Cobar Shire Council’s cash position has improved over the past year.
Council’s audited financial statements will be presented to tomorrow’s Ordinary Council Meeting with Council’s director of finance and community services Kym Miller “delighted” with council’s current cash balance.
Mr Miller told The Cobar Weekly they had originally planned for a break-even budget for the financial year ended June 2018 but instead finished with a surplus of almost $1million.
He said the positive report could be attributed to “the constant application of good controls and proper decision making” along with a profit made in the second half of the year from private works carried out by council staff.
Mr Miller said the biggest gain over the year, was through the engineering department, with a profit made from engineering private works for Roads & Maritime Services helping their bottom line.
He said an increase in income from the Cobar Memorial Swimming Pool and Cobar Youth & Fitness Centre had also helped to improve the budget.
“We had an increase in user fees at both facilities with a lot more people are using them, which is great to see,” Mr Miller said.
He said a number of cost effective measures had also been made in Council’s Parks and Gardens area which also contributed to the improved budget figure. Despite making some cost effective cut backs, Mr Miller said Parks and Gardens supervisor Paul Sullivan had achieved some really good outcomes with many improvements made over the past year.
Mr Miller said while council had received considerable grant money for capital works during the year, it was however only “a short term spike in the business cycle”.
“We still need to be sensible, have a non-risky investment policy and continue to take a cautious and non-aggressive approach to rebuilding,” Mr Miller said.
