18 November 2025 - Ordinary

Hawkesbury City Council acknowledges the Dharug and Darug people as traditional custodians of the land of the Hawkesbury. We pay respect to all Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people as the First People of the country. General Manager.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Members of the public attending the meeting are advised that in the event of an emergency, you will be asked to proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest exit following the guidance of our warden. I would like to advise in accordance with clause 5.33 of the Code of Meeting Practice, meetings of the Council are recorded. In the terms of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, this may involve the recording of personal information provided at the time of the meeting. The recordings are made to assist staff in compiling the minutes of the meeting and to enable the podcasting and live stream of Council meetings. The provision of any information that is recorded is voluntary.

If any person does not wish to be recorded, they should not address or request to address the meeting. The gallery can be seen in the live stream video and if you do not wish to be recorded in the live stream, please move into the foyer and we will turn the foyer speakers on for you. The recordings may be made available to other persons where such access is in accordance with the relevant regulations, the recordings are stored on Council's record management system and uploaded to Council's website. Meetings of the Council may be separately recorded with the prior authority of the Council. For the benefit of those persons who will be addressing the Council tonight, it is expected that you will refrain from making any insult, allegation or personal reflection against any person present or not at this meeting.

This request relates to both your address to Council and any answers given in response to questions from Councillors. Finally, it is also requested that if any person participating in or attending the meeting this evening has their mobile phone on them, can you please either turn it off or turn it to silent. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, General Manager. Apologies. Everyone's present, there's no need. Declarations of interest. Any Councillors have any declarations?

Confirmation of the minutes. Move that

Yes

Fourth of November

Councillor Reardon. Councillor Veigel. Those in favour? Against? It's carried unanimously.

The first item this evening, councillors, is a presentation from Mr. Keith Ilong.

He's the external auditor from the Audit Office of New South Wales. There'll be the presentation, and the matter will be dealt with later in the meeting. He's got a presentation that'll be screened.

Thank you, General. Thank you,

Mayor.

I've just got a presentation. Is it possible I could share my screen, or if someone in council could

Share the presentation? I just can't share my... I can do that for you. Can

I just bear with me?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. So good evening, Mayor, councillors, council executive, and thank you for the invitation to present my report on the conduct of the audit for Hawkesbury City Council for 2025. Apologies for not being able to attend in person tonight. However, I will be taking you through the results of our 2025 financial statements audit, the audit work program for 2025-28, focus areas for the upcoming local government sector report, financial results and analysis, as well as key infrastructure and cash management insights. I would like to start off by firstly thanking Liz, Laurie, James, as well as the finance team for their cooperation and professionalism extended to us throughout the audit this year. Next slide, please. Yep

So this agenda outlines the main topics that we'll cover tonight, namely the audit work program for the next three years, the focus areas for the 2024-25 local government sector report. Our report on the conduct of Hawkesbury City Council's audit, cash, cash equivalents and investments, infrastructure, property, plant and equipment, and we'll have an opportunity for questions at the end. Next slide, please.

I will draw your attention to the work that the audit office performs not only on financial audits, but also performance audits where we report to Parliament. Performance audits assess whether the activities of government activities are carried out effectively, economically, efficiently, and in compliance with relevant laws and regulations. Our office's annual work program for 2025-28 was released in August 2025, and the work program explains how we decide what to focus on and what we intend to cover for the next three years for all sectors that we audit, including local government. This three-year plan gets updated annually by the Auditor-General and can be revised along the way, and this is available on our website and you can subscribe to get updates automatically.

In terms of the audit work program, the key themes for the next few years will include efficiency and optimal use of public resources, grant administration, major capital projects, climate-related risk and opportunities, as well as First Nations communities. Next slide, please.

In terms of our financial audits, we focus on looking at financial reporting, financial sustainability, internal controls, as well as governance for all our financial statement audits. Next slide, please. And our planned performance audits for the local government sector over the next few years will include a performance audit on long-term financial planning, the effectiveness of audit, risk and improvement committees. Performance management and monitoring. Next slide, please. Major capital projects, climate risk and adaptation, as well as waste management.

Next slide, please.

Just fast forward to the focus areas for our upcoming financial audit and sector report. Next slide.

The report will touch on the outcomes of our financial statements audit for all the councils, 142 councils and council entities, as well as provide insights on financial sustainability, IT, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. May will comment on major projects across the local government sector, as well as our findings on internal controls and governance through our financial audits. Next slide, please. And over to the report on the conduct of the audit. So now I'll focus on Hawkesbury City Council's conduct of the audit. So we have completed our audit of the general purpose and special purpose financial statements for 2025, and I am pleased to report to you that we've issued a clean, unmodified audit report, which means that Council's financial statements present fairly and there are no material misstatements.

In terms of the income statement, I'll just briefly touch on Council's performance for the year. So broadly speaking, rates and annual charges increased in line with the rate peg, and also in line with an increase with domestic waste management services, which is not out of line with what we've seen across other councils. All in all, Council's grants and contribution revenue, which is a major portion of its revenue, also increased in the year, mainly due to an increase in developer contributions recognised during the year, as well as capital cash and non-cash contributions during the year. In terms of Council's operating results from continuing operations, this actually increased from last year and performed better, largely due to the aforementioned increase in grant and contribution revenue received during the year for capital purposes.

Overall, Council's net operating result was actually impacted by the divestment of the sewerage business, which I'll touch on. In terms of the sewerage business, as Council would know, in its 10th of June 2025 meeting, Council resolved to proceed with the divestment of the Windsor sewerage scheme to Sydney Water Corporation, subject to conditions being satisfactorily resolved. Council accounted for its sewer assets, excluding the McGraths Hill sewage treatment plant, as assets held for sale, and the sewer business as a discontinued operation in accordance with the Australian Accounting Standards in the financial statements. As the anticipated proceeds from Sydney Water Corporation is a nominal amount, therefore management recognised the

Impairment of its sewer asset of $153 million prior to the transfer, and this is disclosed in the financial statements for 30 June 2025. This resulted, I guess, in the one-off overall net operating deficit of $173 million before grants and contribution for the year, and this is a one-off impact which reflects the discontinued operation. However , the overall underlying result from continuing operation remains positive. Next slide, please. This graph actually charts what the OLG terms the operating result ratio, which measures how much council's revenue exceeds its expenses from its underlying continuing operations. And as you can see here, the trend has actually improved over the last three years.

And again, this can be attributed to the increase in capital grants reported during the financial year. Next slide, please. This graph also charts council's grants and contribution revenue, which does make up a significant portion of its revenue. As we can see, over the last three years, there has actually been an increase in grants and contribution revenue recognised by council, and a large portion of that relates to capital contributions, which can include developer contributions as well as other capital grants.

Next slide, please.

So this slide charts, I guess, the unrestricted current ratio, which measures council's ability to pay its short-term obligations as and when they fall due, and it is a ratio that's used by the OLG to assess the financial health of councils. Generally speaking, Hawkesbury Council has been steady over the last three years. However, it is slightly under the metropolitan average of about 3.7 times the metropolitan council, but it has been a steady measure. Next slide, please. Yeah, next slide. In terms of cash and investments, this is an overview of the cash and investments for Council. Total cash and investments has increased slightly from last year of about 110 million, and the vast majority of this is broken up between external and internal allocations.

Your external restrictions are those that are restricted by legislation or any third-party contracts such as specific grants and contribution, and the internal allocations are determined by Council policies or decision and can be subject to change by a resolution of Council. As noted, the unrestricted cash that's not, I guess, subject to external restrictions was about 30 million, which is slightly lower than the internal allocations of 36.1 million during 2025 .

Council has assessed that Council remains a going concern on the basis that some of this is due to timing differences in the recovery of disaster recovery funding arrangement grants, where Council has made an outlay upfront and expects to recover the cash later, as well as the fact that internal allocations can be de-restricted by a resolution of Council. Next slide, please.

And this is just a slide that shows where your main external restrictions are, vast majority of these being developer contributions as well as sewer funds and a bit on domestic waste.

Next slide, please. This chart's another measure of Council's liquidity, which is the available cash to cover expenses. This has fluctuated a bit over the last few years, and this, in

The prior year there was an average of eight months for Metropolitan Council. Council is below that measure, which means that your cash reserves are less than your peers. However , it has improved compared to last year. Next slide, please.

Overall, the next slide covers the capital expenditure profile for Council. So Council reported total additions and renewals of about $134 million during the 2025 financial year. The majority of this was spent on capital works in progress, progressing onto roads, bridges, footpaths and other road assets. There was also an amount spent on other assets, and then a smaller amount of $7.5 million for land and buildings, plant and equipment and furniture and fittings respectively as well.

Next slide, please. Happy to take any questions from Council on the presentation and on the conduct of the audit.

Thanks very much for that, Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Leung. I'm just wondering, that was very interesting, thank you. I'm just wondering, can you clarify the net operating loss for Hawkesbury City Council this year? Like, what was the actual net operating loss?

Thank you. Thank you, and through you, Mayor. The overall operating loss for Council during the year was about $173 million, and this was a one-off, I guess, loss which was impacted by the divestment of the sewer business and reflects the decrease in the value of the asset as a result of the plan sale. However, stripping that away, if we look back at sort of my presentation, your actual underlying result from your general fund, your continuing operation, does actually remain positive for the financial year, and it actually improved over the last three years from the prior year as well as two years ago in 2023. So I just want to sort of make that distinction between your overall results, which encapsulates a one-off discontinued operation. Stripping that away, your underlying general fund actually made a profit during the year.

Thank you. I've just got a couple of other questions, if you don't mind. I'm just wondering if you could provide some insight into Council's ability to meet its debt obligations.

Thank you, Councillor, and again through you, Mayor. One of the ratios that we report in our report on the conduct of the audit, which is also tabled in this Council meeting, is the debt service ratio for Hawkesbury City Council, and we track sort of the performance, and this measures Council's ability to service its debt over the next coming years, meet its principal repayments, interest and whatnot, and it's actually improved over the last three years from about 7.9. To about 10.4 in 2025. So overall, I think in terms of the debt service coverage ratio, it's actually improved. That said, as I did sort of cover and touch on in my presentation, your liquidity ratios are sort of slightly below the average for metropolitan councils.

So it is an area to just be mindful in terms of how much cash reserves you've actually got to cover that. But that being said, the financial statements are prepared on a going concern basis, with reviewed management's going concern assessment, and we were comfortable with that. Okay,

Thank you. Just one more, and if you don't want to answer this, that's okay. Did you uncover any signs of mismanagement of funds during your audit?

Thank you, Councillor Mary, and through you, Mayor. The purpose of that, I guess, our financial audit is to express an opinion on the, I guess, whether the financial statements reflect a true and fair view of Council's financial performance during the year. In terms of the actual overall scope of our audit, we don't do a—it's not a forensic audit just to find mismanagement. So in the course of our audit, no, we have not uncovered any instances of financial mismanagement. But again, our audit isn't really targeted towards that. It is just to express an opinion on whether the financial statements are true and fair.

Thank you, Mr. Liu.

Thank you

Any further questions, Councillors

No, I'm sorry. Mr. Leong, thanks very much for that. Much appreciated.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councillors, and have a good evening.

Five speakers to address on one issue tonight, and that's the SRV . I hope I pronounce these names right. It's Bruce Poulson, is it? Colleen Bazzuni, Robert Gibbon, Tim Corrin, and Stephen Scotney . The first speaker this evening, I'll call on Bruce. If you come to the microphone here, you've got five minutes, and there will be an opportunity for council staff to ask questions. In relation to speakers who may not favour any speaker, whether it be the councillors after this or the like, I'd ask you to consider that other people might have different opinions, and to allow that opinion to be spoken. It is a chamber, and it needs to be respected in that regard. And thanks very much for your attendance tonight. We did expect more, but glad to see those of you here.

Bruce

I've got to press the red button. Thank you. Trust and integrity. I know I've only got five minutes, so hopefully you can listen quickly. Trust and integrity, I think, is the one thing that I've seen is lacking in this council. And to come up with a special rates variation, it's a case of— You know, we just heard the figures, and I don't think there's probably mismanagement. I just think that all your hands are tied. I don't think we've got two options that was made at one of the meetings. I think there's many more options that haven't been explored. And I honestly believe that the people in this chamber, and potentially some of the people in council itself, aren't actually doing their jobs to their fullness of what needs to be done as a representative for the community.

And that's where I actually stand with all this. I've had numerous conversations with councillors and stuff like that over the last couple of weeks, and it's a case of that I think your hands are tied with a lot of the stuff that's actually presented in front of you. I made a statement at one of the meetings that a lot of the issues that have been caused by damage in the Hawkesbury has been because of other councils and other developments that have impacted the Hawkesbury Council, and we've had four major floods, you've had bushfires, and again, how do you allocate the funds? And I've heard that you have to, you know, we have to make sure that we manage the budget. But if you manage budgets, it doesn't mean that you have to spend the money at the end of it to get more for the following financial year.

So there's a whole lot of things, and against the SRV, at this stage, yes, because I can't trust the people in this chamber. I can't see that you actually know how to manage money correctly. And I've seen it with the last meeting that you had, that you couldn't even work out the difference between someone who's paying $123.10 for rent for seating, that you're going to make that back in two months. Yet we don't want to spend money willy-nilly, right? I honestly don't think anyone's got a business brain here to actually think about how to actually make money and be profitable, and to actually look after our assets, which is the road, and that is a big one. I've built most of the roads across Sydney for the last 25 years: Windsor Road, M7, all of them.

So I work for Transport for New South Wales as a contractor. I've seen it. I've been involved with ICAC with the latest person that's been with Transport for New South Wales. Because of my integrity, I didn't give anything away. But I don't think you guys know how to actually go down to Macquarie Street and get the money out of the New South Wales Parliament that are causing the problems in this council. And I've had someone say to me that the councillors here at Windsor are like little kids, and you've got to, you know, respect the parents down there at Macquarie Street. Well, I know that my kids, when they were seven years old, if they wanted something, they'd pester and pester and pester and pester and pester, and then they gave in and they gave you something.

And that's where I think you guys don't have the energy to go down there and do it. Now that's just my opinion, right ? And I'm willing to help, right, outside of council and come in and give time on this. And I thank you, Mayor, for having that four-and-a-half-hour meeting with me to get an understanding. But where the trust and integrity fails is how much did you actually spend of the last SRV? And where is the actual results from the last SRV? Why are roads still, you know, no good? Got to be careful of that word. Why are they still shit? Okay, let's just call it what they are, right? Why are they like that? Because we band-aid stuff. We don't, and I understand the cost of repairing a road, traffic control and all the rest of it, and people don't like it when they get held up in a queue and traffic and all the rest of it.

I get it. But I think that the management needs to be better. I think the core value of this council and the councillors needs to change, and you need to think about the people behind you. And the 70,000 people that are in this council, you need to think, who are you working for? And to me, you're all public servants, right? I don't care if you've got behind an ABN. You're a public servant in my eye. You need to be working for the people. And I understand that a lot of you actually have the passion to do that, and you've come into council to do that. I think you need to come together as a team and work for the people of this community. So at the moment, I'm against the SRV until you guys get your teamwork together and come up with another six or seven options instead of just four.

Council

On Bucket.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Paulson. I'm just wondering, what do you think would restore your trust in the council? Would it be if we can secure more funding from the state government? Would it be if we had higher quality roads? I'm just interested when you say there's a lack of trust, and I get that. I do understand that. But what do you think would restore your trust?

I think that's a Kerry Packer question, that why would I give you any more because you don't know how to spend it wisely in the first place. And it's not you personally. It's just council as a whole. You've got a bucket of money, and I totally get that. And the biggest issue I see is what's happened from other councils around you, like Penrith and Blacktown, that are rich because of the developments and stuff like that. I think part of the other issue is that you don't allow certain developments to happen in the Hawkesbury to be able to get the revenue because you are the largest LGA, right? So I get all the issues . It's about how do you come together. To actually make it work, right? Selling a $154 million asset, right , because it's an accounting thing on paper because it's broken, right?

I think that you could have at least said, well, we'll give it to you, but we're not going to pay the debt. But you didn't fight for us. That's the trust. We tried.

Well,

Trying is trying makes it— We're not going to

Have to debate back the questions and answers.

Again, I don't think you tried hard enough, right? The way I would see it, and I'm going to use this metaphorically, if you had a gun to your head, you'd be trying a hell of a lot harder.

Yeah.

I'm just going to say it how

It is, and it's a metaphor. That's enough. Yeah. Just to clarify, there's four letters went in the last 12 months, and some prior when the mayor, just in that regard, and we couldn't get an audience. Well, again,

That's how I see it, and I wasn't involved, and if I could help and do something with it, I would now. Yep.

Thank you. Any further questions?

Deputy Mayor. Sorry.

Oh, sorry, Councillor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. You said that there are options that haven't been explored. What are those options, please, in your view?

I think that you should go back to the people or to the councils that have had so much development in their areas, and that has impacted the flooding in this council. You guys have had to spend the money, I believe, on recovery of the roads and stuff, that totally get that, and that leaves the normal maintenance. Where there's a shortfall. So I think you should be going to the people that caused the damage to say, you need to help out. So let's just say Blacktown Council handed over $40 million. Let's just say Penrith Council handed over $40 million. We're halfway there. There's another option. Unfortunately, it was stated the other night in a meeting, there's only two options, and it's good to see that there's now four options on the table.

But I just think there's more options, and I know that you've had to compress this to get this done by the 28th of November. So I get that, but I think there's more that can be done. And I will say it, it's good to see more people here, but it's still not enough.

Just one further question. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you. You talk about how we allocate our funds. Have you thoroughly read our annual reports and our operational plans over the last few years, every single page, every single line?

No. No. But again, what was explained tonight is that you've got one little part that has caused it, and you are profitable. So I'm not saying that you guys are doing anything totally wrong. I just think that you're coming to the people that are paying to say, well, we've got a shortfall, and it's probably too hard to go down to the New South Wales Government or other councils to do that, so we'll just take it out of the ratepayer.

Thank you. Sorry, last question, Mr Mayor. You talk about a lack of trust and integrity. Yes. Without examples to back that up, but then you're also saying you haven't even read our financial statements.

I have read it, but not thoroughly, not every single page.

Thank you.

Councillor Veigel. Yeah, thanks for coming, and I know you're passionate about it, but just for my mind... Have you written to the State Government and said that the councils are underfunded and that the IPART mechanism is busted? No

I have not written, but that's an idea that I— I make a

Suggestion you might be able to help Council by writing a letter and that's for the rest of the public, because the IPART, great peg is busted, and it sets councils up for failure.

I totally agree with that.

But that's okay, but what I'm saying, I'm not necessarily targeting you because it's been a lot of mail. Sometimes you've got to help us to help you. Totally agree. Yeah, so it's very easy to come in, and the other thing is, and I know what— it's got to be a question, Councillor. But there are some very wise people around here that do know the financials. So I don't take it personally, but I know my circumstances are running multi-million operations for a career, so there are competent

It needs to be a question, Councillor.

Well, I've made a statement, so thank you, Mr Mayor, shut up now and move on.

Thanks very much.

The next speaker is Colleen. There is a one-minute buzzer, the four-minute period, so you've got a minute after that. Thank you.

Can I mention Council names if we speak with

Something? Just be cautious. If it's defamatory, don't do it.

If you didn't get an answer, that's okay, but if you're being derogatory towards someone, I'd suggest you don't do it. Okay.

Hi everyone, my name is Colleen Pizzuni. I'm a ratepayer of the Hawkesbury City Council. I don't actually live here. I live in the Cumberland Council, so it makes you all aware. I'm talking on behalf of the ratepayers who are unable to be here this evening, elderly, disabled, myself and anyone who is too afraid to speak up because they'll get a black name with Council on their record.

So if we don't speak up, we won't be heard about this special rate variation, maybe passed on for the next three years, if not more. Therefore, to make it clear, I'm against this special rate variation proposal and so a substantial amount of the Hawkesbury ratepayers given to you was, I believe, a petition by a lot of members of this community. I'm going to talk about Council dinners, trees in parking spaces that we don't require, NR roads not being upgraded in the right amount of time frame. There's a few topics I've got, which I'll actually talk about the special rate variation proposal fact sheet. Does anyone know what IPART actually does? They only recommend to Council on behalf of the government. They don't actually make the final decision. So I just want to make sure you're aware, it doesn't say in the fact sheet it's a recommendation.

And the average residential rate in the fact sheet is misleading. I'll give you one big example. I've purchased a 500 square block in the Hawkesbury and I'm paying $560 per quarter. You times that by four, that's $2,268. You go to Cumberland Council, a comparable block, 512 square metres, it's about $

1,659. That's about a $600 difference. You're saying where's our money going? I don't know.

So I'll go back to, has Council completed a staff restructure? Who has been put up on upper management positions? Do we really need them, excess staff? In the strategy of 2022 and 2023, it states that Council had 316 staff, and they want to increase this 25 to 29 to 420. Council upgrades George Street. Yep, okay, they can upgrade it. Put trees in, but don't put them in parking spaces. Put them where it's required, not in parking spaces.

So I'm going to give you a big example of budget and spending. I've got a ratepayer's email to Council a few weeks ago. There was a church bar function that occurred on the 18th of October. The ratepayer asked Council, was this paid for by our ratepayer dollars? They only got a template, like everyone else did who emailed Council. Then we go to this Council weekend, Sunday to Tuesday, a local government conference is going to be held at Penrith. Is Council booking hotels with this since they're close to the Penrith Council? Are we forking out these extra dollars for this? Then if you look at Hawkesbury Council, they're employing an environmental compliance officer, which I believe all these perks go with other extra Council members who are employed, like long service, five years not 10, a fitness passport.

So Hawkesbury Council lets the fitness passes, say for 420 staff, times that by $25 per week for 52 weeks for the council members. That's $546,000 a year. You times that by three. That's about $1.638 million to council. And I can go on so forth. The annual report to council 2023 to 24 states that local government, state government and federal government made a contribution to our council. How much? Where did that go? And then I also referred to the council resolution notes. They've already spent $80,000 on this variation notice to all the people. Why spend it for?

Look, I'm going to go back to the tree instance scenario: two gardeners, two traffic controllers. That's over $600 for a minimum of four hours. We don't need that over there. Also, can I just finish off with two main points? Quickly

Council is also charging Redbank an extra variation. So where is all this money going?

Cumberland Council has four cleanups a year. We only have one.

Okay, that's a couple of points. Do we have any— Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you for your contribution this evening. You've quoted Cumberland Council a couple of times, and I did a quick Google just then to see their population. You are aware their population is significantly bigger. Therefore, even though the ratepayer is less than that, so our population is about 70,000, but our ratepayer, just checking with our financial officer, our ratepayers are about 40,000. Is that correct? Sorry? 28. 28 Sorry, 28. So 28,000 ratepayers but a 70,000 population. Cumberland's about 235,000 population, so they're going to have a much bigger rate pay. I'm just letting you know that it's not comparable. It's just not comparable. Thank you, Mr Mayor. My question is relating to the trees you talk about. Do you believe that the trees we planted were ratepayers' funds?

I believe so. Let me know otherwise, because I— Yeah

So it's otherwise you haven't looked up the truth. Excuse me.

It's a question-and-answer thing.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. So my question is, were you aware that the trees that were planted were part of a livability program, which was three tiers of government? So council pitched in a little bit, but state and federal pitched in a majority. Were you aware of that?

No, I wasn't aware.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Who's going to maintain it? Isn't it local councils, the local council roads, George Street and Quarry Street?

Thank you. Happy to take some questions off you later, or at any time for that matter. Any further questions from councillors? Thank you.

Before, Bob, before we call the next, there's a couple of statements that were made I'd like to clarify.

In relation to somebody who may offer information to council in relation to a matter that's happening, the word was blacklisted, I'd ask the general manager if someone was to take action against someone who dobbed someone in, for instance, what— What role is affected against Council if we were to take action against someone who gave us information about something?

Through you, Mr Mayor, there's an entire regime in New South Wales built around protected disclosures in particular. So that's an obvious system that is in place for the protection of people who wish to provide information to government on a confidential basis that may uncover wrongdoing, mismanagement, corruption and the like, Mr Mayor.

Has any action been taken against this Council that you're aware of in that regard?

Not that I'm aware of, Mr Mayor.

While you're there, General Manager, the next one was IPART, and in relation to set amounts, is it a suggestion? Is it suggested that other than go through a system that we can apply what we like?

I wish, Mr Mayor. No, IPART are in fact the regulator here, and they will determine the maximum amount that Council can increase its annual rate pie by on any given financial year.

Thank you. And just something that was mentioned that I'm involved with, there's local government conference in Penrith. We actually have a councillor, Councillor Zambrogno, that sits on that state committee, and thank goodness most of us attend that. In the past that hasn't been the case. And as far as the stay in Penrith, we will be. I live at Ebenezer. The conference is finished up past four, five o'clock, and then by the time you- Discuss things with your colleagues and with other councillors from all over the state, and then drive an hour home. So that'd be half past five, half past six. You've got

What I'm suggesting is to get home, get changed and get back to functions that are operating that night is impractical. And as the mayor, it's important the conferences just aren't what's being dealt with. It's a matter of who you speak to and the likes. And when it comes to flooding and the roadworks we've had, places like Lismore, Parks and the likes, it's essential that we speak to those people. Point of order, Mr Mayor. Yes. To avoid any misrepresentation, despite the fact that I'm on the board of Local Government NSW, I have specifically requested that I not be availed of accommodation. I will be driving there from my home. Thank you, Councillor.

The next speaker is Mr Robert Gibbon.

Thank you, Mayor, General Manager,

Councillors

And members of the public. My name's Bob Gribbon. I normally wing it, but tonight I've actually written something down. I've lived in the Hawkesbury for 40 years, and this is my second SRV. And I hope tonight you all fully reject it. As councillors, you were chosen by the people to oversee and advise the council. After the last SRV, seven councillors were re-elected at the 2021 election. Carrying forward the responsibility of implementing and managing the SRV to future-proof the Hawkesbury.

Whether you voted for the SRV or not, it was still the councillor's responsibility to ensure that it was implemented with integrity.

From where I sit, you failed. From what I have heard, it only met 25% of the objectives. And to me, 25 out of 100 is a failure. You didn't do a real good job. All councillors are accountable. You are a team. At the 2024 council election, ten councillors from the previous term were re-elected, other than the two that retired. We are now on the cusp of a new SRV that is larger than the previous one, with the same team of councillors setting the direction, and I find that frightening. In simple terms, you're justifying the SRV's

Main role in fixing the roads, because all the residents complain about the roads. They do. They're terrible. But why aren't you considering some of the root causes for why the roads need so much work? Have you considered imposing weight limits on certain roads? I asked this after the last SRV and was told it was too complicated and couldn't be done. Sorry. Annangrove Road in the hills, a major throughfare, which goes from Windsor Road through to Dural, has an eight-ton limit.

Bannerman Road. Which links Annangrove Road to Glenhaven Road, has a four-ton limit. And if anyone's been down there, you'll see there's a big yellow camera to catch the trucks, and it's actually attached to a cash register at the Hills Council, and they make quite a bit of money out of that. So we should be doing something like that here. I live on Saunders Road near Old Pitt Town Road, and every day I see multiple trucks and dogs drive past quickly, carrying up to 50 tons of whatever on roads that are made for utes, and at most a ute towing a horse float. The roads aren't wide enough for the trucks to pass, so they drive off the edge of the road, damaging the roads. Weight limits will increase the life of the roads and save the council money.

It's not impossible to do. To lower rates for each resident, you need to increase the number of residents. Most of Oakville, where I live, is flood free. It's surrounded by development, bordered by Boundary Road, which will be upgraded to four lanes. Skyville National Park is being opened up by the Hunter Anzac Memorial and will feature football fields, a tennis court, indoor facility, and takes many boxes without adding more traffic to the river crossings to get people in and out. You need to think about it. Personally, I like where I live. Trouble is, it's not where I lived 30 years ago. All the serenity is gone. I look at WestInvest. You received $98 million in funding three years ago. Last week, Fairfield Council announced the opening of Endeavour Park: two synthetic soccer fields, AFL field, netball courts, tennis courts, a amenities building, community centre, on budget for $16 million, less than three years since the grants were announced.

I look at Hawkesbury West Invest, Templin Field, still in design. Turnbull Oval, still in design. Richmond Pool, still in design. Three years.

All are asking for more funds, basically showing that you lack the proof that you can handle large projects over a million dollars. Please vote no on the SRV and consider alternative solutions. Hawkesbury cannot afford more failures in any of these areas. Thank you. Councillor Zabrocky. Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you, Mr Gribben, for coming in yet again.

I ask you this question as somebody that I know pays more attention to this than most, and because you yourself indicated your recollection of the previous SRV. What's your opinion of the capital works promises that have been made associated with the SRV?

A waste of time. And I say that because you look at the amount of roads that were going to get fixed. It's not enough. You'd really need a lot more to make any sort of a real impact in fixing the problems.

I'll clarify my question. I mean, were you aware in the publicly disseminated material, a comprehensive list of those roads whose upgrade will be facilitated by an SRV, or was that information absent or hard to find?

I didn't find it, and I went looking for the information. I was expecting to be. I was told that we were going to be given information about it. It was late in coming. The letter came after the event. I stumbled across it on Facebook. There was very little information out, and most of it was after the information sessions I attended, the first one.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Gribben. You just said you want us to look at alternate solutions. What would you suggest? What do you mean by that statement?

To me, my life's been computers.

And basically, when you have a problem, you start by a root cause analysis to what the problem is. The roads are atrocious. The roads are not as bad as they were 30 years ago, and the roads haven't changed. The thing that has changed is the amount of traffic and heavy traffic.

Like I said, Saunders Road, and a lot of this is the fault of Google, because people look up what's the fastest route, Google takes them down small streets, and it shouldn't. And the roads aren't built— Saunders Road and most of the roads in the Hawkesbury are not made to carry trucks carrying 50 tonnes of dirt. They can't do it. So you've got to stop it. If you do that, then there won't be as much damage. If there's not as much damage, there won't be as much repairs. Not as much repairs, you're not spending as much money.

Thank you.

Any further questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

The next speaker is Tim Corcoran

Good evening, Mayor, councillors and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to address item 10.2.1 on the special rate variation, and to respectfully urge you all to vote for option 4, rate PEG only. Over the past couple of months, the community has engaged in record numbers, and the clear message is that now is not the time to permanently raise rates beyond the PEG, given affordability pressures and uneven impacts across our LGA. The community sentiment is unambiguous. Over 5,500 people engaged via Your Hawkesbury, Your Say, more than 2,300 submissions were lodged, and the Micromex survey found 70% of respondents favour the rate PEG option over any SRV, even while recognising asset pressures and the reality of service reductions if extra funding is not secured.

The Micromex survey also shows that 81% are aware services may need to be reduced without an SRV, and 72% support reducing some services to prioritise renewing roads, facilities and parks. Evidence that residents are willing to accept trade-offs to keep rates affordable. Tonight's business paper now presents four options, but options 2 and 3 were introduced after the engagement phase. Understandably, this fuels concern the community has not been consulted on these new scenarios at all. That process gap matters when trust and affordability are already front of mind for residents navigating cost of living pressures, and it strengthens the case to select option 4 while Council completes deeper work on alternatives and equity.

Your own capacity-to-pay analysis concludes the LGA has moderate overall capacity, but with significant intra-LGA disparity. Richmond, Windsor is notably more vulnerable, with lower incomes, more renters and pensioners, and higher risk of financial stress, meaning any SRV would hit the hardest where capacity is weakest. In Richmond Windsor, rental stress stands at 39%, above the Greater Sydney average, and median rents have risen 35% since 2021, making further pass-through of housing costs likely if rates rise sharply. Importantly, this report also suggests some pragmatic alternatives: consider lowering the residential component of an SRV while maintaining or increasing business and farmland components where capacity is stronger; consider a residential rating restructure, bolster hardship support, or adjust service levels and renewal pacing, none of which require a large permanent uplift now.

These are credible, evidence-based options that can be explored without locking households into a higher rate base before equity safeguards and productivity gains are fully demonstrated. The engagement report's key themes echo what many of us feel: concerns about affordability, desire for stronger transparency and accountability for prior SRV outcomes, and expectations that Council prioritise efficiencies and alternate revenues, including fairer contributions from developers and other levels of government, before any new SRV is contemplated. The submission pack is filled with residents, pensioners, young families, renters, and small businesses warning this increase is unaffordable and asking Council to do more with less, publish clearer work programs, and improve quality and value for money in delivery.

Speaking as a young family that specifically chose the Hawkesbury to start our family and who love this community, rising rates layered on already high housing, insurance, and transport costs will likely force us to leave. This is a reality echoed in many of the submissions from people saying they would have to sell or move if an SRV proceeds. No councillor wants to vote for a measure that accelerates housing stress, pushes long-standing residents out, or widens disadvantages within our LGA. A constructive path is available tonight. Adopt Option 4 and commit to tangible steps already foreshadowed in your own papers: complete the comprehensive spending review and embed savings, publish a ring-fenced renewal ledger and project register, strengthen and target the hardship policy, sequence growth with infrastructure, and explore rating structure and category weightings that reflect genuine capacity and fairness before revisiting any SRV.

These actions would honour the evidence from your own consultants, respond to community feedback, and demonstrate leadership by fixing the basics first, then sizing any revenue change only after efficiencies and equity settings are proven. For these reasons, please vote against an SRV under Item 10.2.1 and select Option 4, rate peg only, while you undertake the further work the evidence and the community clearly call for. Thank you for your consideration and for your service to the Hawkesbury.

Thank you.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you, Mr Corcoran, for your speech.

Thank you for pronouncing the name right.

That was very comprehensive. I'm just interested in, as someone with a young family, for example, what sort of services would you be prepared to see cut? Like, would you— your children are obviously going to go through the phases of wanting sporting, cultural things, et cetera. What do you think would be suitable to cut? Because, you know, we may have to remove those

Yeah, fair question. So just to provide a bit of sort of clarity , so me and my wife chose to live in the Hawkesbury. We specifically tried out some other areas. We tried in the city. We lived in Alexandria first, moved to the hills, didn't like that, found the LGA here in the Hawkesbury to be the perfect balance between rural but still sort of close enough to get into the city. In terms of services that I'd be fine with being cut, to be honest, a lot of events and things like that that I personally feel don't— Appeal to the majority. I'm not speaking about any specific type of events, but a lot of the events my family doesn't visit. I know a lot of other families don't potentially visit, that sort of stuff. I don't have any other specific examples right now.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you very much.

And the last speaker we've got is Stephen Scottney.

Good evening, Mayor and the Council and the public. I'm not a public speaker. I'm probably shaking my boots right here. The people before me have basically said the same message that I've got tonight. They've spoken a lot more eloquently. My original speech probably would have me banned and kicked out of the council, so I'm going to redo it a little bit, and I'm going to have to wing it. I'm talking about my own personal experiences with council, and I've had probably six or seven interfaces with council in the five years I've been in the area, and none of them have been satisfactory. Not one single one. So that brings me to the confidence I have in council, and to be honest, I don't believe this council has the confidence of the ratepayers to go ahead with the SRV.

There are ways of saving money. You haven't actually looked at them all. I think you've got to look internally. You've got to look at the actual council. Look at the number of people, the bums on seats. Are they effective? Because my dealing with council is I have so many ineffective people that I've dealt with. I'm dealing with one currently, which a number of councillors, Nathan, Mike, I've even got Susan Templeman involved. I've even gone to the New South Wales Ombudsman because I believe council are misinterpreting requirements. Those requirements are then being pushed down onto the businesses of the Hawkesbury. You're then putting extra bums on seats to satisfy a requirement because you've misinterpreted it.

And I just look at that waste of money. I mean, you've got, you're putting an environmental person and coordinator.

I know they advertise at about 130,000, but with all the other costs, it's about 150,000 dollars just to this council. And why? Because they've come up with a regime. They're not working smart. They're working to a blind direction. So whatever we do, we should look at it. We should revisit it and, you know, sort of, are we doing the right thing? Morally as well. Are we moral? I don't. Sometimes I wonder where we shove our prices like this, but it's not moral. And it's easy. You do see the inner workings of council. We don't, and I'm not professing to even want to know half the inners. But just getting things right, having staff do and commit. At work, where I work, we talk about integrity. Do what you say and say what you do.

And I find so many interactions with council, that is where it's fallen down. So by getting those efficiencies right, you could save money. Offhand, I would say you could save $500,000 a year, and I'm not even thinking broad. I'm thinking just the interactions with the people I've had to deal with. I was going to use the analogy of the issues we're facing is like originally was a smoking little fire, and over the time, the actual council have been pouring oil onto the fire. And then what you're actually asking here is that you're going to go and get a tanker, an air tanker of water to go and put out an oil fire. Now everybody knows you can't use water on an oil fire because it just makes it bigger.

This money that you're going to get, you're asking for is exactly that. It's not going to fix the problems. We may get a 20% or 25% better roading system, but it's not sorting out the problems that are within council. And you've got to fix the people problem, and you've got to get the processes right before you can actually go forward and save proper money. Thank you for your time. I hope I got my— much the same as everybody else.

Thank you.

Any questions from the councillors?

Thank you.

Councillor Kotlash. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to move the recommendation in the business paper. The staff have some words for the first part of that recommendation, number one, if I could get that up.

Basically that part of recommendation one that I'm moving is part C, option three. Thank you. I

Obviously won't read out all of that. It's the same. The first point, rather, is the one that drives the recommendation.

There's about three main reasons why I'm supporting asking IPART to assess an SRV for the Hawkesbury. The first one is our asset and financial plans show that we have a current asset maintenance and renewal backlog — Excuse me, councillor. Oh, seconder, sorry.

Do we have a seconder?

I'll second it, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor.

Sorry, Mr Mayor.

So what I'm saying is that our asset and financial plans that we have worked on continuously show us that we have a current asset management and renewal backlog of $99.1 million. Now this has come about because mainly two reasons: cost shifting and the rate peg.

Rate pegging has been happening since the 70s, but IPART took over in 2012, and ever since we have been falling behind because we don't have the ability to match rates with the rising cost of things, inflation, the increasing community needs. This is just a fact. If we don't do anything and keep the rates as they are, and we don't start to catch up on this backlog, and this backlog, when I talk about this backlog, this equates to rougher roads, deterioration of our community buildings, less maintenance of our parks and natural areas, and that's just a few things. So these things, the money we are asking for are to fix real things that people care about in the community. This cost, if we don't increase our rates, this cost is likely to increase to $170 million in 10 years.

So this leads me to my second main point: intergenerational equity. We need to be very mindful that the decisions we make today don't just impact on current ratepayers, but they have the potential to cause greater hardship and lack of amenity for future ratepayers. And this will happen if the decisions we make are not done in a reasonable and measured way. The third reason that I'm willing to agree to IPART assessing our application is that in Option 3, we now have a rate increase that is much more affordable for our community. So we have listened to the community. We have decreased the percentage of rates that we're asking, but we have extended it over a longer time period. Now, by doing this, I'm really pleased that our staff were able to respond to community concerns about affordability while maintaining the need for us to generate more revenue to address this backlog.

Can we have a bit of quiet in the gallery, please, Mr Mayor?

I am confident that the reduction in this percentage of the rate increase that we are asking IPART to assess is based on Thorough work,

It is based on

The need to not fall further behind. And it also has a backdrop of the people in our community that are at least able, or at least have the least capacity to pay, are going to be compensated because of the divestment of the Windsor sewerage scheme. We are at this time in a very good position to be able to offer those people almost a reduction in rates. I think their rates will go down.

Go on, Councillor.

Thank you. You've

Got 30 seconds, Councillor. You were interrupted at the start.

Thank you. I also want to say to everybody in the gallery and listening online, the IPART process is an independent—IPART stands for Independent Pricing

And

Regulatory Tribunal . Part of their function is to put fresh eyes on what we present to them. So we will, they need to be sure that there's financial need. They have to be sure that the community has been engaged and are aware of what's happening. They assess impact on rate payers. They make sure that this, what we're asking for, is in line with all of the plans that we do. And one of the things that I think is really important, which is the fifth point, is productivity and cost containment. We have to demonstrate past and future efforts to improve productivity and reduce costs.

Thank you, Councillor

That was the end of that sentence.

That's why

I persisted. Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Further speakers?

Okay. I'm going to...

Councillor Creed. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to move an amendment. The staff have it up on screen. I should be able to do it.

Mr Mayor, I've seen that wording and I'll second the amendment. Thank you, Councillor Zamprogno

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm obviously speaking on my amendment I'm putting up. For those in the gallery that can't see it and online. I moveing that Council does not proceed with lodging an application for IPART for a special rate variation for the 2026-2027 financial year. That Council instead defers consideration of any special rate variation to enable the completion of a comprehensive financial improvement program, including: A. the completion of a comprehensive spending review, identifying operational efficiencies and savings, including potential internal management restructures to save costs; B. the investigation and modelling of a revised rating structure informed by both capacity-to-pay report and Council's commitment to horizontal equity, including the development of residential sub-categories and adjustments to business and farmland categories; C.

a review and strengthening of Council's hardship policy; D. updated modelling incorporating the full affordability impact of the Windsor sewerage scheme divestment, including net household savings; E. preparation of a revised Capital Works prioritisation framework to clearly demonstrate how future funding will be allocated to asset renewals; F. identification of additional revenue opportunities, including review of fees and charges, commercial leasing opportunities, developer contribution improvements, property portfolio optimisation, including leasing joint ventures or other commercial uses, grant funding opportunities and investigation of revenue potential and fee collection associated with extractive industries; 3.

that Council receives a report in July 2026 presenting: A. the outcomes of work listed in Part 2; B. updated long-term financial plan modelling; C. revised rating options; and D. a recommendation on whether to proceed with an SRV application for the 27/28 financial year and, if so, the presentation of a minimum of three SRV options for public consultation; 4. that Council writes to the community outlining the reasons for deferring an SRV at this time, acknowledging community feedback, affordability pressures and Council's commitment to undertaking cost savings, efficiency measures and financial reforms before considering any future rate increase.

Normally I do try and wing it at a council meeting, but I have actually written something down, so please bear with me. So, on the amendment, we've had over 2,300 submissions. It is a significant response, and the message from the community is very clear. They do not support an SRV at this time. Close to 70% of surveyed residents prefer the rate peg only. Families, renters, businesses, people right across the Hawkesbury are feeling financial pressure from every direction. When households are struggling, it is not responsible for council to add further pressure without exhausting every alternative first. I want to be very clear. The majority of community members, and I have spoken to a lot, I have spoken with, acknowledge council's position.

They understand the financial challenges we face, but they do not believe it is fair to ask for so much without seeing what council has done to prove we have done everything possible to limit the size of the increase being proposed. As leaders, we must demonstrate sound, balanced and responsible economic management. A special rate variation is not a small ask, and it should never be the first step. It must be the very last resort after we have done absolutely everything within our control to manage our own finances better. The report tells us that parts of our community, particularly around Richmond and Windsor, have significant financial vulnerability. We also know our rating system needs reform.

The capacity to pay report is clear, and this council has also committed to reviewing horizontal equity, ensuring that similar properties carrying similar burdens contribute fairly. But that work isn't finished yet. Applying for an SRV before those reforms are completed would be premature and frankly not good governance. We also have not completed the comprehensive spending review, the very tool designed to identify efficiencies, reduce waste and find savings. We cannot, in good faith, ask our community to pay more until we demonstrate that we have tightened our own belts first. IPART expects this, and the community expects this too. Add to the fact that the full household savings from the Windsor Sewerage Scheme divestment have not yet been fully realised by residents, it doesn't make any sense to raise rates now when a quarter of households will soon see meaningful reductions in their annual bills that could offset future increases.

This amendment is not about avoiding responsibility. It is not a do nothing approach. It's about doing the job properly. It is about making evidence-based decisions, following through on our commitments, and showing leadership in difficult financial times. What I am proposing is simple, balanced and responsible. We defer the SRV for 12 months. We complete the spending review. We finalise the new rating structure informed by both the capacity to pay and horizontal equity that this chamber voted on. We strengthen the hardship policy. We create a transparent capital framework so the community can see exactly how their money will be spent, and we aggressively pursue new revenue opportunities, efficiencies and smarter financial management.

This is what sound economic approach looks like. This is what good governance looks like. And this is what leadership requires, especially in a cost of living crisis. Deferring the SRV now does not just close the door forever. It simply ensures that we do consider it if we need to. It will be based on stronger data, a fairer system and a much more transparent financial position. I believe this amendment is fair, responsible and in the best interests of the Hawkesbury community. I'm not going to sit here and attack other councillors for different opinions to my own. That is, each and every one of your choices and your responsibilities, and I completely acknowledge you may have a different opinion to me, and I just ask the same respect be given back to me.

I'm asking all my colleagues to look at what is fair and equitable and make sure that we do the work properly first before hitting our community for essentially an expensive tax, which I don't think they can afford in this current cost of living crisis. This is why we've been elected, to sit around this chamber, to represent our community, and they have told us to— They don't want this current SRV. Thanks. Thank

You ,

Councillor.

Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Mr Mayor, I'm wondering if you would allow me, given that I didn't see this. This was sent to us at 4.30 p.m. I didn't see it until I got here because I have to prepare to come here. Would you allow me the indulgence to ask the mover some questions about what's been presented?

Yes, Councillor.

Thank you very much. There's no information in this about the impact of the delay on the backlog. Have you investigated what our backlog, what would suffer? In other words, this is the status quo, so we're not having any more money in. So how will that impact if we were to come back in a year and repeat this exercise? What do you think will happen to the backlog in the meantime?

Well, as we discussed the other night at the briefing when it was put to staff, said no matter what we do, we're never going to get rid of the backlog. So I think, I just think that we need to look at doing this in 12 months and we get everything together. And yes, I understand that we don't like to delay things, but I just want to be able to genuinely look people in the eye and say we've tried to do everything we can. We have tried to do every sort of cost-saving measure that we can to lower the impact. Councillor

I just asked a question and I got the answer. I have another one.

Before you go on, Councillors, the questions and answers need to be precise.

Okay, all right. Well, my next question is, what would be the cost to do all these extra studies, given we've already spent $80,000?

Well, I think that most of these studies that I've already mentioned are already part of what we're doing. We haven't completed them yet, so they're already there.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. The other thing is I really would like an explanation to this because I don't understand the reference to it. Explain the reference to extractive industries and what you're referring to.

Extractive industries, it's— Some of the industries that we already have in the Hawkesbury, and I just want to make sure that we are getting every sort of potential revenue that we can. It's just another way of making sure we're getting... What

Are they

Well, you've got all sorts of businesses, companies that do sand mining, all that sort of stuff. They're already in place. I just want to make sure that council and ratepayers are getting their fair share of it.

Okay. Mr Mayor, I've got two more questions, if I may. What does developer contributions improvements mean? Does that mean more money from developers or more development?

More money from developers.

Okay.

So if they put something forward, that ratepayers and council are getting their fair share.

Okay. And also, what is your understanding of horizontal equity in the context you've used it?

I've included that because that was the notice of motion that this chamber passed in the last council meeting, so I wanted to make sure that I tried to include every possible thing that we have done as part of the preparation if we end up going... Is notice of motion

Okay. Not necessary

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll speak against the amendment. I think, from a political sense, of course, this is what anybody would do who doesn't want people screaming at them that there's been an SRV. But I'm not here to play politics. This is merely parking a decision to save a political backlash by delaying it because, quite frankly, I can't see what is going to change in a year. Councillor Creed himself just said we're doing all this work anyway. So I think that... Sorry,

Point of order. There's no point of order, Councillor.

Right. What we've got before us is a lot of work that is part of what we're doing. We've got resolutions to do that. We're already reviewing our policies. We do many of these things every year, and there's nothing wrong. I've got no objection to doing any of this, by the way. I think we should be doing it. We do do it all the time.

Mr Mayor, I can't hear. Could we just have quiet in the gallery because I can't hear Councillor Lyons-Buckett properly, and this is a very important debate.

Thank you, Councillors. Can the gallery not speak while we've got councillors talking? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm concerned our backlog will grow more, and revisiting, going down this path next year, we're going to have the same people objecting if we have to go with an SRV. Whereas really what we're doing, and we've seen this before with development things, for example, Mr Mayor, where we send it to an independent arbiter to go further. We send things to Gateway, the Department of Planning determines. This is us sending an application to the IPART, which is an independent tribunal. They will determine whether there's a need. They will determine whether we've satisfied all their various requirements. And what we're doing is we're moving . Councillor Kotlash has put forward a motion which is a revised down after public feedback, a much lesser rate variation.

And of course, we can still work on other things around that. But I would firstly like to thank the people that have raised their feedback with us, the people that have come here to speak. I think I really appreciate you giving your views, and I do understand them. I know you'll scoff and carry on, but I do understand it. I know there's a cost of living crisis. I have no confidence that will have improved within a year, so I don't know that anybody's going to be any better off. In fact, I think it may have a compounding effect that we leave the backlog longer. Has this been an ideal process with the SRV? Probably not. I've been critical. I know I'm on the record of being critical. But I've also seen us work to gain more information, to bring in that information from the public, and we had two briefings.

Workshop, sorry. Unfortunately, Councillor Creed missed one, but we had two of those, and we sat there and we tossed around ideas. We put forward, we heard all the things that each of us as individual representatives of the community brought from the people who contacted us. And we know people are hurting. We know that we have room to improve. Nobody denies that we shouldn't be doing things better. We should always be doing things better, and we can do things better. We've heard, for example, from the auditor that we are going reasonably well, but sometimes, and let's just say, I have said since the first time I campaigned to be in council in 2012 that I consider the entire financial sustainability model for local government to be broken.

It's a broken model, but we have to work with what we've got. So what I don't want to see a deferral simply to look at things that we're already looking at. Take a decision tonight. If you don't want to vote for what's on the table, don't vote for it. But don't use a way out by saying, Oh, we're putting it off. We've already deferred the flood planning information. We defer, defer because we don't—some people don't want to make a decision. But we're here to make decisions. That's what we're here for. And they're often hard, and they often mean that we get personal flak from people. But we've got to make those decisions. So there's no action in here to address the backlog. There's nothing in here that says we're going to be able to do better because of this deferral.

The things that we're looking at are just going to be supplementary information that, of course, we can contribute. We can increase revenue streams if we can find more. We can do many things like that. There's no reason we can't do all of it. But by the time any changes could be actually implemented, our backlog will have escalated to something so big that then people are going to be either faced— Faced with the really difficult decision of a really, really expensive SRV, or they're going to have to really lose many of the services that people say they don't use. But of course, when they actually look at it, they do use a lot of council services. So, you know, it's a complex thing how council accounting works, and I don't expect everyone to understand it, but thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you, Councillor.

Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Before my time starts, can I just ask a question? And it is particularly in line with what Councillor Lyons-Buckett has just touched on. And I'm sorry to put the staff on the spot. If you don't have the answer, that's okay. But if we did delay pretty much this exact scenario by 12 months, how much is that going to cost what is now currently just over $99 million? What's that figure going to look like in 12 months of no action, please?

Through you, Mr Mayor, there's probably two parts to that question, Deputy Mayor. The first part is the asset piece. The second part of that answer will be around what is the implication should Council then decide it wishes to pursue an SRV in 12 months' time. Perhaps I'll start with the Director of Infrastructure Services.

Thank you, through you, Mr Mayor. So presently the backlog sits at about $99.1 million, with an M, a year, and it's growing at approximately 14, or thereabouts, million dollars a year. Now, that ebbs and flows with each year as weather conditions and so forth impact on the road network particularly differently. The difference between a deferral and proceeding with one of the options, three and above, or option C and above, it is difficult to estimate, but we would estimate it at between $1.9 and $2.1 million in the first year, and that would over time grow as the caught up, but we would anticipate somewhere in the order of $19 to $20 million over the 10 years.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So essentially—

Sorry, Deputy Mayor, I'll just ask the Chief Financial Officer to kind of answer that question.

Thank you, General Manager, through you, Mr Mayor. The implications of the amounts that Mr Barton was referring to is we have looked at that on the Option C model, which we had the four years at 8.66%. If you were to delay it 12 months and do a similar option, you'd be looking at a 9.5% rise over the four years instead of the 8.6. So—

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. My quick summary from that is essentially we'll be spending more money on consultation for a higher SRV with a bigger backlog. That's the summary of a 12-month delay. I can't sit here in good conscience and support that. It's costing both our community in terms of our ratepayers and our council more money. Everything with a 12-month delay is going to cost more. I cannot sit here and say to everybody here that I'm going to vote for something that's going to cost you more because a decision will need to be made anyway. Therefore, I won't be supporting this amendment tonight. I will be happy to support the recommendation that was put first on the table by Councillor Kotlasch.

I do believe deferring is not particularly good governance. It's kicking the can down the road to make a problem even worse than what it is currently projected to be. Now, it is really hard to sit here tonight and make this decision. We all live in this community. Unlike what is said on social media, that we don't. Every single one of us lives in a suburb in the Hawkesbury that is a condition of being elected to this council. We put our hands up here because we know how much we love the community. You are all our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues. We see you in the main street at Coles. You're people that we know. So to sit here tonight and have to make a decision that we know is going to have an economic impact is particularly hard.

It's very draining on us to have to do this. But we also have a professional responsibility to ensure that, A, this organisation keeps going and , B, when you're driving on the roads, taking your kids to the parks, whatever you might be doing, you can look around and be proud of your community because it is a quality that you want and that you deserve.

The fact is, though, that that comes at a price. And just like you have a household budget, I have a household budget. Everybody does. We have to have a budget here at Council, and I've been very open in my time on this council about saying to people, I absolutely want your feedback. I absolutely want to hear your opinion. But please have done your homework first. Please go and read all of the publicly available, transparent information that is on our website, that is available to you, not just because we've put it there, but because we're legally required to put it there. It is there for you to read. Is it boring? 100 percent, it is boring. But it is important and it is critical. to the decisions we make in this chamber.

Now there has been other discussions, not just tonight, but recently and over the years I've been in here about cost shifting, and it sounds like it's a cliche. In fact, sadly, it's a reality. We have the state government giving us less and less funds and resources. We are legislated by the state government under an act that does not allow us to pull many levers when it comes to implementing our rating structure, and we really have our hands tied behind our back. If you go down to the shops and your average grocery bill was 200 a week and it's now 250, our average price to do a road has gone up the same way. Everything's gone up, and we have to look at ways that we can get more revenue in. But it's the reason we're doing that is to deliver the quality that you want and expect from your council.

As I said, making this decision tonight for me is about professional responsibility and economic accountability. I could not go home tonight and know that I placed this council in such a predicament that it could not function again, and that comes back to the community, as I've said multiple times. So based on the feedback that we've got, based on the data that you've given us that's in our business paper that has been collated through reports, we have listened, and I'm hoping that's a sentiment I can hear around the room tonight. The proposal that went out to the community was too much. Got it. Understood. We heard you, but we still can't do nothing. So I'm hoping that the option three, which I'm happy to support, is a softer yet still professionally balanced approach, taking into consideration what you want and what the council has to deliver to the community.

What I'd like to say as well is that then gets scrutinised by an independent body. That's what IPART is for, and that's what they will do with our recommendation. The last thing I want to say is, when words are thrown around like mistrust or lack of integrity or corruption, they are very powerful words that I would ask you to hold back because there is no one who is in this chamber, whether it be an elected person or staff, who is operating in that way. And based on the fact that we just had our auditor on the screen for you to hear, with our audited reports that have all been approved, we are doing everything that's right. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. That's my decision. Thank you.

Thank you.

Councillor Codlash. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm speaking against the amendment . One of the things that was said that needed to be done by Council was to exhaust every opportunity to find savings elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned, the whole time I've been on Council, which Started in 2016. We have always done that. We have quarterly budget variations, and somebody's having a chat. We have quarterly budget variations. We are always looking to save money. That's just a given. I mean, if you think we get in there and just, Oh yeah, she'll be right, it's not true. We all work towards getting the best that we can out of the resources that we've got. That happens all of the time, in good faith. What I don't quite understand is that on page 28 of the business paper, there is a list of 14 really quite major activities , projects, I guess, that demonstrate, list the things that we have done to save money.

Now, just as possibly putting you on the spot, staff, have we got any idea of how much money we've actually saved from the 14 cost-saving measures listed on page 28 of the business paper?

General Manager.

Thank you. Through you, Mr Mayor. We are actively working on quantifying that as part of the submission that would go to IPART should Council support the making of an application. Broadly speaking, identifying efficiencies and productivity improvements is very much part of our business as usual operations. Just running through, I guess, at a fairly high level on some of those bullet points there set out on page 28 of the business paper. Budget parameters and planning cycle. Councillors were certainly aware that the first iteration of the current financial year's budget was at a $20 million deficit that was subsequently brought back to a balanced position. Wastewater divestment is the next bullet point.

The divestment of the Windsor Sewerage Scheme is estimated to return around $80 million directly to the customers of that sewer scheme over a 10-year period. The Lower Portland ferry, through the good work of a number of key staff and councillors who advocated for Transport for NSW to take over the operations of Lower Portland ferry, Council saved around $600,000 per annum or $6 million over 10 years. The FOGO, the food organics, garden organics and the ARC Ento trial. I think it was just at our last meeting, Council made a decision to defer the , as a result of the innovative trial at the waste management facility, the decision to push out the commencement of that trial by two years has saved ratepayers $6 million.

Should the Arcanto trial be a success, and that we're all hoping, who knows, but if that was a success, that foregoing the requirement for a food and garden organic service would save the community $30 million over 10 years. The animal shelter services agreements mentioned, where now as a result of some alternate agreements in place with partner councils there, we're generating an additional about $1 million per annum, so that's $10 million over 10 years. The events review, so Councilors know that we had to rationalise the events program. That's cost neutral, but has effectively corrected a significant budget shortfall in the ongoing events program. And then, look, there's a number of points there that I would loosely group into property portfolio review.

And since our property and property management policies were adopted in 2023, staff have been working through a range of initiatives, and particularly we've tackled the low-hanging fruit early, so to speak, on that. So the childcare centres review will generate around $6 million, broadly speaking, broad numbers over 10 years. We're working on a remnant land work, which will identify, I think, up to about 12 properties that are surplus to needs potentially that will then be reinvested. So there's a number of mechanisms there, even right down to things like the billboards on Windsor Road, for example. So that— will generate around $800,000 over a 10-year period. So all those little bits and pieces as we manage that.

And then, as we've highlighted in there, our continuous improvement program and service review program brings about those soft, what I would call soft save, where we can't necessarily—they're very difficult to identify those indirect financial benefits that come from efficiencies and just working smarter across the business. So broadly speaking, there's some pretty round numbers there, but that's the sort of quantum that we're looking at and that we'll be looking to firm those up to some degree for any proposal to IPART.

With your indulgence, Councillor, General Manager, in relation to the information that was given to us a couple of days ago with DA approvals, would you like to touch on what's happened in the last six months? Oh

Certainly. So one team that we have on the back of both internal and external drivers, we'll say that, is having a look at the way in which our development assessment team operates, looking to generate efficiencies through process reviews there. And certainly our application processing times over the first four months of this financial year have halved from the previous financial year and now sit at about the fourth or fifth best in metropolitan Sydney.

Thank you, Councillor. Well,

Thank you. Did anybody add all of that up? Because I was—yeah, that was. Thank you. I'm glad I asked that question. And I suppose that's why it is disheartening to hear from some people and from some of my fellow colleagues that we haven't done enough. We haven't done enough work to get our finances in order before we launched into this, because it's very clear to me that we have done almost everything that we can do. No, I shouldn't say that, because there's always things that you can do. But that list of 14 things that we have done, I think demonstrates that we take seriously the need to get as much efficiencies out of everything we do. And one of our speakers commented about getting the different levels of government to pay.

The Lower Portland Ferry was on our agenda for years. It was costing us a fortune, and it was grossly unfair that we had to, and the Hills Council had to pay for this. It was almost like an extension of a state road. We all knew it. We kept pressing, and we had that win. So we are mindful that we need to go into bat for our community. Sometimes we win. Most of the time we don't, because that's the nature of the broken system that Councillor Lyons-Buckett pointed out. The animal shelter. We used to take animals from surrounding councils for next to nothing. So we addressed that. We said, no, sorry, you have to pay more. It's a service that we offer. We have done all sorts of things. I wasn't so cognisant of the quite Our large cumulative savings that we have.

But I think it's a good thing to bring up now. It's, I think, be comforted that we have done a lot of work in this space. One of the things that has struck me, and like Councillor Lyons-Buckett, not seeing this amendment until half past five this afternoon puts me a bit on the back foot. But one of the things that has struck me just in reading it in the chamber is there's a lot of things in this amendment— there's a lot of things in this amendment that actually aren't, that can be partitioned off from the special rate variation. Like, I think some of my fellow councillors have already said this, we're already doing a lot of these things.

Thanks.

I speak against the amendment.

The $80,000 that we spent in relation to information and both to try and get it out in the public, and we had some issues there, big time. But the information that we got and had two briefings and discussions about it, that was invaluable. I mean, we all had an idea, and with some of the speakers tonight, they had ideas too. But it was from an outside consultant that give us information, and one of the things that we're assessing—well, we were discussing prior to that information coming—is who can afford and who can't.

And it was generally assumed that there was areas in metropolitan Hawkesbury that were doing it pretty tough. Well, when we got the information, it was exactly the opposite. We've got 11% of our community that's doing it tough paying rates, and they're not from the metropolitan areas. They're from business and from rural properties. The big end of town is, it would be, that pays the highest rates . That, along with a lot of other information, was pretty valuable because it give us an insight where we charge rates on property values.

But we sit around asking how we distribute those funds in relation to the Local Government Act that says that the people that pay the money provide services for them, which is in conflict, because the ones who pay the most live furthest out of town and got the less amenity. So it's not an easy decision, and the amount of people who responded in different ways about this variation is—well, I wish it would happen with some of the other things we discuss, because the councillors did sit up and take notice. But with the amendment that's here, all the things that's on the list, and they're all relevant, but they've been discussed all year round, all the time, and certainly by this Council since the last election.

There was a big commitment by councillors, and to their credit, in the main decisions that affect councils across the board, the councillors are on board. With the last speaker, Stephen, who spoke about credibility of council, he's spot on. If we set a bad standard, then we expect a bad name. The issues that the General Manager brought up are issues that councillors around this table have been pushing, certainly since I've been Mayor, to have issues addressed in a different style to what they've been dealt with before. And that's why that list there, and every one of them, we've done pretty good at. And as indicated in the amendment, there's a whole heap of other things we're still looking at and opportunities that come up because of the discussions, because we are talking together with a common objective, that we want the best out of this place and we want to be proud of it.

So, councillors, to support a rate increase goes against the grain, I can tell you.

If we don't do it and we put it off, things get worse. It's not four floods we've had; it's eight floods in two years we had, which hadn't happened in 28 years prior to that. And then the other issues that we've got with costs shifting, as the Deputy Mayor spoke of. It's not easy, and we've talked about it, all those things lots of times. But you sitting around the table is going to make a decision tonight, and be aware of those discussions, where we're going with them, the implications if we don't support a rate increase. And it is hard,

But if we don't do it, it's not going to get easier. So, councillors, and I know some of you feel as strong as I have in the past about rate increases, but I'd ask you to seriously consider how you vote this evening. Any further debate?

Councillor Ryan first. Sorry

Mr Mayor, if this submission goes to IPART, will the council's submission be made available to the councillors and to the public?

Absolutely, but I'll have the general manager clarify it.

Through you, Mr Mayor, yes, it will, Councillor.

Councillor Djuric. Thanks, Mr Mayor. When we were engaging with the community on the SRV, we were saying that we couldn't refine the way we did business to the point where we could negate an... But I don't think we are trimming the fat to the point that we are suffering the same as the community, and I think we can do a bit better. To say that we would go from a rate increase from 8.6 to 9.6 is to say that we've got no other avenues to look at, nothing else we can do and nowhere else to trim the fat. And I'm quite certain there are other avenues where we can trim the fat.

And to say that we're feeling blindsided by not seeing Councillor Creed's amendment till late is similar to how the community feels about how they got the information on the SRV last minute. And I think we knew about this earlier and we could have brought the community along if we went out earlier, and I think we could have done better. And I'm going to support the amendment. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. No problem.

Yeah, thanks, Mr Mayor. I'm going to put a stake in the ground and support the amendment, thank you. Why? I don't... I think with the reports coming back and the public surveys that came back to Council, I commend that you listened to them. But the initial proposal was for two increases : an SRV of 11.9, but let's just round it, 40% growth for the period, or nothing, a zip.

If you're going to sell the proposal, right, you've got to take the community with you. This is how I tend to work, and it comes down to communication.

So, although we've come up with, well, it started with two... We came to four. We came down to five. We negated one because I wouldn't have got the revenue, and IPART wouldn't have looked at it. We've come with four, and it's a preference to do the sustain model, which is an 8.66 over the four years. Okay, so

I would— everything that's been said to me on previous SRVs, right, and I can only go by my colleagues in council who've been through this process before, right, there was more than two submissions to the community. It wasn't just two: take it or leave it. I believe there might have been—they can talk. I don't have to—it was three or four in the last one. But it comes down to, look, this is where we think we are. You get the feedback from the public on all the proposals that's in front of them, and then we reassess. So this is the thing that I've absolutely been anguishing over. And all the speakers have been eloquent in what they're against this and with the sustain model, and thank you for it, and I respect you for it. But right at this moment, I'll be voting for the amendment. Thank you. I'll just keep it brief, and I'll keep it— Thank you, Councillor.

Can I ask a question, Mr Mayor? A

Question,

Councillor.

Yes, please.

I hope somebody can answer this because it's about the IPART process. My understanding was that the IPART process,

With all of the deliberations that they do, that they actually go out for public consultation again. So , all of our ratepayers have the opportunity again to look at the option three if that gets up. So that kind of negates the—

Well, depending on the extent, that might negate the problems with my fellow councillors thinking that the public won't consult.

Thanks, Councillor. General Manager.

I'll leave aside the commentary there at the end. But to your question of does IPART then subsequently publicly exhibit the application that we've put to it, the answer is yes.

Any further debate?

Anything else?

Councillor Brogner. Yeah, I'm speaking in favour of the amendment. I'm pleased that Councillor Creed has worked with councillors on the form of words that he's advanced, because

When you go to the people that you expect might be open to the idea, but I'll continue . Yeah, do so, Councillor. Because I see it as a counterpart to what I was fortunate to be able to pass in the chamber last month. I brought something about rating fairness. Clearly, there's a very clear perception in the community that we've got to do some work. To make sure that, you know, regardless of the quantum of rates that we levy, that we do so in a way that's fair. I think what Councillor Creed, through his form of words, adds to that and begins to task Council to engage in a variety of things that, frankly, should have been before the people before this decision was made, to give people the best confidence that

We've examined every mechanism that we can, not merely the rating structure, but alternative sources of revenue, and to properly engage with people in a way that is above and beyond reproach. I believe that the consultation process that we engaged in had some deficiencies, and I'm drawing from my memory of the SRV in 2017, where not only do we have far more extensive public meetings that were very, very much better attended than the ones that we've had recently, but we had a very well-established plan of capital works. I've looked hard to see what the public could have drawn on to get an understanding of whether roads in their area would be advantaged by an accelerated maintenance program as a result of an SRV, and it was almost impossible to find.

I found one graphic that was very low-res, the street names were very hard to make out. In the end, I wasn't even confident that that was something that had been available to the public or whether it was something that was disclosed to us in a briefing. I think we could have done a better job. Councillor Lyons-Buckett thinks that, you know, to delay this, you know, is motivated simply to avoid some kind of political backlash. But I mean, what Councillor Creed is suggesting here— is merely that we engage in some work and make a decision, perhaps in 12 months, which will be a year closer to the next council election, where I rather think that people's memories are going to be more focused on the way that councillors have voted on contentious issues like this.

For all its faults, the last SRV at least laid out that extensive pattern of capital works, which we felt morally obliged to because they were a pledge on behalf of that chamber. The value of that process was never more clear than when we came within a whisker of reneging on the pledge that we'd made to sell Paco Road. And it's only because we'd promised to do that as part of the previous SRV process that I think collectively in the chamber we realised that we had to keep faith. And that's the only reason why Paco Road is sold today. I think people are entitled and should expect that if we're going to be asking for a rate rise of this magnitude, is that we do something at least as thorough as that.

I also want to articulate what the difficulty is that we face here in the chamber, because although it's abundantly clear as a result of the feedback process that we know that people don't want this SRV, it's also true that in survey after survey,

People in the Hawkesbury put roads number one, two and three on their list of priorities. It feels a little bit like they want to have their cake and eat it too. Yes, we want more resources devoted to roads, more even than we're doing at the moment, but no, we don't want to pay more for it. And it places, I think, the chamber into an invidious position because, as diligent servants of the people, we've got to try and balance all of these competing and stated priorities that people have. We understand the cost of living pressures that people are under. The capacity to pay report was fascinating reading in the sense that it said that, you know, delinquent rates are more prominent in those parts of the LGA that some people think of as rich.

But delinquency in rates, the inability to pay, and the fact that people have fallen behind on their rates is a real marker of financial distress, together with the fact that people's expenditure in the Hawkesbury, their discretionary income is down, their savings are down precipitously. This is the effect of the cost of living crunch, and we can't ignore that. But at the same time, I would love for us to have more resources to be able to spend on the things that we like, including roads. You know, I know that if an SRV does not go through, we are going to— council staff are going to have some justification for denying every pet project that I want to advance. I want footpaths around Oakville Public School?

No. I want Barnes Creek Road or, you know, Commercial Road sealed? The answer will be no. I want to extend more colonial-style street lamps down George Street as far as the station? The answer will be no. I want park signage to be upgraded, because some of our park signage is in a properly depressing state? The answer will be no. Why? Because there won't be any money, and we had the opportunity to vote that through, and we didn't. But at the same time, I think— Excuse

Me, Mr Mayor. Time was up quite a while ago.

Sorry, let's just ask the general manager. It didn't come up on my screen. My apologies. I was looking for a timer so I could time my remarks, but there wasn't a timer there. I'll rely on the chair to tell me when my remarks are concluded. It was coming, councillor. Thank you. Well, look, I'll support the amendment, but I'll lament the position that it puts us in, and I'm quite sure that the people that tell us not to raise taxes are going to tell me tomorrow that they want more money spent on roads. Thank you.

Any further discussion?

Before we put the amendment, I'm just going to speak in favour of the motion.

We put the amendment first.

Sorry?

We put the amendment first before we speak on the motion, because several of us want to speak on the motion, I think.

Okay.

Okay. The motion by Councillor Creed — the amendment, sorry, is on the screen — by Councillor Creed, seconded by Councillor Zamprogno. Those in favour of the amendment?

We've got Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Creed, Councillor Veigel. Those opposed? Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Isbucket, Councillor Ryan, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Reardon, Councillor Sheather. The motion's lost.

The amendment's lost. The motion is before you. Councillor Lyons-Buckett.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll speak on the motion, thank you. And I agree with colleagues who say this isn't an easy decision. And of course nobody would — if we could do anything and not do it, we would. But there's nothing I've seen that we can do that does not do it. And I didn't vote originally to even go down the process because I thought the original proposal was excessive, and I wasn't in the least surprised to see the feedback that came in around that. However, since then, we have done more work. We have really worked together, and we've come up with this proposal that's before you to spread the rate over four years at a lower rate, which won't send us into decline. It'll keep us from declining more and building that backlog that's going to— Going to cost more later.

Hopefully, through some further strategies, we can ease the burden on our ratepayers. So the rate peg across four years—so you always have to pay the rate peg; that's what you've got to pay anyway—and so that would compound to about 16.54% over four years. So you would have to be paying that increase anyway, even if we voted not to have an SRV. So everyone would have that. So with the reduced rate of 8.66%, each year there would be an increase of 4.76% above the rate peg, which is much less than what the original proposal was, and it's spread over another year. So when we looked at figures around what that would mean, it looked like a lot more manageable of a proposal. And I understand that it is a burden on people to pay more money.

We're paying more money for everything, from our food to our insurance to fuel if you use it. And I get that there's an element of mistrust and a lack of confidence in council. But we have done so much work around this, and it's been reinforced by seeing our audited financials and hearing from the auditor tonight that the management—we are doing well within the confines of what we have. This isn't about council making excuses. We all know we can improve, and we must. As your elected representatives, we must ensure prudent financial management now, but also for the future, to ensure we don't place further burdens down the track for our children and grandchildren. Any of the staff sitting up here will tell you that many of us constantly demand things of them.

We ask them to do things, we ask for more, and— We do stand up for our community and we ask for things to be done, but they can only operate within the resources that they have. So another thing I'm concerned about and that we must really commit to looking at is around the ongoing charges, which are separate to the rate. They're the extra charges people get, particularly things that the ratepayers that have to pay, pump out. And I'm working with some residents on some options around that. And we must get to a position where we show our ratepayers we're delivering the best results we can, and that accountability about that lies with us. We have to be the ones who are vigilant in calling our management to account, and we do regularly.

We need to rebuild the trust, which people have expressed here tonight, saying they have lost. That's going to be challenging because, you know, people measure trust in different ways. But if we can provide a strong cohesive councillor body, we can work towards it. It's time to stop external forces trying to run this show. We're the people elected to make these decisions, and we have to face an enormous balancing act. It's a really difficult thing to deal with. I don't want to sit here and lose things like the Sister City Committee or the Estedford or the things that are so meaningful within our community. But if we have to stop start cutting services, they're the sorts of things that unfortunately will have to go, and we don't want to do that.

I want to mention the two workshops we recently had that were hugely beneficial. I really hope that we can continue to work like that. We engaged well. We were able to direct staff probably in a more meaningful way than I've seen before, and I really appreciated that. My time's going very fast. I've got issues. We need to make some hard decisions. We've got to make decisions about the viability of the West Invest projects and our capacity to staff and maintain them into the future. We need to investigate any options that can be pursued by us to take up additional revenue streams. To do all this, we have to be the drivers of it. We have to have genuine dialogue with our community around the process around all of that.

But we have to do it in a supportive and united environment, and we need to have honest engagement with our community so perceptions don't run wild and misinformation drowns out the reality of what we're doing. We'll revisit the policies and much of what's here, designed to assist those in hardship, and for all those commenting and making submissions, I urge you to keep giving your feedback, not only about this, but all the time. It's really your thoughts are important and your feedback's really valuable.

Thank you, Councillor.

I've got about six words, and your local knowledge contributes to helping things to get better results. So I invite everyone to continue not to only come out when there's an SRV. And I can't count.

Yeah, just the two in front of the six, that's all. Any further discussion ?

Councillor Wheeler. Thanks, Mr Mayor. Look, I've been unsupportive of this SRV since it was first presented to us, and I don't think we've done it well. It's been too quick. The consultation period has been short. We've had too few options, and we've lacked detail. And I didn't support going to consultation for those reasons. And it would be really easy for us to blame the staff for this. It would be easy and cowardly, because the fault really lies with us. It's been our inability to work together for the good of the Hawkesbury that's been this council's defining feature for years, since before most of us were elected, in fact. But in the last few weeks, something shifted. We've actually talked.

We've thrown around solutions. We've tried to come to an agreement. No one around this table can honestly say that this SRV is unnecessary. The questions have always been when, how much, and for what.

So if we look at the community's input, and taken at face value, it could be seen as never, none at all, and roads, roads, roads. Tonight, what we've heard, I think, from the speakers has been far more fulsome suggestions, and those have been really helpful. And I think we also need to listen to those criticisms. I mean, some of them really bite: a lack of integrity and trust, a lack of satisfactory interface. And if you look at some of the other criticisms online, they're things like corruption, bribery and embezzlement. We really do have an issue with trust and communicating with our community. And some of that comes down to the fact that we haven't functioned effectively as a governing body.

That's on us, and that's what we need to fix. We need to show what we're doing with public money. We need to do things well. We need to make long-term improvements, not quick fixes. And we need to communicate all of that much better.

What we've got now is far more detail and more options. We've had a proposal for a whole lot of additional things, three-quarters of which we are required to do anyway, and we will do anyway. We've had some pipe dreams, I think, presented. The idea that we have fat to trim. We are always looking for improvement. We should always be looking at what can be trimmed as things change and evolve. But all trimmings have consequences, and we've just seen that with childcare centres. So that little exercise has now seen those childcare centres, most of which are in our most vulnerable areas, as we've seen in our Capacity to Repay report, they are now forced to increase fees and cut staff. We're already reducing staff in some areas of council.

Some of our most valued areas are seeing reduced staff numbers, maybe not all the time, but certainly some of the time. And this has an impact on our staff. It has an impact on our capacity to deliver services. We did have a very extensive capital works program last time, and Councillor Zamprono will remind him voted against it and engaged in a campaign of public vilification against those who voted for it. So to claim that we need more detail before you can support it is frankly spurious. We are voted in to make decisions. We're not voted in to make the decisions that only get us re-elected next time round. We are voted in to make decisions for the long-term consequence, the long-term viability, sustainability and health of this LGA.

Willingness to pay and capacity to pay are not the same thing. We have no proof that the eleven and a half percent of people in this LGA who have not paid their rates have not done so because they can't afford to. So we need to stop turning correlation into causation. We've looked at property portfolio optimisation. We've looked at a number of things, and we will continue to do so. I'm still unhappy with this, but what I am willing to do is send this to the independent umpire, IPART, to make the decision based on an assessment of capacity to pay, council's commitment to efficiencies and the need for an SRV. It's not automatic approval. IPART can and does refuse all or part of proposed SRVs, as North Sydney Council will cheerfully tell you.

This is a really difficult and unpleasant decision. It always is.

Thank you, Councillor.

Any further debate? Deputy Mayor. Red light, red jacket, bit hard to see.

All good. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll be speaking in support of the recommendation, and since I've already spoken against the amendment, I'll keep my remarks quite short. I did just want to touch on what the GM said before, and I don't think that can go unnoticed, and I wanted to therefore highlight it again. When Councillor Kotlash brought up that list of significant cuts that we have made and savings we've made. When the chatter is about you've done nothing to cut things, you're just asking for money, it's just fundamentally not true. The efficiency and the productivity measures that we have voted on, but our staff have put the hard work into, we're looking at millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars in savings.

And as the mayor would know, leading up to the last budget that we adopted, we told the staff, go and make more cuts, or go and find more efficiencies. And they did. To then also, you know, as we found out from the general manager, but we had got in an email previously, that the DA processing times have halved. That is extraordinary. The biggest complaint I've got as a councillor in my time here is DA processing times. And, you know, you've pushed that since you've become the mayor, Mr Mayor, so to have that result that we are, what did you say, GM, one of the top five or six in the Sydney metropolitan area for processing times, we have never had that. That is how our council is performing.

You've told us you wanted better roads over and over and over again. I don't think there's one Facebook or social media post that any of us in this chamber have done where we haven't had that feedback come from community members about potholes and drainage and this and that about roads. And so when we take that feedback on, we listen, we have our briefings, we have our workshops, we sit here and go, what can we do? We then put together a package, we go out and investigate. You want this quality? This quality is going to cost this much, and we put it to the community. That's what we've done here. And I think for those who are going to support the motion on the board, it is a prime example that we have listened to the fact that you said what you've tabled first was too much.

So we've listened and we've said, okay, let's tone that down, let's soften that a little bit so that the impact isn't so much, but we're still delivering what you've told us you want us to do, and that is better quality roads. The question then becomes, if we cannot pay for it with a moderate SRV, what services do you want cut? Councillor Djuric touched on that, but where was your substance? Where was your detail in what we are cutting? Are you going to tell members of our community you're closing a library? You're closing the gallery? You're going to close the museum? You're going to close a pool? You're going to eliminate our street sweepers? You're going to cut in half our staff who mow our lawns so that the lawns get mowed less frequently in our parks?

Are you going to tell the community that their weekly garbage pickups are now fortnightly and they have to suffer the smell of their garbage in their bins? These are the very, very real things we here have to decide. To decide if we don't implement an SRV, we're going to cut things back because the budget is only this big. And that's what I really wanted to get across with my extra speech here tonight. The words I touched on previously were professional responsibility and economic accountability. And I think what's on the board is that decision. Don't get me wrong, this has weighed heavily on me. I've actually had the worst anxiety in the last two days, if you ask my closest family and friends, that I think I've ever had in my life.

It's not about me. I'm just letting you know how much the pressure has been on me the last two days. That anxiety is very, very real, because the cost of living, I understand it and I get it, and I don't want to put that onto people, is a very real thing. Given that I've just got a minute left, I just want to finish on this. I don't know why I'm getting a bit emotional here, but anyway. I'm about to go into my 10th year here on this council. 10 years where there has been very little unity from the elected body. 10 years where we have made each other cry, we've made each other really upset, we've said awful things about each other. We haven't worked together. The community has begged us to work together.

You see that in the comments online. You see that on Facebook. I think going into my 10th year, I would like to think I've reached a higher level of maturity, of wisdom in terms of my collective knowledge about how the council works. And I must say that the cohesion that I have felt with some of my councillors, who I considered my absolute political foes over the last decade, has been something that I never thought I would feel as an elected person in this chamber. And I'm sorry it's taken an SRV vote to get to that. But I think that if we can come together with our very different views across the political spectrum to know what's best for the council and our community, then I think based on once this decision is made, we have three years left to make a lot of other better decisions for the betterment of this area.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you.

Councillor Brogner. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm speaking against what's now the motion, but I want to start with a question to staff. When I was raising in my earlier speech the status of a capital works program, I just felt that it would be wise to seek clarification. There was a graphic that we saw in a briefing that had green and purple worms. One represented the roads that were going to be upgraded anyway, but the purple ones represented the additional roads, but it was very grainy and very low res. Could I at least get some clarification about whether there was a list of capital works the SRV would fund, including specific roads that are mentioned by name, that went out as part of the publicly disseminated material? Could I get that clarification?

Yep. Through you, Mr Mayor. There were no specific roads included in the material that went out. The approach we took was to detail programs, and that was a very deliberate response because the nature of the network has been, and has shown us over the past four years, that roads are deteriorating, and roads in particular are deteriorating at a rate where the priority could change every three months. The principle of what we're trying to do is to apply the very sparse resources that we have where they are most needed. And if there is a commitment to a particular road four years out, it would be disingenuous to say that we will apply that funding to that road come hell or high water, because it may not be the greatest priority.

That is the approach. That would improve with time. That is a function of where we are, and councillors will remember when I first began about the state of the data that we had available to us at that time and how we've worked to improve that data. That will continue. That work will continue. But the reality is, is that a capital works program, and we do have a five-year rolling program, we reprioritise that every 12 months to ensure that that funding goes to the roads which need it the most.

So my follow-up question would be: can we at least ensure that, to the extent that we did identify specific roads by name — I'm referring to the graphic that was shown to us in the context of a briefing — will that perhaps form part of the final submission to IPART, or is it still the intention of the executive not to name roads for the reason the Director stated?

Thank you through you, Mr Mayor. No, it's not our intention to circulate that for the exact reasons that Mr Button has illuminated. I think it would be disingenuous for Council to publish a five-year rolling program when we know that that is subject, as Mr Button has indicated, to such degree of change, particularly at very, very short notice. Okay,

Thank you for the answers to those questions. So I'll direct my remarks in these ways. Firstly, let's be clear. People watching from home might say, well, this is very reasonable. There are four options here. Number one would presumably be the most expensive because it was the original proposal. Option four is the rate peg only, no SRV. Therefore that's the cheapest, and therefore options one, two, three and four are graduated in terms of most expensive to least expensive. I want the people watching along in the gallery and at home to recognise that 8.66% for four years, which is now the motion before us, is effectively the most expensive option. It's like option one. 11 .73 over three years is the same as 8 .66 over four years.

Cumulatively , it amounts to 39.4% rate rise cumulatively. It is phased in over a longer period of time. At the end of that four-year period, it's the most expensive option that there is. I don't want people to mistake what's in prospect here with being some kind of compromise option. It's a compromise only in the sense that it's being phased in over one extra year. But what people will be paying at the end of year four is what otherwise people would have been paying at the end of year three, if I understand this correctly.

Secondly, unlike the SRV that we had in 2017, and this is my main misgiving, when we made extensive public dissemination of a specific capital works program, I felt that that had value. I was new to this at the time, and I thought, well, it makes sense to me that if we're going to be asking for a rate hike, we tie that to specific capital improvements. Of course that's what we do as part of our public communication. If it turns out, as the director has clarified, that we've done no such thing this time. And I understand the director's motivations, staff generally. I don't want to direct this at anybody. I do understand the rationale, but I would point to this as perhaps one of the reasons why the level of anxiety, or the pointedness of public feedback, has been the way that we have seen it of late.

Because we haven't put out a list. We're proposing a four-year SRV and a rolling program of capital improvement and maintenance that goes out beyond this chamber,

Effectively won't bind a future chamber because we've made no promise except the promise to raise rates. Well, no wonder. And I'll leave my remarks there. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Ryan. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'm glad you could see my light at the end. And I thank the speakers who came up, and for their knowledge and background in relation to this. I've spent a considerable time reading this. I went back through the earlier SRV, and I didn't vote for this to go ahead the first time because I felt I didn't have enough information. And tonight, Councillor Creed gave me some further information. I got a 4.23, and I'm sorry, I couldn't take that all on board. I have spoken to a lot of people, and I seem to be a person that people do come and speak to, and I listen to them. And a lot of them were very put out by the higher level with the original 11% plus. And that's where- I thought to myself, we've got to do something about this.

They told me they're very happy to stretch it out, and I was quite happy to go along when that was brought up at the briefing, which was a very good briefing. Most of the things I've got to say, Councillor McMahon's already said, and so I won't bore you with that again and the people here. The big thing that I have, and what I am and why I got elected, is I'm here for the community, and a lot of our staff are our community. They really work here, and every time I meet them, they're happy, they're pleased, and they're very impressed with doing work for the community. So it's going to be difficult if we have to cut back further and further. That won't come cheaply because there'll be redundancies.

The money will have to flow from somewhere for the redundancies and that, and then we'll have more people who are suffering rate stress. So the other thing is, I don't want to move this on to the next generation. I've got the next generation, two generations living here in the Hawkesbury. I don't want to move that on that a decision we make here now , or we don't make, moves on and affects them in years to come where they've got to pay big bills to get things fixed when we can fix the problem right now. So I'm here to make a decision. That's what I got elected for, and I told a lot of people that I will make a decision when I have to make one, and that's what I'll be doing tonight. And I'll be making this decision to go with item three.

So thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

Councillor Veigel.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. A question, if I may. Yes. The SRV increases specifically for the Capital Works Program for roads, is it not?

All asset classes, Councillor, but predominantly, given our asset backlog in roads, that is where the predominant expenditure will be.

That's how I remember it. So none of the SRVs are going to go into an operational cost basis? You've already funded that, and it's, as you've already mentioned, based when you look at the—well, let's look at the forensics of it. If you cut everything out of the operational budget and you cut every pool and library out of the place, you'd still save seven million, but that wouldn't go to a brass razoo for any capital upgrade. I remember that being mentioned online, and also the public forums. Is that still the case?

Those figures that were provided in the public forum, Councillor, were to depict that the scale of the backlog figure was not readily able to be met through service efficiencies, given how much those services cost to operate.

Thank you. And you still believe the IPART increase for next financial year is going to come in at 3.1 and maybe 3.9 on ongoing years for the next four years?

It's 3.—IPART has provided Hawkesbury City Council a rate peg at 3.1% for the next financial year. The remainder of our modelling throughout the report, we have used 3.9% for that peg, given that that was the previous year's peg, and that is the assumed rate peg that we had used in our community engagement, so that's why we've continued that.

Is that just a professional assumption, but you wouldn't bet the house on it, would you?

Because I wouldn't.

No, Councillor. It's, I would say it's an informed view, but it is one that there are a number of factors that drive that rate peg figure, and we won't know that until such time as we see those out of years.

Yeah. Okay. No, thank you. I'll let you make a comment and I might come back if I could, Mr Mayor. Thanks. Yeah,

Thank you, Councillors. When we talk about opportunities to further go out to the community and all that sort of stuff, when this came to council a couple of months ago, there was none of that discussion then. Most of us have been involved in special rate increases, been around it, some of us quite a while. It's not new. What happened in relation to the mail-outs and stuff was unfortunate, and I say that sincerely. There was trouble with how that happened. But I don't think it would have made any difference. Probably more people would have been informed and upset that that sort of thing was going to happen. But we sat around this table here, and the two people objected to what we were doing the most as being the most supportive tonight in relation to the motion, Councillor Lyons-Buckett and Councillor Wheeler.

They expressed strong concern of just how we should go about it and the opportunities that should be taken up, the expressions and the like.

And we didn't take much notice of it. Those opportunities that you spoke about tonight, and it's not easy for someone who's got something in mind to change their mind. But the opportunities for us to offer the community, indifferent to what we did, was there before us. So if we want to set some examples of sincerity and the like, when those opportunities come up, we need to speak up, irrespective of our political or personal views. That's not what you're sitting around this room for. It's to make good decisions, informed decisions. And I don't know of any other subject in the last five years that I've been here that we've spoken about collectively and more about the information about what we're discussing tonight.

And in hindsight, when you get residents, excuse me, who spoke tonight, and probably every other person you spoke to over the last month or so has offered advice, I don't think there's one that's come to me that we aren't addressing or haven't addressed. It's extensive. It's not easy and the like, and some of it is going to take some time to work out. But all that work is being progressed. The staff don't only hear it through the media and comments from the community. They hear it from 11 of us. So, you know, to put it off for 12 months, there's a financial implication in relation to the progress that we will give the very things that we need to work on. And while Councillor Zamprogno said at the end of the day, after four years, that the money's the same.

It is, for the person who's paying it, for the person who's collecting it, then us, it's not. We're behind. But in saying that, the discussion that we've had in relation to opportunities and the SESNOC

Same population, same area, 40% rate increase, one up the front. We discussed those sort of options and what come up, and we were talking about over five years, that that wasn't practical. We come back to four and minimise that so that that impact would not be as great on the ratepayers as the initial 40%. So councillors, you know, we've got a job to do here. Sometimes it's not easy. And as Deputy Mayor said, we all live in the city. We've got friends and we talk to them every day. They make us well aware. Bob Griven that spoke, I sit on committees with him. He certainly lets me know when we might have headed down the wrong path. So councillors, I respect decisions you make, but make them with sincerity and be fair. Any further discussion?

Councillor Feigel. Sorry

Just another question. With regard to the sustainable model, I know it's mentioned that over the four years you're going to come up to about 40%, which is shy of it there, I say. What's the cash implications? Is it lower? I thought I read somewhere that the cash revenue is lower than the three-year scenario. It's

In line

Somewhere. Can just somebody point that out? Because there's a lot of black and white in front of me at the moment

The amount that's collected. Over four years, as compared to

The three-year term, which was the original one at 11.73.

Sorry to do that to you.

I was confused just through you, Mr Mayor. So over the variation between effectively the resolve scenario and the sustain scenario is over the course of that four-year period, the figure is $13.7 million less revenue as just over those two models. It's important to note in the discussion that, yes, the overall quantum is the same, but by spreading it out over four years, you've got the factor of the extra years rate peg that is included in that fourth year, and also the fact that just simply by delaying , smoothing out that quantum does inherently reduce the overall revenue. Yep. Yeah, that's correct, Councillor

You're light, Councillor. Sorry

About that. We need to get that out. So to state the obvious, the cumulative percentage might be 40, but the revenue of money is back in the council is far less yet You're not looking at the same thing, I think. Okay, thank you.

Any further discussion?

Right reply, Councillor Kotlash.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll address that last comment first. We aren't back to where we started because what we did by reducing the percentage of the rate increase was to allow people some wiggle room with affordability. What we did is we addressed the affordability, or we addressed parts of the affordability problem, but we also kept the need for us to address the backlog. And to me that was a masterstroke in collaboration and listening and doing the absolute right thing by our ratepayers. I was very glad when that happened. So we're not back to where we started. We are very far from where we started. And I think a few of my colleagues have said how impressed they have been with the staff and their ability to quickly address all of our questions and demands and our misgivings.

And we had what I can describe as a very impressive collaborative couple of workshops. And there was, Mr Mayor, when you talk about sincerity, every person in those workshops, staff and elected councillors, are sincere about doing the right thing by this community. That is a given. And it was very refreshing that we had those workshops, and I'm pleased with the outcomes, even though— I agree it's very hard to be the decision maker in these sorts of situations.

One of the other things that needs to be just cleared up is that we are going to do a rating structure review. We were going to do that anyway. We are still going to do that. The rating structure, for those not au fait with how this works, is the rating structure can be done irrespective of the special rate variation. We can still go ahead and ask IPART to look at what we've put forward. At the same time, we can start to do those sorts of reviews. Very important. We all want to see them done, and I hope that we'll do them even more comprehensively than Councillor Zamprogno put up in his notice of motion. He left a few vital sort of things out of that, but I'm sure we will all agree to do a thorough review, and we will look at every option we have in the rating structure.

I'd like to ask, well not directly, but I'd like Councillor Djuric to, if he has any suggestions about fat trimming, that he actually states them and doesn't just say that we've got them for all of us to think, well, what are they? So I would suggest that if you have ideas, anybody has ideas, that put them to us and then we can, one , find out what they are and, two, assess them properly.

IPART is going to give our community another opportunity to have their say. That gives me comfort.

There was a statement made that said we will always have a backlog.

The 11 point whatever percent it was, the first percentage that we said that we needed was for us to deal with and address the full extent of the backlog we have now. And it was to do that in 10 years. Once we get— if we had done that, we would have addressed the backlog that had been identified. This is a continuum. As our Director of Infrastructure said, roads and their maintenance is a moving feast, and we have to be more mindful than we were in the first rate variation, that we must keep looking at what we've got and how it's going. That's the cost-effective way of doing things. The other thing that needs to be said is in the initial—

One last thing. Please, everybody, keep engaging with us. Councillor Lyons-Buckett said this, and I say it again. Everybody in this community should be engaging with us all the time

It's

Very helpful and it will be very welcome.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you.

The motion is

Before you on the screen. Those in favour of Councillor Kotlash's motion.

We've got

Councillor Weir, Councillor Lines-Buckett, Councillor Ryan, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Ridden, and Councillor Sheather. Those against is Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Djuric, Councillor Feigel, Councillor Creed. The motion's carried.

Thank you, councillors

The next item is the 10.4.2 quarterly budget review statement.

Councillor Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr Mayor. I think Councillor Veigel has some additional words.

Yeah, there's additional, if I may.

Oh, lovely. I'll be making a point

Councillor Veigel.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Just regarding 10.4.2, we know— Sorry, you're moving what's on the screen there,

Thank you. Yes, please. And a seconder? Councillor Wheeler.

Yes, Councillor.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you for the staff for submission of the budget review, and I completely agree with the proposals thereabouts to support Morana based on the commitment to that, and also to complete the project at the women's cottage project, albeit the costs have gone up to over a million. Council made a commitment last year, as you know, unequivocally to support domestic violence and the women's cottage after the failure of their previous build-up. The proposal I'd like to push forward, if I may, is that the balance of the reserve funding gets directed to roads funding, please.

And it makes sense to go to the roads funding because we've just had an SRV and specifically for the roads funding. So if we've found some additional funds, then that's fantastic, we can put that towards it.

From the reserve.

Thank you, Councillor.

Oh, the reserve funding. Sorry, even though the leftover that can come back onto the road fund.

Thanks.

No.

I just checked that wording, Councillor

Just to clarify, Councillor, the word reserve in there restricts the intent of the motion, I believe.

Are you suggesting a word change?

No. It's fine like that, Councillor.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Councillor. When we— there was 2.7 million we put aside in case we had issues with the mall. We'd asked the contractor to do it in two months rather than nine months, for obvious reasons. Nine months mess in the mall would have had a massive impact. So we put the 2.7 aside to make sure that we could complete. That was in the funding last year. So , and that come out of our works and predominantly road budget. We just discussed at length. About the necessity for funding, we can hardly take money off the community in the front door and take it out the back for other projects. The projects that have been supported within this that Councillor Veigel's put up is the—there's a situation that there was two lots of money that was taken out, $79,000, that we had made commitments to, and we had made a commitment also to the women's cottage, which had, on balance, there's additional funds required.

When I spoke to staff about it, and their recommendation that's in the business papers clarified within this proposal, the $400,000 would make it $1,040,000, and part two, as Councillor Veigel's put there, that the project that we're proposing as approval for the expenditure of $1,040,000. Our staff now has the advantage of having a budget deadline and a process to work to, rather than an open check as it would be without that information being provided. So we put the money back in the roads where it initially come from, and with the minor adjustments we've committed to aspects of Council where we've made previous decisions. Thank you, Councillor Veigel. Councillor Nathan Zamprogno.

Thank you. I want to support this because, of course, I support the Women's Cottage, and I love the idea of putting more money towards roads. My question for staff is , while we're allowed to do this, my understanding of the Livability Project funding was that it had very tight deadlines and very constrained conditions about what we were allowed to spend it on, and certainly for the last several years, whenever we've suggested in this chamber that we wanted to change what the Livability funds were going to be spent on, is that we'd have to go back to the grant authority and we'd have to argue with them and don't know if that's going to be allowed. Now we've got several million dollars worth of funding that we can allocate to just whatever we want. I'm just trying to work out

How this is

Possible

The funding is limited, Councillor. This is not money out of the funding. This is funds that we've taken out of our projects to make sure that if it did overrun, that the project could be finished on time. And the project was finished on time to budget in relation to the funds that were given to us and used in that regard. So, sorry, Mr General Manager.

Happy to further expand on that, and I don't have the exact dates. Councillors, you'll recall a decision was made probably earlier this year, if I'm taking my mind back. The Livability Project had— Very fixed deadline on the grant funding, wherein it had to be expended by the 30th of June. It was a use it or lose it proposition. What a decision was made earlier this year by this Chamber to say that if that project ran into this current financial year, that Council would supplement the project to the tune of, I think it was three point it was a little bit more than the two point, yeah. So that Council would effectively fund whatever that difference was if we weren't able to deliver it by the 30th of June when the grant funding expired.

So it was effectively a contingency in case we weren't able to deliver it by the 30th of June. What then transpired through the excellent work of our project delivery team was coming up with innovative ways with our contractor, working extended hours in the mall, that then delivered that by the 30th of June , subject to some minor bits and pieces, I would say, that still to be delivered down in the mall, that has now subsequently freed up the $2.7 million of Council's general revenue in order to be able to spend that as it pleases.

I'm satisfied with that answer. If I were to be a pedant, I would say that the wording of the motion should say $2.5 million in livability project funding set aside from Council funds that is no longer required to be allocated to the Women's Cottage, and in those circumstances, I wouldn't have been as confused. Thank you.

Council Wheeler.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I'm glad to see that Councillor [unclear] and I were of the same mind with this. I think what we know from the— From the Women's Cottage project, and has been the case since their builder went bust, is that the longer this takes to lock in, the more it costs. And so, as with everything in council, unfortunately, and as with every building job these days, the longer it takes to get the contract fixed, the longer it costs. What we know as well from the Women's Cottage, and for those of us who went along to Reclaim the Night a couple of weeks ago, is just how vital this service is, and just how vital an expansion of this service, an expansion of the space for that service delivery is.

We heard some really harrowing stories at Reclaim the Night, and the genuine need of people in our community for this service to keep both them and their children safe. I think this is a good thing to do with our money. I didn't really have a preference at this point about where this money ends up. I think putting it into roads is terrific, given where we are now with the SRV. This is some money that we can use to front-load the backlog and make up for that longer, slower SRV rollout, and hopefully then get similar gains to what we would have had with a bigger SRV earlier on. So we should see some results

More quickly. One of the other things that's come up in this quarterly budget review is the stuff around the Windsor sewerage scheme. I think people really have a poor understanding of how we have ended up at the point where a scheme that on paper was worth 170-odd million is now on paper worth nothing. And that's beyond the two and a half minutes that I have left to explain the intricacies and the magic of local government accounting. And I don't want to be dismissive about people's concerns. It is their money and their asset, after all. But, you know, I used probably a rough analogy in the councillor briefing. It's a bit like when you think that the car you've spent a whole lot of money on is worth megabucks, and you pop it on Facebook Marketplace and it sits there for, you know, six months and someone offers you 500, and it's probably scrap metal.

And unfortunately that's where we've found ourselves with the sewerage treatment plant. It is only worth on the market what we can sell it for, and Sydney Water don't want to pay for it. But what we have done is ring-fence that money. It doesn't come out of council's general revenue pool. It doesn't come out of council's asset base. It sits in a separate fund. So we're not writing $150,000 off council's whole base. We are just writing off in the sewer fund. What we've also done is get a pledge from Sydney Water that those savings will be passed on to effectively the owners of that asset, the customers of the Windsor sewerage scheme, so that it's this— The benefits go back to the customers, not for council to shove into general revenue or do whatever we like with.

This is money off their bills, and that's been a hard-fought discussion with Sydney Water, who, and the IPART recommendation to Sydney Water initially was that those customers be ring-fenced and pay above what the rest of us who are on Sydney Water bills pay. So that, I think, is a win for those people, but it is a very difficult thing to explain at the end of the day. This money was council's money initially. This is not liveability funding. This is not money that we would have otherwise spent on the mall. It's money that we pulled out of roads maintenance to provide a contingency in case the liveability project went over time and therefore we couldn't pay for it with federal and state grant funding.

All of that project, apart from an initial pledge from council of 2.7 million, which we were required to pay to secure the rest of the funding, has been met by state and federal government. That includes every tree planted and every paver laid. So the comments that this has been taken out of council's general revenue and could have been spent better elsewhere are unfortunately incorrect.

Thank you, Councillor. Any further discussion? Right of reply, Councillor Veigel.

Yeah, just briefly.

Consider statistics have shown there's been an increase in domestic violence, especially in the last, well, post-COVID years, has been extraordinary and exponential. Bad. I haven't seen any of the numbers decline anywhere nationally, nor in this country.

So it slates at home back to our community that we've got to look after people in this area. And dare I say, it's just not—it's both areas, I guess. Not only the women in our community, but also the guys that might be suffering that as well. But I just—I'm not going to say any more than that. So I thank you. This gets up anyway on that side of it, but also the money's coming back to the roads. But just if I may ask a question through you, Mr Mayor, is it possible? Just

Not asking the question; we're in right reply. Yeah, righto. Well, we'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you.

The

Motion

Is before you on the screen. Those in favour?

It's unanimous. Councillor Zamprogno, Councillor Wheeler, Councillor Lyons-Buckett, Councillor Ryan, Councillor Djuric, Councillor McMahon, Councillor Kotlash, Councillor Creed, Councillor Veigel, Councillor Regan, and Councillor Sheather. Those against? That's carried.

There's two other items. Councillors, 14.11, response to Councillor's questions.

And —

Thank you, Mr Mayor. Thank you. Lines bucket. Thank you. I'm just wondering, with regard to the suburbs that don't get a sign, just a little bit unfortunate for them, is there any scope, I think I may have asked this when I asked the original question, but is there any scope for those suburbs to provide their own? Is there a process by which a community group in a suburb or something could say, We've got some money, can we put a sign up?

Through you, Mr Mayor, look, there is no documented process, but we would welcome the conversation with any community group. Okay,

Thank you. You may have said that before.

I like that word ‘welcome

Councillor.

We don't need a resolution for that. The last item is 14.1.2. It's response to Councillor's questions.

If there's no questions..

Okay. Okay, Councillors, that concludes tonight's meeting. Thanks for your input tonight. It was a big, big ask of all of you and, as you're well aware, we've got some work to do into the future. Thanks for the meeting tonight. Good night. Meeting closed.