Working towards a Sustainable MRC

Murray River Council was formed in 2016, as part of the NSW Government’s Local Council amalgamations. We went from being two separate Shire Councils (Wakool Shire and Murray Shire) - with various offices, depots, treatment plants, landfills, water and wastewater supply systems, multiple staff and computer and management systems - to one. Over the past 6 years we have been working hard behind the scenes to assess (and where possible) harmonise these services, along with many of our internal systems.

The 2022/23 financial year saw the final steps in the rates, services and charges harmonisation project where we adjusted general rates, water, sewer, stormwater and waste charges to be standard across the region. This means that it doesn't matter if you live in Tooleybuc or Moama, you will pay the same amount for water to be supplied to your property and for the yellow bin to be collected each fortnight.

But streamlining fees is one thing. Making them stretch across rising costs is another.

Funding our services

Like all Councils, we are funded through the rates we collect. But the NSW Government has put a cap on rate rises which means rate income is no longer in line with inflation. As a result, the cost of delivering essential services such as roadworks, rubbish collection, water supply, sewer removal plus our steadily expanding service list is becoming too expensive for us to continue to wear the costs.

So, over the last 18 months we’ve been looking at ways to improve the financial sustainability of the council.

Towards financial savings

Firstly, we have looked internally at our own practises: looking at what can we resource, undertake and complete internally verses having to outsource to a contractor or consultant. We’ve also looked at what additional skills some of our staff have and how we can better utilise them, increasing utilisation of our yellow fleet and looking for efficiencies with our power consumption across our sites.

This is about keeping operational costs as lean as possible without compromising services. So far, we have been saving around $100,000 per month through this review. But we need to do more. So we’ve been looking at further ways to contain expenses, like selling underutilised buildings and land to reduce the financial impact of our large asset base.

The conversation around ‘assets’

In March 2022 we began a process of reviewing our assets to ensure we are growing with our communities and investing in the right assets in the right ways. This included buildings, facilities, recreational and open spaces as well as general land. We had direct engagement with users, clubs and groups along with survey-based feedback from users of our park spaces. This was no mean feat, with over 700 blocks of land and open spaces assessed on their own.

We took a ‘needs and demands’ approach to better understand the usage requirements of every single one of our assets. What we discovered is that there are a number of assets within Council’s portfolio that may not be providing value to the community like they once did.

In short: we are over-investing in some areas and under investing in others.

So, we need to streamline what assets we are ‘investing’ in so we are financially sustainable into the future. We cannot continue to invest in all of them. This will also help minimize any future special rates variations that we would need to apply for, which would place additional burden on our ratepayers.

This means we are going to have to make some tough choices; ones that may not be popular. But the way we use (or don't use) our assets has changed significantly over the past 50 years, so we need to reassess if the cost to the ratepayer is outweighing the need.

This doesn’t mean the smaller populations automatically lose out because of numbers-based usage stats. It’s about what value certain assets across all areas offer to enable sustainable and financially responsible decisions to be made.

The choices

In the coming months you will hear more about these tough choices. But rest assured there has been a lot of planning, conversations, community feedback and fact checking undertaken to make sure these decisions and their outcomes have the best outcomes for our entire community.

The decisions made by us as a Council have been influenced by you, our community and the feedback you have provided us over the past 18-months.

The decisions have not been made easily. They not only impact on you, our community, but they also impact our staff. Please be kind to our teams as they do what is best for our communities to create a prosperous future for us all.

Ask questions. Stay involved. And let’s make Murray River Council sustainable well into the future.