Kingborough Council has adopted its Budget for the 2025–26 financial year, with a focus on maintaining essential services, building long-term financial sustainability, and improving service delivery.
Mayor, Paula Wriedt said the Budget aimed to meet community expectations by ensuring staff had the resources they needed to deliver a wide range of services and projects across the municipality.
“This year, Council took a new approach to engaging with the community on the Budget,” Cr Wriedt said.
“By starting the conversation earlier, we were able to gain clearer insights into what matters most to our residents.
“Community feedback highlighted that core services such as roads, waste collection, parks, sporting grounds and trails remained top priorities for Kingborough residents.
“These services are essential to daily life, but they are becoming increasingly costly to deliver.
“Construction costs have risen by 30% over the past three years, and Council’s overall expenses are forecast to increase by 6.3 %.
“For many years, Council has aimed to remain one of the lowest rating councils in southern Tasmania.
“While this is an admirable aspiration it has left Council in an unsustainable financial position.
“A long-term financial plan was developed to address the underlying deficits and secure a sustainable future.
“However, delays in key housing developments near Kingston Park and increasing financial pressures caused by the rising costs associated with building and maintaining the community’s $1 billion worth of assets have further added to the budgetary challenges we face as an organisation.
“We are not alone in facing these funding challenges.
“Local governments across the country are experiencing similar pressures.
“The 2025–26 Budget includes a rate increase of 6.5 %, and Councillors also supported finding efficiencies of $200,000 within existing expenditure.
“This will be done strategically to minimise the impact on service delivery.
“Our community relies on and values services like sporting facilities, playgrounds, waste collection, water quality monitoring and our large range of community programs.
“Cutting these would come at a significant cost to the quality of life in Kingborough.
“Council is also investing in internal improvements to enhance service delivery, improving the way we work with our community. Our systems and processes need to be updated to improve efficiency and importantly, to change our organisational culture.
“All Councillors are committed to ensuring that our organisation meets customer expectations, delivers better services and makes it easier for members of our community to do business with Council.
“This year, Council is investing over $24 million towards improving and maintaining our roads and footpaths with $6.7 million in upgrades to our vital stormwater infrastructure.”