"There is some pressure on personnel costs, but this is not unusual in the environment we're operating in and it will be managed out over the course of the year," he said.
Councillors Mike McVicker and Rob Kent said alarm bells started to ring when they were presented with the council's financial performance report for the four months ending October 31 at a meeting of the council's Operations and Monitoring committee yesterday. Mr McVicker said he had confidence in the council's staff but was concerned about the downward trend and was particularly worried about a forecast $304,636 budget deficit on staff wages.
"We are seeing some big variances to the budget after just four months so of course I'm concerned.
"We need to know how many staff we have at this point in time after the restructure, I get the impression we are re-employing again.
"It was a surprise so early in the financial year, I thought we would have this right by now," Mr McVicker said.
Mr Kent said he was looking for answers from staff to questions regarding what he perceived to be a $1.469 million economic development deficit.
"If it continued for the rest of the year it would be more than $4 million.
"This can't continue." Mr Kent said he voted against the Annual Plan for this very reason.
"Where are the savings we were supposed to make on staff?
"I'm definitely worried, but staff told us they would get back to us, so I hope they do," Mr Kent said.
"We can't budget for an operating deficit so yes, alarm bells were ringing loudly, this has to be brought back under control."
Mr Colle said yesterday's discussion was "generally not about actual current performance but about forecasts of a possible position at the end of the financial year, that is at 30 June 2015".
"With our managers looking ahead to the year's end, we're projecting the potential for under-recovery of fees and charges of around $1.68 million. "There's also an indication of personnel costs being a little over budget at the end of the year, by $304,000, a variance of just 0.9 per cent. With some other areas of savings the total operational shortfall would at this stage look like being $1.63 million.
"However, as we have done successfully in the previous year, management will be putting in place firm corrective action that will ensure we meet budget by the end of the 2014/15 year. If we didn't take that action in the months ahead we would be $1.63 million out.
"Of the $5.856 million deficit forecast mentioned in the report to councillors, $4.255 million is for capital subsidies from other organisations that we are now not expecting to receive," Mr Colle said.
"However, this amount is more than offset by a compensating reduction in capital expenditure."
