To whom it may concern,

…………………GOLD BULLION UNCOVERED!…….

Stale news? Perhaps not really, that was just a smallish heist of$3.9m.

South Gippsland Action Group (SGAG) would like the Administration’s oft repeated commitment to ‘Openness & Transparency’ to produce the goods in order for us (& YOU) to better understand what happened to our $17.2m. You see, there is an astounding lack of detail in the adopted proposed Budget papers & that just leaves everyone guessing.

The background is that over about a 12 year period (extending over the 10 year reign of Tim Tamlyn as SGSC CEO) the ratepayers were imposed upon to support an average7.5% p.a. compounded rate increase. That was well above what was needed if there had not been the intent to undertake the Municipal Office Project. That project was scrapped shortly after the 2016 council election (which saw only 3 of the 9 councillors re-elected).

The backgrounding comes into focus when you look at the Cash Reserves. In 2015/15 – $18.247m & by 2018/19 that figure had swelled to $35.273m. That is almost a doubling in just 4 years. Yet at the end of 2018/19 the Administration could not see how they could possibly allow the one off 3% rate relief proposed by OUR ELECTED COUNCIL to proceed. The cost of that rate relief would have been in the order of $1.3m (FOR JUST A SINGLE YEAR). Instead, the Administrator’s opted for a 2.5% rate increase the excuse for not honouring the earlier commitment to the rate reduction was that we could not afford the compounding impact of it on the outlier year budgets. To me, that reasoning doesn’t ring true at all – but it’s what YOU think about it that matters,

So here is the complication! In the Budget for 2019/20 the Cash Reserves have dropped down to $18.062m, which is even below the 2014/15 numbers. I know we don’t find out the ‘real’ cash reserve figure for 2019/20 until Sep 2020. I don’t see much activity that accounts for the drop of $17.211m in the estimated Cash Reserves. Add to that the proposed borrowing of around $14m & the drop exceeds $30m.

Without detailed explanation that’s quite an achievement! It’s not like the payment of rates is likely to grind to a halt anytime soon, despite Corona-19!

Yours sincerely, 

John McCombe

Leongatha