NORTH SYDNEY COUNCIL
Media Release

14 March 2006

Infrastructure Levy Proposed

An annual $37-per-property infrastructure levy, to meet the shortfall between actual and necessary expenditure, is one possibility being considered by North Sydney Council.

Council will undertake community consultation on ways to pay for infrastructure improvements.

Infrastructure includes building and maintenance of seawalls, roads, drainage, public buildings, fences and retaining walls, and bus shelters.

North Sydney Mayor Genia McCaffery said there was a significant gap between what Council could currently afford to spend on infrastructure, and how much actually needed to be spent.

"The amount we spend on our seawalls, for instance, is about $400,000 short of what is really needed; expenditure on our footpaths is $300,000 shy, and we need to put $330,000 more  into our buildings than what we have budgeted for."

Cr McCaffery prudent financial management and 'no-frills' operations had placed North Sydney Council in a sound financial state. "Council has enjoyed the lowest residential rates in metropolitan Sydney as well as a debt-free status for a decade. And we have been highly successful in creating other revenue sources, so that rates and the domestic waste charge now form just 40 percent of our total income.

"But the trend for North Sydney, like all other New South Wales councils, is that expenditure is expected to increase at a greater rate than income, because our rates are capped in NSW and increases approved by the Minister do not keep pace with costs of delivering services."

She said this was made very clear in the recently released interim report of the Independent Inquiry into Financial Sustainability of Local Government. "The report shows an NSW-wide shortfall of $6.3 billion in infrastructure needs, which is predicted to worsen at a rate of $600-800 million annually up until 2020."

Cr McCaffery said investing more in infrastructure now would reduce costs in the long term.  "We know from maintaining our own homes, for example, that if we put off spending money on that new roof for another year or two, the problem actually exacerbates and becomes far more costly." 

Ends

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