We recently had a conversation with our community to understand your priorities to help us prepare for the Annual Budget 2024/25.
While our Annual Budget ensures council delivers important services and facilities to the community in a financially-sustainable way to meet the needs of our residents, preparing it can be something of a balancing act.
We deliver more than 57 services to the community and maintain over $1 billion of assets.
As part of our budgeting process, we must consider all the demands for services and how they will be paid for, while meeting legal and policy requirements, along with ratepayer expectations.
As part of this initial engagement, the community was able to use a ‘fund it’ tool on the digital engagement platform Your City Your Voice which allowed users to allocate points to identify the five service areas most important to them.
Residents were also able to provide more detailed feedback by way of a formal feedback form.
From the 182 contributions we understand open space, sustainability and the environment, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, city amenity and safety, and health, wellbeing and recreation were some of the most important services you want us to consider when allocating funding in the 2024/25 Budget.
Gathering your thoughts early in the budget development process, means we can better reflect community needs in the final Budget, allowing us to achieve better outcomes for the community as a whole. This feedback will help inform the development of the Proposed Budget, which will be shared back with the community in April 2024 for comment.
