To understand some of the big issues facing Noosa Council right now, we need to go back just a little to see what it’s come through in recent years. That journey can tell us a lot.

There was a short-lived CEO who used the job here as a career stepping stone, after a word salad of management consultant gobbledegook like his “Roadmap for Change” and “Noosa project 2.0”.

What was actually delivered, thanks in part to Covid, was a huge inflow of extra funds and a big jump in Council’s total rate take, accompanied by an unprecedented increase in staff numbers.

In September 2022, Noel Playford wrote;

The reality is that too much revenue has overwhelmed the organisation during a pandemic. The Budget is bloated from extorting an additional 20% in rate revenue in the last two years in addition to the largest ever handouts from other governments as a result of Covid. 

There were more projects, reviews and extra, non-core functions than you could throw a whiteboard at.  And we all know that a larger, more expensive bureaucracy can find a thousand ways to justify itself.

Fast forward to today, and we have a new, less divided Council finding its way forward, but shackled by much of the bureaucracy and lack of focus that plagued its predecessor.

So we ask the question: Is it time for an audit of what Noosa Council really NEEDS to do? And what the Noosa community really wants Council to spend their money on?  Is it time to reconsider how many plates our Council has spinning?

Where’s the real consultation?

At the August General Committee meeting, during consideration of the first budget review, Cr Stockwell moved for the establishment of a Future Fund. 

Interestingly, the subsequent discussion raised the need for community consultation on the proposal and the need to better engage the community on budget matters.

A good place to start would have been genuine community engagement around the formulation of this year’s budget.

To suggest, as council did, that a “compressed timeframe” coupled with the induction of a new council prevented any formal community engagement on this year’s budget, is somewhat disingenuous.

A “heavy induction schedule” should not have distracted council from dealing effectively with what is arguably one of the most important documents impacting on residents.

Allowing for the caretaker period this year (in the lead up to the local government election) and the declaration of results there was plenty of time – a full three months – for councillors to consider the draft budget and allow for community input before endorsing the final budget at the end of June.

If councillors want genuine community engagement on budget matters, they shouldn’t squib on consultation during the budget formulation process. 

Measuring what’s actually happening.

On a more positive note, there appears to be progress finally on the development and implementation of a proper performance reporting regime for the many projects and initiatives that council has currently underway.

Cr Stockwell, one of the few councillors who has a demonstrated interest in performance measures and planning, rightly made the point at the same meeting that what we need to see in council’s performance management and reporting is actual progress against outcomes. His comments are both relevant and opportune.

He said that by this time next year he would expect the performance report to have some solid information about where we are tracking on those key outcomes; are the projects achieving the aims we want.

The community doesn’t want to be blindsided by a lot of planning jargon but wants to know, in simple terms, what progress has been made with the many projects that are engaging council resources. The community wants to know, for example, whether we are going to achieve what was set out in the transport strategy, where we are on the road to net zero emissions by 2026, will we achieve the objectives of the housing strategy, and so on; as well as what is getting in the way of completing these initiatives and whether outcomes be achieved on time and at what cost.

One must wonder why council staff developed, and councillors endorsed, such an ambitious Corporate Plan when, by their own admission, they are finding it “challenging” and having difficulty implementing it.

Ambitious plans are all very well, but the community is surely entitled to expect that the plans and projects agreed to by council are realistic, achievable, and measurable.

Hopefully, once developed, the new performance reporting regime will provide the community with a more realistic and up to date picture of progress with the various projects on council’s books.

And then we can judge which programs are not delivering, which are simply not an essential, core part of our Council’s operation and which parts of the bureaucracy are justifying their own existence rather than working for ratepayers.