Noosa’s social media feeds have been full in the last month or two of Councillors softening up the community for another budget belting.  A belting is just what residents got.  However, here at Noosa Matters we like to zoom out and focus on the bigger picture…and that’s when things start to look even worse than we imagined.

Just over a decade ago the Noosa community succeeded in de-amalgamating from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council. The poor performance of Noosa Council in recent years has some of those who fought so hard for so many years thinking that the win may have been a pyrrhic victory.

The latest Council budget serves an expensive meal that’s hard to swallow.

The previous 2000-2024 Council started the community rate-gouging as we have revealed in previous Noosa Matters reports. But it turns out that was just a warm-up to the current budget. 

The largest source of revenue, Net rates, levies and charges, increases last year’s budget item by 10.5%. That’s despite the last published Brisbane inflation rate (CPI) of 2.7%.  That’s right…nearly FOUR TIMES the rate of inflation.

(This Council’s first budget last year also increased Net rates, levies and charges by 5.7% when CPI was 3.4%).

One of the budget’s largest operational expenditure items is Employee benefits. That increases by 12.4% this year, following a 6.2% increase last year.  

Why all these bigger-than-inflation rate grabs ? – I hear you ask.

Well, it could be staff empire-building. After all, staff these days produce the draft budget. And it’s not often you find a Councillor who really understands local government financial accounting.

Forty years ago Noosa had very high population growth and development rates. That increased property rates and service costs. But population growth has been very low for quite some time now and does not cause large budget increases. 

Councils sometimes introduce new services being demanded by the community. They can also spend rate money on Federal or State responsibilities rather than staying in their lane.

It could also be that the organization has become so inefficient that the knee-jerk reaction has been to simply add more and more staff as the ‘easiest’ solution. That usually goes to the issue of leadership and compounds the problem. (It also increases the Employee benefits cost to the budget).

Let’s zoom out for the big, ten-year picture

Whatever the reason, as bad as the current budget is, just look at the last 10 years. That period paints a picture of an accelerating rates train with no one trying to restore control.

Total CPI (inflation) over the last 10 years has been 34%. 

The 10 Council budgets have seen Net rates, levies and charges increased by 72.5% in that period.

And Employee benefits have increased by 113%. That’s $59M now from $27.7M ten years ago.

So despite moderate population growth, over the last 10 years Council increases have been more than double  the CPI increase in Net rates, levies and charges and more than treble the CPI increase in Employee benefits.

Council essentially provides services and infrastructure. When it comes to infrastructure, the last official Council  Annual Report shows that the value of Community Equity (mainly infrastructure assets like roads, bridges, land, buildings, etc) has hardly increased in real terms over the last 10 years. 

Its value was $1.007 Billion 10 years ago and increased by 39% to $1.407 Billion today. The increase is slightly more than CPI of 34%. In real terms, that’s an insignificant increase. So the large increase in revenue has not added to the value of infrastructure. 

That leaves Council services. Residents will have their own view about whether service levels have increased to the same extent as the large budget increases. 

The spendathon really got started in a big way with the previous 2020-2024 Council. Five of the current seven Councillors were also members of that previous administration.

One other thing this Council has in common with the previous one is its increasing tendency to close its ears to community criticism.  When we look at the big picture of performance and value for rates, perhaps we can understand why.