March 17, 2015
A review of the South Burnett Regional Council’s finances by the Queensland Treasury Corporation has given the SBRC a “thumbs up” for its financial management.
The purpose of the review – which was undertaken in February – was to assess the Council’s capacity to service its current debt portfolio, as well as proposed borrowings for the construction of the new Kingaroy Wastewater Treatment Plant and, if owners agree, the normalisation of the Memerambi Estate.
The review also looked at other risks which might affect Council’s debt servicing capacity and its vulnerability to those risks in the coming two years, as well as over the longer term.
QTC’s assessment team rated the Council’s financial position as Moderate, which it defined as “a local government with an adequate capacity to meet its financial commitments in the short to medium term and an acceptable capacity in the long term.”
The review looked at the SBRC’s finances from 2011 through to 2024.
It projects that Council revenues will grow from $50 million in 2011 to $80 million a year by 2024, and expenses will grow from $50 million to around $76 million per annum over the same period.
Council’s liquidity will progressively tighten between 2014 and 2017, then rise between 2018 and 2024.
The report found that amalgamation and decisions taken since the 2008 council mergers had strengthened the region’s position overall.
A review in 2007 had rated the former Murgon Shire Council as “Distressed”, and both Nanango and Wondai Shire Councils as “Weak”.
Only the former Kingaroy Shire Council had achieved a “Moderate” rating, but now the whole region was rated as “Moderate”. Many of the debt and infrastructure issues that have plagued the region have either been fixed or were being addressed.
At the most recent Council meeting last Wednesday, where news of the QTC’s positive rating was announced, Cr Barry Green said the report was an endorsement of the work that had been done over the past seven years.
“We are often criticised by those with a very limited knowledge of finance,” he said.
“But when Queensland Treasury tell us we are a very good council, I think we should put that out there.
“Finances were in a hell of a mess when this Council was put together in 2008.”
Mayor Wayne Kratzmann agreed the current council was now on a much safer financial footing than the old, non-amalgamated councils.
“The finances of the former Wondai, Nanango and Murgon Shire Councils were reaching a point where they would have become financially insolvent,” he said.
“In fact, Murgon already was.”
Mayor Kratzmann said rates had risen since amalgamation, but that was to make the region sustainable.
“That’s why the big rises have now stopped,” he said.
“We had to make the hard decisions and it’s been tough, but our Queensland Treasury report is A-plus and we’ve set up the South Burnett for a very strong future.”
This makes me chuckle. Last year Jack Black argued black and blue that all our old Councils were great and really well-managed. I didn’t agree and said most of them were in real strife. Now Queensland Treasury says the same thing. Where’s Jack today?
Nice one Roddy!!! Your comment just reinforces the belief that parochialism is in fact very much alive in the “capital” of our great shire. After reading the comments from some Crs and others about the three outer shires being poorly off and the central shire being good. I have become disgustingly disappointed.
Do you guys not really want any cohesion at all? It does not seem like it.
The comments re. Wondai and Murgon council finances by the news jockey on March 20 is not really right at all. I have been told by Murgon’s finance rep. of that time that they were still paying all their bills.. Get your facts straight and don’t deal in innuendo.
Wondai and Murgon were keeping up their upgrades etc., something that Kingaroy apparently was not really doing real well at all. Instance the waste water treatment plant. I have heard of a figure of $26 million bandied about and surely if this plant was replaced when it should of been, then Kingaroy’s debt going into the amalgamation would of been really quite high and more importantly the water going into the Gordonbrook dam would have been of a very much better quality.
Actually I was told that in the early 1990,s that the plant was in a very distressed state and it was not replaced as it should have been AND NOW all of the urban rate payers of the shire have to pick up the tab. We have been repeatedly told by one Shire Person that Kingaroy regularly subsidizes everybody else! Really??
Now fellows {you know who I mean} it is time to stop being churlish and start bringing this great Shire together as a whole for the benefit of everyone in it and not just Kingaroy. Whatever anyone thinks we have been dealt this amalgamation hand and we now have to bear and wear if, like it or not. There is no going back.
Rod, as for your Jack Black baiting, give it a break, it doesn’t really make you sound at all good. Haven’t you even considered that he may be being blocked from commenting on this controlled site as most times he has made very good points and at times he would have hit a few raw nerves, that’s for sure.
Glenn – I suggest you read the annual reports of the former shires and base your arguments off the figures rather than what some bloke told you at the pub and, as you say not on ‘innuendo’ as the ratings were given by Queensland Treasury Corporation. Also have a read of SBRC’s annual reports – they are audited by the Queensland Audit Office so it would be unfair to say there are ‘lies’ in that.
As a Councillor who wasn’t involved in any of the former shires I can say its not about which town was ‘better’ but rather just fact as laid out by the independent government statutory bodies – I hardly think QTC has a stake in promoting which former shire was better.
Glenn: Jack Black has not been blocked from our site, nor has anyone else (we have blocked a few people from our Facebook page, but this was because they were spamming it or being overly aggressive to other likers).
The only limits we place on comments are that they must not be defamatory, must not be just a personal attack on someone, and should raise a new point in a discussion. We don’t allow swearing, and we will edit to fix spelling and grammar if we have the time.
Our website is not “controlled” by anyone other than ourselves. No one tells us what to write or not to write.
Over the past year, a few disgruntled residents have made a series of allegations about us which are simply untrue. They’ve done it because we’ve exposed their long-standing political connections while they are pretending to be apolitical. We have also pointed our readers to publicly available data from a number of State and Federal Government departments which show that a lot of what they’ve been peddling as “truth” is ill-informed twaddle.
In an effort to bolster their own credibility, they’ve adopted the classic technique of shooting the messenger (ie “Don’t believe them, they’re controlled by Council/LNP”)
The unexciting but simple truth is that we’re a locally owned, independent small business that makes its money from advertising, just like any other media. We have a combined 38-year history of working to improve this area, not only in our day-to-day work but also in a wide range of not-for-profit community organisations we’ve belonged to over many years. We do not have any political affiliations, have never belonged to any political party and are not owned or controlled by any of the three councils that cover this region.
We love the South Burnett and are working hard to project a positive image of this area through honest and independent reporting. We doubt our critics could say the same.
Glenn, I agree with a lot of what you say. I heard Kingaroy Council were told they had to fix up the sewage treatment plant in the early 1990s too. But rather than take action – which would’ve meant a rate rise – they kicked the can down the road. If they’d bitten the bullet and done it when they should have, it would have cost $5 million and probably been paid off in 10-15 years. But they didn’t, and now 20 years later we’re facing a $25 million bill.
But I wasn’t saying any Council was better than any other. They all kicked the can down the road because they all got hooked on unsustainably low rates. Murgon was just the first to go down the gurgler. All the rest would have followed sooner or later.
I outlined this to Jack but he rejected it. Instead he tried to argue all our old councils were in great shape and the rate rises we’ve seen since amalgamation were unjustified. But now Queensland Treasury has backed up what I was saying about the real shape our old Councils were in. That’s all I was pointing out.
I agree with you there’s no undoing the merger and we’re all in this together. But I think a key to doing this well is to see the past clearly and honestly and learn from it. Not hang on to some idealised vision of an imagined “Golden Age” that never really was, or to argue ideas that aren’t supported by facts.