Council's 'rosy' financial position to be presented

PHOTO/FILE

Rotorua Lakes Council staff are painting a rosy picture of the organisation's financial position, which is to be presented to councillors at a meeting this morning.

Councillors will meet from 9.30am to discuss agenda items relating to the council's performance, both financial and operational, during a meeting of the Operations and Monitoring committee.

Staff will present reports outlining the council's quarterly progress towards its "2030 visions", financial performance for the six months ended December 2015, non-financial performance for the six months ended December 2015 and an operational report for November, December and January.

In his agenda report the council's finance manager Paul Sands said overall "council is tracking favourably against budget half way through the year with both revenue and expenditure tracking favourably against budget.

"Council set a funding envelope in the LTP (long-term plan) which would see council borrow $7 million for capital expenditure by year end. With the current positive position forecast to continue to year end it is anticipated council will borrow $2 million less than planned."

Mr Sands said the reasons behind the $2 million downgrade to forecast borrowing was due to spending on the Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre not going ahead due to an external funding application being declined and lower spend for corporate services.

"Overall the capital works program net of capital subsidies is forecast to end the year $2.6 million under budget," he said.

He also said council expenditure was below budget "by $145,000 with operating and staff expenses being over, but being offset by savings in administration, finance and depreciation expenditure.

"The favourable position is mainly due to lower finance expenses ($249,000) achieved through holding lower borrowings than planned and restructuring debt to achieve significantly lower interest rates".

At today's meeting the council's business performance analyst James Simpson will outline progress towards achieving the council's non-financial performance targets.

The Local Government Act stipulates that local authorities are required to report on how well they are performing in delivering levels of service to their communities as measured by the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

"Of the 62 KPIs which have been measured 51 KPIs (82 per cent) are progressing on track and 11 KPIs (18 per cent) need attention to achieve the KPI, or improve the current position, by financial year end. The overall change from the September to December 2015 quarter has been a slight improvement in the number of actions that are on track," he said in his report.