget.
“It includes an investment of 125.6 million in a wide range of services to the community,” she said.
Baird Ward Cr Yvonne Allred said she also wanted to take note of the accompanying community engagement report.
“All of this is being underpinned by that long-term financial plan assuring that we have thorough considerations for our long-term sustainability – so I’m happy to adopt the budget tonight,” she said.
Tirhatuan ward Cr Nicole Seymour said that the recent budget didn’t sit comfortably with her.
“I think the fact that we’re doing service reviews so that we can actually unpack the value and justify it going forward is going to become increasingly important as we move into future budget cycles,” she said.
“We’re spending 48% on capital works and the largest part of our capital works program is going into renewals of ageing infrastructure.”
“We’ve got all these housing pressures – our municipality is ageing, our population is growing and it worries me that there is no uplift that we can even top that up with.”
*We’ve got in excess of $90 million in loans,” she said.
“So to have loans and this budget is asking us to lock into another $21 million of loans over 10 years at fixed interest rates…but we need it in order to deliver the services and the capital works.
Cr Seymour said the Council had caught criticism for a number of decisions, such as walking away from the Stringybark Festival and that they could have saved that kind of quantum of money by doing other things differently.
“It’s not been easy to get where we are and I think next year’s budget will be worse,” she said.
Darren Ward Cr Pearce said he didn’t believe in this four-year term that the Council has taken substantive, decisive action on structural budget reform.
“Essentially, we played around the edges, but the sub-structures substantially remained intact,” he said.
Cr Pearce said he questioned the spending on items such as social policy research and planning, sustainability and climate change response, arts and culture, festivals and events, data and technology, people and culture and strategy and performance.
“The next council is going to inherit a huge financial challenge,” he said.
Mayor Dwight said that this council group also inherited some significant financial challenges and said she thinks that the Council have worked to address some of those very well.
“I do agree with you that we’re on a long road when it comes to service reviews and getting the information that will inform some of those tough decisions,” she said.
The motion was carried unanimously and the Knox City Council 2024/25 budget is available to view online.
