This budget marks the last for myself as Mayor, the last for this term of Council, and the last before a significant reshaping of Local Government in our region.
During the past few years we have reshaped Council priorities deliberately towards renewing the City’s networks of pipes and roads. This was never going to be easy, nor cheap. I have appreciated your support as we set out to address the backlog of works that faced us at the beginning of this journey.
When I was elected, in the year 2000, the City’s record levels of main breaks and sewerage chokes were a major cause for concern. What was needed was a commitment to the hard slog of replacing the City’s basic infrastructure. This has meant limited money for ‘lifestyle’ luxuries over the past few years, with almost all of Council’s efforts being directed to a programmed replacement schedule. We are now fully funding ‘depreciation’ in our budget. Put in a really simplistic way, this means that if, for instance, water pipe lasts fifty years, and we have fifty kilometres of pipe, we should be either replacing one kilometre a year, or putting the money in the bank to do it later. On top of this, we have also been working through a catch-up program for all the years when not enough replacement works were done.
Our road network was also in poor shape. Programmed road maintenance in Rockhampton had traditionally involved a lot of resurfacing with asphalt. Resurfacing is a vital part of road maintenance, but reconstruction is also essential to good road maintenance. In layman’s terms road maintenance can be likened to the care of a weatherboard house and the preparation and painting that is required. Applying another layer of paint (asphalt) only works for so long before it is time to sand the surface back to bare boards, reprime and refinish. Far too many of our road surfaces had reached a stage where continuous recoating was achieving very little. They potholed easily and the resurfacing lasted only a very short while. While there are still many kilometres in need of reconstruction, we are proud of our achievements to date.
To keep faith with our promises, we have done all of this while keeping your rates as low as possible. The money to ramp up our capital works program had to come from somewhere. We use rates and grants to pay for day-to-day operating expenses, all of the maintenance and to fund depreciation. The rest of the ‘new’ works are being funded by borrowing. We have chosen to carefully use debt to spread the impact of needed works over a period of years. We could have chosen to increase your rates, or to delay the work program. However, it really is a case of ‘a stitch in time’ with many of our assets.
The current level of debt didn’t even raise an eyebrow with Queensland Treasury Corporation when they went though our books recently.
Our ten-year financial projections show further increases over the next five years with the debt beginning to decrease around 2012 as the backlog of overdue work is brought under control. Meanwhile, we are in a low interest rate cycle and Council has a disciplined plan to renew your assets while keeping your rates under control.
In presenting this document I pay tribute to the Councillors of Rockhampton City who have been a credit to both their City and themselves, to Mr Gary Stevenson, who has been Chief Executive Officer for the duration of my term and a dedicated worker for this community, and to the many other people who make up the staff of Rockhampton City Council. They have put in outstanding efforts to deliver the results laid out in the following pages. You should be very, very proud of them.
The next budget will be well out of my hands, but as I present this report card to you, I do so with the knowledge that I have delivered on the promises I made to you in March 2000 to the best of my ability.
It has been an honour to serve you.
Cr Margaret Strelow