Central Coast Council financial crisis: Community impacts of 250-300 staff cuts revealed

A long list of “gruesome” impacts from 250-300 staff cuts at Central Coast Council have been outlined including the loss of fireworks at special events in Gosford. Read the list here.

The financial crisis has spelt the end of Gosford New Year’s Eve fireworks and many other events and services. Picture: Peter Clark

Mass reductions in events, services, maintenance and other areas have been revealed as Central Coast Council outlines impacts of 250-300 staff cuts.

From the permanent cancellation of the Gosford New Years Eve and the Australia Day event at The Entrance to a long, long list of service cut backs which will see non urgent repairs take longer and the closure of The Entrance Library.

There was no sugar coating the harsh facts at Tuesday’s council meeting where it was revealed that 90 management positions had been cut from the organisation through both voluntary and forced redundancies. The remaining positions are being cut from the front line workers.

Australia Day at The Entrance will no longer be held. Picture: Mark Scott

The cuts are a direct result of the council’s financial crisis and are designed to combat the $565m debt accumulated over the past four years.

Council’s director of corporate affairs Natalia Cowley said staff cuts had been a “brutal event for council and council staff”.

“We have had to reduce $31m of employee costs which have moved from $252m in which actually we have $45m in redundancies in this financial year,” she said.

“That is going to drop down to $176m from next year onwards. We are reducing the material and contracts and also keeping the depreciation at the most sustainable level that we have.”

Administrator Dick Persson AM was keen to highlight impacts of staff cuts to the community – which he described as “gruesome details” – calling on council directors to explain what the cuts mean for their areas.

Dick Persson AM

He pointed out that “these cuts are coming based on getting the 15 per cent IPART rate rise” and there were no areas left to cut back within the organisation.

“It’s so important for people to understand the situation,” he said.

Council’s director of community and recreation services Julie Vaughan dealt the harshest blow, outlining all the events to be cancelled including New Year’s Eve at Gosford, Australia Day at The Entrance, Australia Day Eve at Toukley, Winter at Gosford and The Entrance, Gosford Christmas Parade and various festivals along with a 50 per cent cut in school holiday activities.

Ms Vaughan also outlined reductions in the community grants program, social planning activities, town centre services, youth development activities as well as library and education programs.

“It is proposed that The Entrance Library be closed and 20 places in childcare services will be removed,” she said.

The Entrance Library is expected to close. Picture: Richard Noone

Sports fields and parks are also set to be impacted with a reduction in weekday rubbish pick up and BBQ cleaning and less maintenance and mowing depending on the park.

Director of infrastructure services Boris Bolgoff said his team had an 18 per cent reduction.

Mr Bolgoff said roads, footpaths and drainage maintenance service levels would reduce, including low risk pothole repair timelines going from 30 days to 60.

However he stressed that high risk work would continue to be done quickly, while rubbish collection would not be impacted.

Director of water and sewer Jamie Loader said while emergencies would be acted upon immediately, there would be delays in responding to non critical water leaks and proactive maintenance such as flushing dead end water mains resulting in more dirty water complaints.

Mowing services will be reduced on certain “low level” fields.

He said a significant impact was not being able to continue prolonged management of region-wide incidents such as the current floods.

“We will certainly be able to manage it for a period of time however due to fatigue and other issues we may have to supplement our workforce,” he said.

Director of environment and planning Scott Cox said impacts for his department would be in assessment of development applications and planning proposals.

“I expect to see that there will be an increase of at least 5-10 days in the assessment of development applications on average,” he said.

Brown water complaints could increase with a reduction in the regularity of maintenance tasks such as flushing dead end water mains.

Ms Cowley said her team had taken a 20 per cent cut in areas of innovation and futures, energy, IT and finance. She said the impacts include not providing many of the administration services once offered.

The impacts comes as council adopted its long term financial plan for the next 10 years.

Ms Cowley said the plan centred around repaying the $565m debt accumulated over four years which includes paying back $200m for the unlawful use of restricted funds.

She said the “key pillar” of paying off $110m of the restricted funds was the proposed 15 per cent rate rise.

Council’s director of corporate affairs Natalia Cowley.

The remaining $90m will be paid through the sale of council properties predicted to be $40-60m, a $20m write off of internal reserves and a loan with the remainder.

The $20m write off includes the use of internally restricted funds, which are funds not suitable for general use that have been allocated to a specific project. These include $10m from the land development reserve, $4.7m from the infrastructure reserve, $316,223 from the water safety and surf clubs reserve, $182,662 from the Kibble Park Café reserve and $4.7m from the waste disposal facility reserve.

Ms Cowley stressed that the write off created no financial issues for council, with no plans attached to the funds and a majority of the reserves from the former councils. She said surf clubs would not be negatively impacted, with funding allocated to clubs through “business as usual”.

The council’s draft budget for 2021/22 is set to come to a meeting in April.