JIM FAGAN
Mayor Noel Playford thinks it will be two years before Noosa has a 10-year financial plan that says all is well but the shire has to trim a lot of fat and waste out of the next two budgets before it has guaranteed financial sustainability.
“What we are engaged in now is a lot of serious work investigating in fine detail a lot of areas where there is an inefficient allocation of money and finding out where we are not getting value-for-money.” Mr Playford met Noosa Today for an early preview of Noosa’s budget for next financial year. “What I am trying to do is not build in any rate increase. In other words, ratepayers have got to understand, just as they had to understand when I was elected in 1988, that we’ve got to first get the waste and the fat out of the organisation. “Often, when you do that, you find you don’t need a rate increase anyway. Then, if you do need an increase because of what the community expects you to do, at least you know you are spending inefficiently. “I say I’m trying to do it because, while it is a council decision in the end, the Local Government Act has been changed in recent times and it is now the Mayor’s responsibility to prepare the budget. “Obviously, you don’t do that in isolation. I will be working with staff and councillors but what I present to Council will not be what everybody else wants. It’s my responsibility. The council does not have to go along with it. They can change it.” Mr Playford said the first week he was in office he “got the staff together at the depot here. I just talked to them, saying this is the way we are going to do business. Everybody has the right to have ideas. We want ideas. We want improvements. “I said it doesn’t matter where you are in the organisation, everybody has a role to play. I want people thinking about our future and how we can do things better. Your ideas are valued. Make sure you don’t keep them to yourself.”
