From Paul Bennett, General Manager, Tamworth Regional Council, New South Wales
Without doubt the biggest challenge for the vast majority of Local Governments is maintaining and replacing key infrastructure. The magnitude of this challenge is becoming even more apparent as councils improve their asset management systems and start to get a real grasp of both the asset replacement backlog and the annual under spend on maintenance.
The national skills shortage is another huge challenge, and not just in the widely known professional areas such as planning and engineering. The number of skilled plant operators that are defecting to the booming mining sector is placing huge pressure on many rural and regional councils who are struggling to employ appropriately skilled “outdoor” staff to undertake asset maintenance and construction.
Many councils have built entertainment, sporting and leisure facilities that simply do not stack up economically. As a result they place an ongoing financial burden on their communities and divert resources away from providing core infrastructure. Local Government must embrace strong business principles and drive the economic performance of their assets in order to reduce the level of Community Service Obligation that is provided to these commercial activities.
This means Local Government has to think outside the square and look for additional revenue raising opportunities and higher use of existing assets. For example, holding a ballroom dancing championship in a basketball stadium or beach volleyball on an equine dressage arena.
The biggest threat to Local Government is inaction. Local Government needs both political and professional leaders to continue to step up and hold other levels of Government accountable for the current funding issues facing the sector. But this is only part of the answer.
Councils themselves have to stop passing the buck for all of their problems and start tackling major issues such as asset management head on by truly engaging their communities and having “tough conversations” around service levels and community wants versus community needs.
Failure to achieve Constitutional recognition would be another huge threat to the future financial sustainability of Local Government and we need to capitalise on the current bipartisan support for this.
