The council engaged the University of Technology Sydney: Centre for Local Government to conduct a review of the council’s financial sustainability. 

The results are in.

The review found the overall financial sustainability of the council was strong and particularly impressive given the operating environment of the council.

“Notwithstanding this, we note that there are a number of potential areas in which ongoing improvement may benefit financial sustainability going forward…we also note that, amongst the range of measures under examination, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council has tended to perform particularly well in those measures for which we believe are the most appropriate indicators for which council’s performance should be assessed,” the review report said.

“For this reason, while we find that Port Macquarie-Hastings Council has underperformed in a range of additional measures, including compared to the peer group, this tends to occur in areas that we feel should be of relatively lower priority – and with generally lesser implication for financial sustainability – for council.”

Acting mayor Lisa Intemann said the review came back with a positive snapshot of the council’s position at this moment in time.

“This is a work in progress for council to improve its financial sustainability which includes things like continuing to reduce our debt, which we’ve reduced by $20 million over the last four years, and increasing our efficiency,” she said.

“This is only a step along the way. Naturally we need to manage our finances but the final goal is better delivering the services that people want in this community.”

Cr Geoff Hawkins said it was a good report for the council.

“It is built on year after year of hard work,” he said.

Data over five years was examined for most indicators with an additional sixth year used in the efficiency analysis.