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Jobs to go as budget slashed at Mosman Park

Jon BassettWestern Suburbs Weekly

JOBS will be cut so Mosman Park Council can slash its spending by almost $1 million and build up reserves depleted before failed mergers several years ago.

“We wanted to reduce the hard-core expenditure of this organisation by as close as we could to $1 million, which is close to 10 per cent of our budget,” Mayor Brett Pollock said at a special meeting approving the 2018-19 budget last night.

The council will get rid of a community development manager and four members of its outdoor works crew.

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Reviews of other spending included projects’ priorities and administration operations, and the council’s contributions to The Grove library and aged care provider Shine, before it was agreed to spend $663,485 and $81,997 on each respectively.

Asked how the redundancies’ costs would impact savings, Mr Pollock said the payments would be “normal”, the resulting unstaffed work would be done changing the duties of remaining staff and using contractors, but jobs would not be shared with neighbouring councils.

He said the previous budgets’ cuts had just “knocked off” some of the “low-hanging fruit”, and the council now had to increase its reserves beyond the current 60 per cent of any “acceptable level”.

The budget will add $716,468 to the reserves, which will reach about $3.5m by the end of 2018-19 and include a new rubbish reserve fund of $289,509.

Cr Zenda Johnson questioned if some seniors would still incur a $36 penalty if they paid rates in quarterly instalments.

However, staff said the subsidy which paid for the penalty had been cancelled by the State Government 18 months ago.

Their report said indicators of the ratios of spending on new assets and the structures’ sustainability were both “of concern”, but a long-term financial plan and “healthy” reserves would help.

Rates will be increased by 0.9 per cent increase in the rate in the dollar, generate $8.9m and have no instalment charge if fully paid by September 28.