AS part of the gruelling Fit for the Future process, the Bombala Council has now made its formal submission to IPART, indicating its preference to remain a stand alone Rural Council.
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The submission is a comprehensive 51-page document which includes the Rural Council proposal itself, as well as Council’s current position, an outline of how Council proposes to remain Fit for the Future, the expected outcomes for Council and how its plans would be implemented.
The submission will soon be made available on the Bombala Council website, but for now we are able to provide the executive summary of the proposal as it appears at the opening of the submission -
“This proposal is being submitted on the basis that the Independent Local Government Review Panel (ILGRP) identified the rural council option as one of the two options considered appropriate for Bombala Council. BC elected to limit the scope of our investigation to these two options – merger with neighbouring councils or rural council.
Bombala Council strongly believes that the rural council option is the most appropriate path for Council and its communities and our submission demonstrates that we meet all nine rural council characteristics.
In resolving to pursue the rural council option Bombala Council also considered the ILGRP alternate option of a merger with Cooma Monaro Shire and Snowy River Shire Councils. To investigate the viability of a merger, Council in co-operation with these Councils contracted KPMG to prepare a Merger Business Case.
Within the detailed findings of this business case was KPMG’s analysis that “…a merged council is likely to materially underperform against benchmarks relating to asset renewal and infrastructure backlog and the expected net financial benefit of a merger is unlikely to be of sufficient quantum that would enable a merged council to invest heavily in these areas.” (KPMG Merger Business Case Final Report 18 May 2015 p.2)
As a result of the lack of positive findings by KPMG in support of a merger between the three councils, Bombala Council selected the rural council option as most likely to deliver the best outcomes to our communities.
In pursuing the rural council option Council has undertaken significant community engagement to gauge community attitudes regarding the future of Bombala Council. Community feedback has indicated that a clear majority of ratepayers and residents believe strongly that the potential negative impacts of a merger far outweigh the benefits.
Additional support for the rural council option is found in assessment of Bombala Council’s financial position against the Fit for the Future (FFTF) performance improvement benchmarks. Financial analysis provided in Section 4 of this submission demonstrates that the Council will meet or exceed all of these benchmarks within given timeframes.
Premised within this submission is the intention of Bombala Council to investigate shared service and resource sharing arrangements with neighbouring councils and build on existing resource sharing arrangements as identified in Section 3.1. In addition the elected Council has endorsed the pursuit of other improvement measures including business/service innovation, outsourcing and a service review.”
The public can now make submissions itself on the Fit for the Future process up until July 31, 2015. IPART is due to report to the NSW Government in mid-October.
